I first properly clocked it on a damp Tuesday evening, phone propped against the kettle while the cherry vape cloud drifted across the kitchen. The Coven group chat had gone quiet for twenty minutes then exploded with a clip of a woman in Tesco quietly moving the last ripe avocado from the bloke’s basket into her own. No words. Just a look and a small smile. Caption called it microfeminism. I watched it twice. Then I watched the comments. Women piled on with their own versions faster than I could scroll. Men arrived in packs, calling it petty, calling it man-hating, calling it the reason everything is falling apart. One wrote “this is why I stay single.” Another said he would never date a woman who did “that sort of thing.” I sat there in my slouchy hoodie, blue nails tapping the worktop, and thought, here we go.
We have been doing this stuff for years. My mum always called the big spider in the shed “she” even when it was clearly a he. My nan used to give the last roast potato to whoever had actually cooked, which was always her. Nobody named it. Now it has a label and a hashtag and suddenly it is a problem. The second you give the small thing a name, the people who benefited from the old default notice it exists.
I started asking around the usual way. Slid into DMs, posted a vague story asking what tiny thing people do that makes certain men twitch, then sat back with my oat-milk flat white and let the replies come. A woman from Southend said she only ever refers to the family car as “hers” even though both names are on the paperwork. Her partner used to laugh. Now he corrects her every single time. A twenty-something in Hackney told me she has started saying “the children and their dads” at the school gate. The dads clock it immediately. Some grin. Some go very still. One actually said “that’s not how language works.” She just smiled and walked off. An older woman with a proper Basildon accent like mine said she has been calling every unknown dog “good girl” for years. Her husband used to join in. Lately he gets snappy. “It’s just a dog, love.” The “love” lands different now.
I tried a few myself. Walked into the corner shop on my road and when the bloke said “cheers mate” I said “cheers hun” back. He paused like I had asked him to hold my bag. Another day I was in the chemist queue and the woman in front was buying tampons. The bloke behind the counter said “anything else, love?” I muttered “she’s all right, thanks.” The woman turned and grinned. The bloke looked at the floor. Last Sunday at my mum’s I said “ladies first, then the sons of ladies” when the last roast potato was being claimed. My brother rolled his eyes. My mum nearly dropped the gravy boat laughing. My dad just looked at me over his glasses and said I was in a mood. I was not in a mood. I was testing the temperature.
The examples keep arriving. A waitress I spoke to admitted she always assumes the drink with the fruit and the little umbrella is the man’s order and hands it over with a straight face. Another woman only plants female trees in her garden. Someone else defaults to “she” for any animal whose sex she does not know. A few have started saying “thank goddess” instead of the other one. One girl starts every work presentation with “hello ladies and sons of ladies.” None of it is marching or petitioning. It is just refusing the automatic setting we were all handed.
I spent an evening in the comment sections of the bigger videos. Same pattern every time. Women posting their versions, often with a little wink. Then the replies from men who feel personally robbed of something they never knew they owned. “This is why I don’t date feminists.” “Imagine being this bitter.” “It’s just grammar, grow up.” One bloke wrote a whole paragraph about language being ruined. He used the word “ruined” six times. I counted. Another called planting only female trees “environmental vandalism.” I looked it up. Most street trees in London are chosen for size and pollution resistance, not gender. The vandalism claim lasted about four minutes before someone posted the council planting guide.
What they never say out loud is the actual discomfort. If the default can be flipped this easily, maybe it was never as solid as they thought. Maybe the world does not have to centre them automatically. Maybe the waitress giving the nicer portion to the woman is not an insult. Maybe it is just what happens when someone stops putting the man first without thinking.
I tried the presentation line on a work Zoom last month. Opened with “right then, ladies and sons of ladies.” Two of the men laughed. One did not. He unmuted later to ask if I was “making a point.” I said I was just being accurate. He went quiet for the rest of the call. Afterwards one of the women messaged me privately: “I have never seen him look that uncomfortable. Do it again.”
That is the quiet power of it. It costs nothing. It takes three seconds. And it forces a tiny moment of recognition. The people who already get it barely notice. The people who do not get it notice immediately and cannot explain why it bothers them without sounding exactly like the thing they claim they are not.
I am not pretending this is going to smash anything by next Tuesday. We still need the big structural stuff: equal pay that actually arrives, decent childcare that does not cost a second mortgage, laws that get enforced instead of ignored. But the big stuff moves like traffic on the A13. These little flips happen in real time, in shops and offices and comment sections, and they add up. Every time a woman refuses the automatic “he” or the automatic larger plate or the automatic assumption that the man is the one who needs looking after, she is practising a different default. She is reminding herself, and anyone listening, that the old default was a choice all along.
Some of the men who hate it the most will tell you they are all for equality. They just do not like the tone. They do not like it when it is funny. They do not like it when it is small enough that they cannot argue with the principle without looking ridiculous. That is the clever bit. You cannot write a serious essay against calling a spider mummy long legs without revealing more about yourself than you meant to.
I keep a running list on my phone now. Not because I need more content. Because I like watching the pattern. The women who do it usually shrug when I ask why. “Just felt like it.” “Got bored of the other way.” “Wanted to see what would happen.” The men who lose it usually have a lot more to say. They write paragraphs. They use words like “divisive” and “unnecessary.” They never seem to notice that the original default was also a choice, just one they never had to think about.
Last week I was on the train back from London, feet up on the opposite seat, reading the comments again. An older woman a few seats down caught me smirking at my phone and gave me that knowing look. I felt my cheeks go hot for a second, then I thought, good. Let her see it. Let anyone see it. These tiny acts are not about winning an argument. They are about making the invisible visible for long enough that people have to look at it. Most of them will look away again. A few will not. Those few are the ones worth paying attention to.
The rest can keep writing their essays about ruined grammar and environmental vandalism. We will keep doing the small things in the meantime. Hello ladies. And sons of ladies. The trees will keep growing either way. And the comments will keep exploding. That is how you know it is working.