My wife has accused me of mansplaining when I really was just sharing the information I had in my head about “the thing” because I was proud of myself about that.
There’s also the “You may already know all this, but it’s worth saying out loud anyway.”
I’m not saying mansplaining isn’t a thing - it certainly is - but there are other innocent “info dump” kinds of things that can look like mansplaining but weren’t intended to be. I try to be very clear about why I am info dumping when I do, but I’m not always able to catch myself in time.
#TouchOfTheTism
Exactly, when I tell my therapist about the funny things I learned about psychology, it’s just me saying stuff that I know now, how I think it’s cool, and asking for further information. I’m well aware that he already knows far more on the topic. If you’re explaining it with a tone of “you fucking idiot woman, I’m educating you”, then that’s mansplaining. Another important possibility, is just phrasing a question as a statement for clarification. Think of how a waiter will repeat your order back to you at a restaraunt. I do the same thing when I learn about a new concept. I repeat back what I think I understood about something to make sure I got it right. Tone is very important. If I don’t sound like I’m trying to be a dick to you, then I’m probably not.
That’s a great observation Nougat! Great job!
Thank you! That’s exactly what I wanted to hear!
So, what’s the latest topic you want to info-dump about? I’m curious and invite an info-dump.
I just fixed one of my motorcycles, and I’m currently doing a deep dive on the pros and cons of phenolic caliper pistons. I could go on about motorcycling and vehicle mechanics all day every day.
Yeah the intention is far easier to sus out when it’s in person, especially with a known person. I’m a woman and I have ADHD and I do this to my husband all the time.
As a fellow autist, but also a cis woman person, I think there’s a genuine and clear difference between the two, but… I viscerally understand infodumps when the other person already knows…
You gas yourself up so much to share the thing and they are like… mmhmm. Deflation city. And it’s hard to stop yourself from sharing your own personal understanding of things with people, even if they can correct you, which you hope they will do if you are wrong, omg that would be amazing!
That contrasts so hard with the condescending “I know more than you” attitude. Because the things those dipshits pick to harp on are usually the more superficial aspects of the thing.
Like that’s nice, I’m glad you know the specific term for the thing, genuinely, now let’s proceed from our mutual understanding and iron out the details together!
But that’s really different from someone who talks over you, is wrong, won’t be proven wrong, don’t care or know all that much (like dunning kruger sort of thing)
I am very guilty of asking people if they know about something then telling them anyway.
Too many cases of people confidently telling me they know about computers, point to the monitor and tell me it’s a CPU, then proudly call the computer under their desk the hard drive. The only reason their “CPU” won’t turn on being they need to press the power button on the monitor.
I’ve had this experience before. I was excited to talk about what I learnt whilst volunteering for a war museum, and wanted to share my excitement with people. Got accused of Mansplaining. It really was upsetting, since I was just talking about a lovely experience and didn’t want to upset nor offend anyone…
They already knew everything you had to say?! War experts out there I guess
1 “fun” fact if you got it, maybe one of the less bloody/violent ones 😇
I knew about this before a bit, however in the museum they have a few bits dedicated to what information we have of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance attempt.
As the Nazis tried vehemently to erase evidence of dissent, amongst other things of course, the story of Scholl’s attempt at gathering resistance has survived - despite her expected demise.I have not read up on my History in many years, however it’s often a short yet symbolic read to the persistence some humans have shown in the face of terror. I do recommend it.
Incredible
Sophie Scholl and the rest, heroes and martyrs
Distributed anti-nazi pamphlets and tried to take all the blame to save their friends. Defiant to the end, supporting their country but not its evil divergence.
RIP:
Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, and Kurt Huber
My brother in law is a guy who knows pretty much everything about everything. Pretty much any interesting topic you bring up, he’ll have a deeper, more interesting conversation ready about that topic. This might sound annoying, but he’s got a way of making it seem like you’re discussing something you both already understand. Like, he isn’t explaining things unless you ask, he’ll say things like, “I’m sure you’ve already seen/heard of this”, “Maybe you were the one who told me this, but…”, (even when I’m pretty sure he knows I wasn’t) etc. By giving you the credit for the information, it removes the feeling of him trying to be superior or condescending. This might still be mansplaining, I don’t know. I’m a man, so maybe I have more of an ignorance for being mansplained to since I don’t have to constantly put up with it, but this feels a lot more like a man explaining rather than mansplaining
It’s exposition for the voices in my head.
My partner has taught/trained me to ask “would you like to hear more?” before I info-dump on him.
Example: Me: “at work today I’ve been playing around with configuration settings for Primo VE, specifically the search scopes… Um… would you like to hear more?”
Response: “I’m glad you have an interesting problem at work and no, no thank you.”
Then she spent two hours talking about every single thing she experienced at work and her remarks on them…
There was no “she” in my story.
Edit: and we just had a test of the system. I got home bubbling about updating Anubis and the new config options, then asked “would you like to hear more?” and he was like “sounds like you had a good day, no thank you” then flopped face-first onto the couch.
I was just alegorizing an unbalanced relationship, not trying to describe yours.
Fair enough. I’m a tad prickly about it because folks assume sometimes and it gets tiring.
The problem with this, and it’s a serious one, is that gives them the opportunity to say no.
You are a starship troopers propaganda video. Would you like to know more?
Yep! I even use that tone of voice with him.
As a man with adhd, I do this all the time to men and to women, and I’ve been accused of mansplaining. I’m working on it, but I promise it has nothing to do with sexism. I just think everybody needs to know all the details so rhey can reach the same conclusions as me.
And for what it’s worth, I really appreciate when someone does the same for me on a topic I don’t know about. But I understand how frustrating it is when someone does it on a subject I do know about, so I always try to gauge knowledge before info dumping. What catches me off guard is when someone isn’t interested in learning. They don’t know everything, and they are just OK with walking through life, knowing they don’t know something.
Point is, I really do appreciate the grace presented in the post. I don’t mind if you’re being condescending if you forgive me for oversharing.
Can someone mansplain mansplaining to me? It seems like any time someone with a beard inhales sharply.
Kind of like how manspreading is men sitting down.
And the male gaze is men looking at things.
Mansplaining is when you explain a subject to a woman as if she doesn’t know it, when she would be fully expected to know it. An example would be a man without an astrophysics degree explaining astrophysics with condescension to a woman with an astrophysics degree. It sounds silly but I’ve seen it happen, more often than not it happens online though because terminally online people tend to be more condescending.
Manspreading is more often when dudes intentionally take up more sitting space than they clearly need in public when it’s obvious there is enough space for additional people. Often it’s a lack of self awareness.
Male gaze is the way women are most often portrayed in visual arts and media from a heterosexual, masculine perspective, often objectifying them as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. It suggests that media is often constructed and consumed from a male perspective.
Hell, even a lot of sexualization of men is from the male perspective. Having spoken to a lot of women about how they experience attraction, most aren’t very interested in the hypermasculine view of the male “ideal body” and are far more interested in certain behaviors and mannerisms, or even just the look of their face and hands, rather than everything else.
I’m writing this not as an argument, but as taking your questions in good faith. I hope it was in good faith.
What I picture in my head when I hear the term manspreading is the guy on every bus or subway who is sitting in a middle seat with legs spread wide. It could also be arms around the backs of the surrounding chairs.
Yeah pretty much the jist of it.
Tbf I see teenagers do it a lot too but their brains aren’t fully developed yet.
You know men tend to be larger than women?
I had a live-in partner complain that all the clothes in the laundry basket were mine, implying she was doing most of the laundry. I looked. We wore the same amount of clothes, mine were just bigger, taking a larger volume.
Size doesn’t make you spread your legs, blocking two other seats or make you wrap your arms around the back of the other seats. I’ve seen plenty of men who can keep their hands and knees in front of themselves.
But … it does? If you’re tall, your arms and legs are longer, so they stick out further. As I found out on an 11 hour flight where the people to my left and right decided they both needed both arm rests, it’s painful to sit with your knees and elbows touching each other.
Wrapping my arm around a seatback would have been a godsend.
Alright, I see the problem. I’m describing how some men literally spread their arms across the back of multiple seats and how some men literally spread their legs out so that each knee is blocking access to each seat beside the and you are interpreting that as people complaining about guys being allowed to use their armrests. No one is complaining that you take up physical space. They are complaining that you are spread out in a way that blocks access to the space around you that you don’t need. If you don’t sit down and spread your knees wide enough to block access to the seats next to you, then the term manspreading doesn’t apply to you.
So taking up unnecessary public space is something particular to men? Do all men do this, or just only men?
Or are we gendering bad behavior to win internet points?
Manspreading is more often when dudes intentionally take up more sitting space than they clearly need in public when it’s obvious there is enough space for additional people. Often it’s a lack of self awareness.
I feel like doing it intentionally and doing it because you’re lacking self awareness are sorta at odds
Fair enough, let’s just assume most of them lack self awareness, because that makes the most sense.
There are definitely some cases where it’s intentional, I’ve definitely experienced dudes trying to take my space on the bus by pushing into my leg that is currently existing in my chair space.
Probably bait, but I’ll take it anyways.
Mansplaining is when you make an assumption that a woman doesn’t know something basic and fundamental about a topic, and then explain it to them like they’re an idiot or a child. You may not even be aware you’re doing it as a man, because misogyny is ingrained into our culture and social conditioning. Such is the nature of microaggressions; you do them without realizing, because it’s a bias that has become so baked into your worldview as to become subconscious.
It’s easy to avoid doing, though. Anytime you’re about to explain something, to a woman or otherwise, simply first ask if they are familiar with ‘x topic’. If the answer is yes, proceed without explanation, if the answer is no, explain as you would to anyone else without condescension. It’s literally that easy.
“Doesn’t know something basic and fundamental”?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining
asked if she had “heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year”—not considering that it might be (as, in fact, it was) Solnit’s book
He didn’t know she was the author. I mean, that’s a pretty simple mistake to make. I wouldn’t assume someone I’m casually speaking to at a party is the author of the particular book on the particular subject we are chatting about. What are the odds?
But somehow this is extrapolated to any time any man monologues. And implicitly that only men do this, and only to women. Let me blow your mind: sometimes men bloviate to other men. And sometimes women do this to men.
Funny, you cut off the important bit right before that quote where the man cut her off as she was about to explain her most recent book. Here’s a bit of context:
“She began to talk about her most recent, on Eadweard Muybridge, whereupon the man cut her off and asked if she had “heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year”—not considering that it might be (as, in fact, it was) Solnit’s book.
See how the context changes the situation? She was already speaking, and the man cut her off, assuming she was unaware, and explained to her something that he would have learned to be unnecessary if he had simply treated her as a conversation partner to be listened to, rather than something to be narrated at.
I can already tell I’m not going to be able to convince you, though. In order to support your point (and, perhaps, avoid any self-reflection) you’ve ignored nuance - generally bad practice when talking about the intricacies of social interaction. Certainly, men monologue to men, men monologue to women, women monologue to men, and women monologue to women, but much like when people equivocate the fear of sexual assault to the fear of false accusations, the thing being ignored is the amount that these things happen; they are not equivalent.
To be absolutely clear: I am a man. An autistic man, even. One who loves to learn, loves to info-dump, and has more female friends than male. In all my time info-dumping to my female friends, I have never once been accused of mansplaining, because I ask before I explain to ascertain their knowledge, and I actually listen when they speak.
Funny how that works.
I genuinely don’t understand what difference it makes. She began to explain, implying she hadn’t said she was the author of the book he had locked and loaded. He cut her off. This could either be excitement on the topic they both had interest in or a slightly rude faux pas.
If she said “yep, heard of that book — I wrote it” and he said “you can’t be the author — you’re a woman” the misogyny would be obvious.
The fact that one person cut another off in one conversation doesn’t mean every time a man opens his mouth he’s “mansplaining”. Or maybe it does, since the definition seems to mean whatever the speaker wishes it to be. Bringing me back to my first post.
Cutting her off was definitely rude, but I agree that it’s silly to ask everyone you meet if they wrote each book you want to discuss with them.
If you had something like
Alice: I’ve been researching a guy recently, do you know anything about him?
Bob: I recently read a book about him, have you heard of it?
Alice: I wrote that book.
Bob: Wow, cool to meet you. I really liked your work!
Bob still assumes that Alice didn’t write the book until told otherwise, but he doesn’t cut her off, and this conversation is perfectly pleasant.
I’m memestealing this!
From one thief to another, cool.
Mansplaining is when you are a male and you open your mouth to say something. It might have been used properly in the past but now it’s just a buzzword used to silence people.
It does seem to be a way to shut men down without making any kind of point. Look at some of the responses in this thread.
Another “emotional invalidation” or “NPD” or “weaponized incompetence.”
0 for 3
So, no.
The only place I see those terms used to describe benign behavior is in rage bait. My guess is that you haven’t heard someone use those terms in a serious way because of an internet bubble or something.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining Wikipedia says it originated as a call out for internalized misogyny, but now is used very generally.
I bet you could find info on the rest pretty easily.
Also its real ironic that your comment meets the definition of mansplaining lol.
“(for a man) to comment on or explain something, to a woman, in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner”.[1][2][3][4]
I’m not a woman though, but if any read your comment then you meet the strict definition lol.
Asking someone to explain mansplaining is mansplaining. Got it.
You asked, but then gave three inaccurate statements that have already had detailed answers about the meaning. It isn’t mansplaining because you weren’t directing it at a woman, but the comment as a whole would fit the definition if it was directed at a woman.
Can someone mansplain mansplaining to me? It seems like any time someone with a beard inhales sharply.
Kind of like how manspreading is men sitting down.
And the male gaze is men looking at things.
All three terms are more nuanced than that even if some people ignore the context and use them in a sexist way against men in general. There will always be a number of people who use words incorrectly.
Homie I gotta stop biting. If you can’t see how your comment was:
- overconfident
- inaccurate
- oversimplified
- and could be read as condescending
Idk what to tell ya.
Good luck out there.
Asking someone to explain something is none of those things.
BTW I think you are a fine fella. Sorry I didn’t say that more. I wish ya the best.
Oh yeah you are 100% right. It was the rest of the comment.
She’s probably an idiot and had to be told in that way
deleted by creator
She sounds like an asshole
ur mom lies to u
Your mom lies to your dad everyday
they dont talk so i know that aint true :p
That’s such a cool observation :)
Is try at your attempt at lashing out over hurt feelings?
You’re so insightful!!!
Well she’s not here to impress you.
She’s clearly posting for attention though
I would like to know more about this Vagina Devil Magic…
Allow me to mansplain.
Nah I’m just kidding I have no idea.
Im assuming it’s this energy.
Neurodivergents be like: “Wait people don’t want to know this? That’s absurd. So anyway, what I was saying was…”
How many “Men” are just ND?
“Mansplaining” is sexist. It’s the equivalent of saying women are airheads, or gossips, or talk too much.
Is each man expected to just… Assume that everyone else shares their exact knowledge? Would such an assumption not therefore eliminate most communication entirely?
Or what if we decided to divide up groups by something other than gender. Would it be okay to say “asiansplaining” or “jewsplaining” or “gaysplaoning”?
Can a trans-man mansplaining? Can a trans-woman mansplain? Is there a separate category of “transplaining”?
If you don’t do it, then don’t worry. The term doesn’t apply to you.
The problem is when people assume you’re mansplaining just because you’re a man explaining something.
No, it applies to “men”, and I identify as one.
That’s like whenever racists say shit like “hey did you know 50% of crimes are committed by 13% of the population?”, a black person calling out the racism, and then being dismissed by saying “well if you don’t commit crimes they aren’t talking about you”.
deleted by creator
Look, you’re not wrong. It’s just really hard for me to take it seriously.
Does it truly hurt your feelings that men are stereotyped as overbearing and condescending? Are you truly injured by this stereotype? Are you personally treated differently because of it?
Maybe it’s just the people that hang out with, but I don’t find that any of them have had this phrase used against them. It seems more like we’re trying very hard to be offended because we have so little else to be offended by. In the name of fairness.
But that’s just me and my friends. Maybe you get teased with this incessantly and it really causes you emotional trauma. In that case, I apologize, and please tell me your story.
I’ve never had this phrase used against me personally, but that’s probably because I don’t really talk much with bigots.
If we want to build a world that is equal and just for everyone, we cannot afford to keep perpetuating these hateful divisions. I understand that historically, the vast majority of oppressors have been cis (allegedly) straight men, and in the US and Europe they have been white as well. So for some it feels cathartic to lash out against groups that resemble their oppressors. Hurt people want to hurt others. As long as we perpetuate the cycle the same mistakes will keep repeating. But it’s also important to remember that anyone can be an oppressor. Peter Thiel is gay and leading the world into technofascism. Look up a list of the world’s richest person and yes, there’s a lot of white dude at the very top but if you scroll down a little bit you’ll find find Jensen Huang, Carlos Slim, and tons more non-white people. The women of the Walton and Koch families.
Progressives keep asking why they are losing elections, why so many young men are falling into incel or alpha male culture. There’s a lot of complicated reasons for that, but shit like this certainly isn’t helping.
It’s especially disheartening to look through the profiles of some people here who are arguing in favor of this sexism. Because most of the people here I agree with 99% of what they post and comment.
Imagine this was a microagression about any other identity group. Imagine some asshole joking about how Asians are bad drivers to a Chinese person. Imagine that Chinese person gets offended, and you tell them “it’s really hard for me to take you seriously”.
I don’t have any emotional trauma about this. I was raised exposed to a certain amount of toxic masculinity, and as I grew older and strive to become a better person I had to un-learn some bad habits. I didn’t just memorize what words were offensive or not, but gave a lot of thought and educated myself into WHY they were offensive. The word “mansplaining” alone is mild, but what it’s doing is singling put a specific identity group, then generally associating a negative connotation to the whole group. It’s offensive, it’s bad, and it should not be perpetuated.
I think the real point here is that this is the thing you have chosen tofocusing on. You have had so little unfairness in your life that you feel the need to fixate on men being minorly teased.
If you really want fairness, maybe you should focus on the things that are massively unfair first.
Or do you only want fairness for white men?
Lol you have no idea what I focus on. You’re just reaching for a personal attack. Also it’s weird that you specify “white” men when I purposefully have not, because as far as I can tell there’s no racial component to the word “mansplaining”. Are you assuming that I’m white for some reason? I’m not sure if I’m white or not - kinda depends on who you ask.
Bigoted thinking is bigoted thinking, and I call it out when I see it. It’s fundamentally flawed. It’s bad science and bad statistics and leads to incorrect conclusions. It’s the same kind of thinking that eventually leads to bigger things. You cannot in good faith argue for fairness while allowing unfairness based on some arbitrary scale. You seem awfully comfortable turning a blind eye to prejudice when it doesn’t impact you.
You’re engaging in stereotypes, and stereotypes are harmful. Even positive ones, like the idea that Asians are good at math or women are nurturing.
The inequality people have suffered from bigotry throughout human history is horrible, but that does not justify bigotry against people who resemble old bigots.
You can say “minority teased”, but the modern word is “micro aggression”.
It’s pretty damning that most of the arguments you’re using here to justify the word are the same ones racist use to justify using the ‘N’ word, or any other bugot uses to justify their bigoted language.
So what do you focus on then?
I mean, in addition to microaggressions against the least impact among us.
“Mansplaining” is describing something sexist. It describes a real phenomenon that is necessarily gendered.
It’s not sexist for the same reason terms like “anti-semitism” or “gay bashing” aren’t prejudiced. They’re descriptive of a real thing that happens.
Terminology like this can help women navigate problems that men don’t have. If you don’t see the value in it, maybe that’s because you’ve never experienced that problem.
Bit of a difference between “mansplaining” and the other terms in that the other terms mention the target of the action, leaving the actor ambiguous. Anyone could be anti-semitic or bash gay people. Mansplaining is a term specifically coined to say that only men can perform condescending infodumps. What’s worse, nowadays it’s often used just for men explaining things they’re not sure if the other person knows. Some of us are also neurodivergent and have trouble picking up even fairly obvious social cues. I know it’s a problem for me with ADHD and I know there’s also “tism infodumps”. Both disorders affect women too (and ADHD in women is underdiagnosed), but I’ve never heard “womansplaining” used as a term, nor do I think it would be appropriate. It’d be a hella sexist term.
I’m sure there’s quite a few men out there who legitimately are so condescending, they feel they have to explain basic things to “dumb women”. But I’m willing to bet most cases of “mansplaining” are some guy being an idiot and missing hints from the other party in the conversation, as well as just misjudging what is common knowledge and what isn’t.
It doesn’t help that women are just more polite and more likely to let you finish talking even when they know everything lol
But I’m willing to bet most cases of “mansplaining” are some guy being an idiot and missing hints from the other party in the conversation, as well as just misjudging what is common knowledge and what isn’t.
If you’re a man, who are you to invalidate the experiences of women like that?
If someone overuses the term and accuses someone of mansplaining when that’s not what they’re doing, by all means call it out. I’ve been unfairly accused of mansplaining before. But that had nothing to do with the word itself and everything to do with the person who said it. Not having access to that word wouldn’t have made them more reasonable.
Meanwhile the word describes an experience that you have never had, and you’re sitting here saying that most of the people who have had it actually haven’t. That’s kind of fucked up, dude. Take a step back.
The term literally is sexist because it implies it’s only bad when men do it. These days it’s used to describe any time a man explains anything. It’s lost any meaning it may have had originally.
White knightism is sexism in its own right too, because it brings to the table the assumption that women are weaker and need protection, thus not equal to men,
Because you seem to have missed it:
It’s describing something that is really happening.
There is a systemic bias that exists where men treat women this way. It’s a problem that these women have to deal with. Trust in the experience of people who are actually in this situation instead of trying to invalidate them to feed your need to win arguments on the internet.
Just because something happens doesn’t make it okay to generalize that behavior across an entire identity.
“Mansplaining” is a pretty mild example but we can look at other more extreme ones. One of the most classic is racists who love to say “Do you know 50% of crime is committed by 13% of the population?”, and use that as justification to the idea that black people are inherently more likely to be criminals. And they may occasionally walk it back and try to say shit like “not you, you’re one of the good ones”.
Or it’s like someone who feels as though they got taken advantage of in a business deal saying they got “jew’d”. And then trying to say “well no I’m not antisemitic, but I’ve personally seen and heard of Jews conducting business unfairly. And it’s common enough that the term has arisen, so it’s gotta be somewhat true. And if you are a Jew who conducts business fairly then I’m not talking about you”. If you encountered someone trying to say that, you would be quite correct to respond by saying “wow that’s actually really fucking antisemitic”. And this is the exact same thing you are trying to argue with the word “mansplaining”.
I never said it doesn’t happen. I said it’s overblown.
Online, literally anything a man has ever said seems to be described as mansplaining now. Offline, I’ve barely heard anyone complain about it - only talking about car mechanics I believe. And I’ve got some people in my circles who are pretty vocal about gender dynamics issues.
👍
It doesn’t help that women are just more polite and more likely to let you finish talking even when they know everything lol
I was agreeing with you sooo heavily until this last paragraph. This is a biased generalization of women, and arguably an implied contrast to men.
Maybe it’s just the people I know? Could even just be the upbringing in a formerly soviet nation, it used to be pretty socially conservative in many ways here. Younger people are starting to break out of that pattern luckily. All I know is, in my generation and older ones, on average, guys tend to be more loud and in your face, more likely to interrupt you while talking.
I don’t know…my wife wifesplains things to me…assuming I’m a toddler and I’m not loading the dishwasher optimally; despite me knowing how to run computational fluid dynamics software and being aware of water flow optimiztion. 😀
That must be really frustrating.
And yes, women can mansplain
Nope
So when my ex-husband first went to vet tech school they, at some point, learned about menstruation. He proceeded to explain to me, a middle aged woman, how periods work, lol.
So your ex-husband was an asshole. Cool story, but the world is full of condescending assholes of all kinds and polite people of all kinds.
Right, just an example of the behavior of note in action. Correct, he was also a condescending asshole. I think those are prerequisites.
That’s great input! Good job pete!
Here’s an example of “mansplaining”: I’ve been beekeeping for close to ten years. A gentleman joined our group recently who has had maybe a few months’ experience. Wearing a brand new bee suit and gloves, he proceeded to tell me how to carry out a basic hive inspection. He was not assuming I shared his exact knowledge, he was assuming I knew even less than him.
The term mansplaining came about because it encapsulates a very common scenario. I know a few chaps who constantly explain stuff to me that I know a lot more about than they do, and in a very condescending way. One old codger even patted me on the head and said, “A young thing like you wouldn’t know about MS-DOS.” I bought my first computer in 1984.
I haven’t found mansplaining as prevalent among young men, I must say. They seem more open and egalitarian in their approach, more respectful. Though a friend told me, “It’s because you remind them of their granny.”
Not gonna lie, I had no idea until this post that “mansplaining” was strictly considered male behavior. I’ve had women do the same thing when I’m in spaces or situations that are traditionally female dominated, and figured that “mansplaining” was the appropriate descriptor for that. TIL.
You’re right. The behavior really should be called “non-consensual info-dumping”. Furthermore, people should ask first and only proceed to 'splain away if emphatic consent is given.
That’s the key. I LOVE explaining things I’m passionate about but it’s rude to just go wild on people, so I’ve developed a process to gauge familiarity and interest.
I’ve already heard the term “gaysplaining” unironically more than once in the bisexual sphere to call out gay people that try to gaslight bi people into thinking that they’re not really bi.
Sounds like a conversation that devolved into generalization and prejudice, treating each other as symbols of their identifies rather than individuals.
I’m sure it happens. Tons of bigoted shit happens. That doesn’t make it okay.
As we all know, a bi person dating a different gender than themselves is just confused and straight, while a bi person dating their own gender is pretending to be gay to fit into LGBTQ spaces. /s
Anyone can “mansplain,” so better to say “womansplain,” “non-binarysplain,” etc. as applicable.
English already haz gender-neutral words for this. For an adjective, we have “condescending”. For a verb, we have pontificate, garage, bloviate, bluster, rant, etc.
Language changes and evolves over time, so we could also make a new word for this phenomenon. “Mansplaining” is unnecessary gendered slur.
“Language changes and evolves over time, so we could also make a new word for this phenomenon.”
We did, you just don’t like it.
Yes.
There’s a lot of words people have created that have been deemed hateful, bigoted, and harmful. We call these “slurs”.
And English is a very contextual language so something can be a slur in one use and not in another.
Is that actually true? I’m struggling to think of any examples.
There are occasions where a technical term is used as a slur in casual conversations while still being perfectly acceptable in the original context. “Retarded” for example. That certainly does not apply here.
There’s some words that are more or less offensive in different English-speaking countries. “Cunt” and “Bloody” come to mind there. There’s also been some attempt at reclaiming “cunty” for women which… Eh, I’m just gonna stay away from that one.
“Mansplaining” is offensive from it’s very etymology. It’s baked into the word without cultural context. The word itself is formed from unnecessary and bigoted generation.
The word is formed from an experience common enough that the word caught on overnight. We don’t need to get #notallmen about this.
(Also, “I’m struggling to think of examples”: thinks of several examples)
pontificate, harangue, bloviate, bluster, rant
None of those words impart the same meaning as “mansplain.” A new word would be preferable.
Bloviate pretty much covers what I do on work phone calls. In my defense (mildly), I welcome whenever someone interrupts me.
garage
Is that a typo or is there a definition of garage that is synonymous with bloviate that my dictionary doesn’t list?
Lol autocorrect REALLY doesn’t like the word “harangue”
Don’t you garage to me!
Dude ngl so I was accused of mansplaining by an ex while explaining some technical shit I was talking about and I knew she didn’t know, claiming she did in fact know…
Assume that
everyone elseshe shares their exact knowledge?And that’s exactly what I did, upon her request. I stopped explaining technical terms when talking about something assuming she’ll just know what a buffer tube and an H3 weight are. Turns out that made her “feel stupid” which of course wasn’t my intention, I intended to both A) comply with her literal request as per respecting boundaries, and B) hope she’d see just how ineffective of a system that is for communication. Turns out I was the asshole for doing as she asked, who knew. She threatened to shoot me (she wasn’t gonna do shit but still threatening to isn’t exactly “chill”) when we broke up for the crime of checks notes spending my own money legally, so I’m sure I was the problem lol.
There’s not much of a point to that story really other than I enjoy telling it but I rarely get to since it’s rarely relevant, and to say don’t bother assuming everyone knows things, they might just hate that too lol. Danged if ya do danged if ya don’t, I’m royally danged.
Okay but what if I’m excited to talk about dinosaurs? Is it mansplaining because I didn’t know the lady im talking to is a paleontologist ?
And people wonder why many men are afraid to talk to women.
deleted by creator
Dropping this gem here:
deleted by creator
Great post, thanks for sharing!
Women: “Don’t be condescending”
Lemmites: “What the fuck”
