This is an excellent point. Power is in fact rarely relevant in ordinary interactions, and when it is, it often works differently than we might think. For example, are we sure that every man who is telling a woman something actually has more power than she does? Does the guy at that party actually have more power than Rebecca Solnit? Maybe yes, but also maybe no.
Yes! This is also what leads to so many otherwise innocuous statements being taken as “microagressions,” an apparently even more heinous crime than mansplaining.
I so agree! The concept of microaggressions just encourages us to go around with a chip on our shoulders, looking for reasons to be outraged. It’s not a healthy way to live.
On a side note, I recently met my cousin’s teenaged son again, for the first time in ten years. He is white, but he has this enormous natural Afro. I so desperately wanted to touch it, and my kids said the same thing. I know that touching Black people’s hair is something people talk about as a microaggression. And I get that it would be annoying to have people touch your hair all the time (although when I lived in Chicago, Black children liked to touch my long, wavy hair, and I thought it was cute). But my cousin’s son’s hair was so tempting, not because of racism but because it was cool!
Insert applause. This was lovely. As someone who explains things for a living the rise of mansplaining as a concept has been very annoying and led to me intentionally just letting people be confused until they ask me to explain. Unsurprisingly this happens a lot because the law is mostly nonsensical and counterintuitive.
That fossil fact blew my mind, even though it should be obvious, I never thought about it before.
Thanks so much for the kind words! I totally get why you are reluctant to share your expertise with people, but it is sad to me that people feel they have to restrain themselves because their interlocutor might be offended. I think the more knowledge the better!
Sep 1, 2022·edited Sep 1, 2022Liked by Mari, the Happy Wanderer
Sometimes I really think that mansplaining is a symptom of hyperspecialization. Most of the knowledge that all of us have that helps us to make money and essentially have "a place in society" is very specialized. This leads a lot of people to mix up what they know and what everybody knows.
Nobody talks about the reverse of mansplaining which is way worse - it's when you assume everyone knows what you're talking about! People don't want to accept this - that most of the things we think of as "generally smart" are things that we only know because we studied it in school or do it for a living or obsessively follow news about it.
Seeing a mansplainer mansplain makes people uncomfortable because it's a person acknowledging the weird reality we live in! Which we don't want to see! (For example, I'm sure a lot of people who call out mansplaining have failed to explain the context of something they've shared about the Muller investigation, and, rather than risk "mansplaining" it, have just said "well we all know this ukrainian guy said this on this date, we all know that...")
Also just generally enjoyed the Hans story! I can imagine this guy and what it felt like to be on the hike.
This is such an interesting comment! Just today I was listening to an interview with Thi Nguyen, and he said something similar, that our society is so specialized, but that we don’t trust each other, so the information we need from each other is often met with hostility instead of gratitude.
The example of somebody interrupting themselves to define a term they've just used is interesting. I feel like I do this fairly frequently, and then I wonder afterwards if I've insulted somebody by assuming they didn't know. However, I think what drives me to do this is a) a real desire to be understood and b) the sense that a lot of people (perhaps particularly other men) would rather sit in silent ignorance than pipe up and say "sorry, I don't know what that word you just used means".
Maybe it would be better to interrupt yourself and ask, politely, if you need to explain what you just said means? That feels *more* condescending, somehow. And just droning on without checking in to make sure what you're saying is resonating with people seems rude, too.
I suppose some people just like talking to hear the sound of their own voice, or because they process things out loud, or because they're LARPing giving a TED talk. I'm not sure what's gendered about that; I think men do it to other men as well. Maybe other men are more likely to interrupt the speaker and try to change the topic, or just leave the conversation.
Boy, social interaction sure is hard. Is it any wonder it seems safer for some men to just sit alone at home and play video games?
Sigh. It is difficult. I never interrupt myself to define words, probably because of that guy, but you’re right that most people are unwilling to admit they don’t know something, so if we don’t explain better, we haven’t really communicated. I am hoping that we can all be a bit more charitable with one another.
Jewish messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are more recent, but they have only come to reinforce the old Jewish narrative. These are the same ideals.
The transnational, transracial, transsexual, transcultural ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond races, peoples, cultures) and that are the daily sustenance of our schools, in the media, in our popular culture, at our universities, and on our streets . . . have reduced our biosymbolic identity and our ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022Liked by Mari, the Happy Wanderer
I do it all the time too. Good thing I'm female--lol (also an English teacher with tons of international students) The smoothest thing to do is just elaborate naturally so that listeners will likely get what unfamiliar terms mean through context. And you're right that most people will not ask.
Male calicos used to be a collector's item decades ago. Maybe they still are? I mean, they are perishable - it's not like you can store them in a vault.
Nice pics. Two days ago, I did a day hike of Table Mountain (in the Tetons, far western Wyoming). Only 4 miles from parking lot to the summit, but it's 4100' elevation gain. I am 60. Younger me could do it without a problem. 60 year old me had to stop and rest A LOT, especially towards the summit. I hope to walk again by Saturday.
To your topic, having once been scolded for "mansplaining!" by a young women who did not know what she was talking about (had to do with portability of teacher retirement funding between states), I decided best just to not engage in conversation with women I am not already friendly with beyond the superficial. Sort of like "compliments" - I don't give those out anymore (except to my wife under penalty of "unhappy wife"). I never know who is going to be offended, so best just to not engage.
Wow--a 4100’ elevation gain at age 60!? I’m 55, and I think 3000’ is a lot! You are my hero!
I’m sorry your experiences being scolded has put you off talking with younger women. That’s yet another reason we shouldn’t be so ready to sling the “mansplaining” label--we might be missing out on getting to know interesting people!
It's a thing to do if you live here. Q: "What did you do last weekend?" A: "Went up Table." It is also used as a fitness standard: "If you can do Table, you can do this hike". I stare at it out the west facing windows of our home. It taunts me. Shot my mouth off to the wife that I was going to climb it again (last time was 3-4 years ago). But, it's an ass-kicker, and mine was kicked.
Now I want to go there and do that hike! I have a project to hike to the summits of as many mountains as I can--I’m at 26 so far, although most of them are a lot smaller than Table Mountain! Thanks for the link!
The video clip of dad jokes is from, I think, the team at Charlie Berens. I did my studies in Wisconsin and everything these guys do is terrific and culturally right (for WI) ...like "drive your sorry ass back to Illinois." Fun way to start the day.
Yes! I love Charlie and, as a native Minnesotan who enjoys our friendly rivalry with Wisconsinites, I think he gets our part of the world exactly right!
You’re on your way! Once we re examine our once firmly held beliefs like mansplaining, more and more of these assumptions will become clearer for what they truly are .
Sep 4, 2022·edited Sep 4, 2022Liked by Mari, the Happy Wanderer
I’ve never been accused of mansplaining (to my face, lol), but I do wonder if I’ve come across that way. Whenever something “clicks” for me, my first instinct is to go explain it to someone else—because (1) it’s cool, (2) I think others might benefit from this new insight, and (3) explaining it to others helps *me* understand it better than just keeping it in my head would. Does that make me a mansplainer? Maybe! I dunno. Thoughts like “I am smarter or more knowledgeable than this (potentially female) person” never enter my mind. I just…process stuff by talking. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022Liked by Mari, the Happy Wanderer
Having read the Solnit essay that birthed the term "mansplaining," I was struck by some salient facts:
1. The boor at the party is pontificating about a topic that she has just written a book about.
2. In fact, he's inadvertently quoting her own book, because he recently read a review of said book the New York Review of Books.
3. He continues to pontificate when informed she is the author of this book.
And one has to ask: how many times does this really happen? Like, how many books has Solnit written that other people inadvertently cite to her? How many topics is she the world's best-known expert about? How many PhDs does she have?
My point being, the essay that made "mansplaining" a ubiquitous term hinges on an anecdote that is interesting for being unusual, the proverbial "story you'll be dining out on for the rest of your life." Any person with expertise on a narrow field of study would absolutely live for a situation like this, where their obscure knowledge proved not just relevant but utterly, uncontestedly dispositive.
Yes it is an interesting and funny anecdote, but as the centerpiece in an an empirical "men are like this, whereas women are like this" statement it falls well short of the mark. Not just for Ms Solnit, but for the rest of us who may not be the world's leading expert on, well, anything.
Of course, once the Genie of the term mansplaining was out of the bottle, within days of making the rounds it predictably morphed to yet another in an ever-growing list of synonyms for "shut up, you!" Which at this point is online culture's primary export.
This is an excellent story. She is describing one man (who, admittedly, is arrogant), but his behavior has no bearing on any other man. In fact I think most men would be like Hans. When you let them know that you do know something about the topic, very, very few of them would persist!
I'm part Swiss and got to hike there again for the first time in years this summer, I'd need to get a lot fitter before I could walk up a mountain like the Faulhorn again though. I'm also part autistic, and biologically male - though some of the time I toy with inventing a separate non-binary gender identity because I'm such a bad fit for traditional masculinity, and the bullies in my (Swiss) school certainly let me know.
I both love explaining things and having things explained to me - even things I already know if they're explained in a new way or that makes new connections I haven't realised yet. I guess people with my personality might generalise from that to thinking everyone else likes it too?
I personally really do not like SBC's "extreme male brain" phrasing and think that "extreme systematising brain" would be both a more accurate and value-neutral description. I can agree that most extreme-systematisers are male, but that is not the same thing as saying most males are extreme-systematisers, and as far as I can tell they're not. Personally, I think very little of dominance and aggression having spent a lot of my childhood on the receiving end of it - I wouldn't count correcting someone's misconception about calico cats as dominance here, you were right after all and you didn't punch anyone - and while I'm extremely competitive in board games, that's in a group where everyone knows it's just a game and no-one is hurt by losing.
In my work as a teacher, I find that it's much more of a problem to assume everyone knows something when they don't than the other way round - I NEVER open a class with "As I'm sure you all already know ..." and I've had to point this out to a newer colleague once - but I guess that's an exception as teachers are expected to explain things as part of their job.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment! I have read that bullying is a terrible problem in Swiss schools and am so sorry you went through that. And I agree that “extreme systematizing brain” is a much better term. After all, women can be systematizers too!
Thank you for this comment! Incidentally, I just shared your lovely and important essay on Facebook, because I think everyone should read it. You are absolutely right that compassion is not a limited resource, and that when we exercise compassion, it renews itself.
Coming late to comment on this as I was out of town. I like the intention behind this post, but also confess that I had a knee-jerk reaction along the lines of, "But, men do mansplain!!!!" Then I thought about what I was trying to say, and realized that as with so many things, the whole context of an interaction matters. For example, the guy who once talked to me about what The NY Times "Well" blog was writing about when I was writing for that blog was mansplaining. Admittedly, I had not written the particular article he was talking about, but his attitude seemed to be that any topic he chose to discuss would show off his amazingness. This is what we mean by the word "entitled." However, I just returned from an African safari and had two different male safari guides explain many things, some because I asked, some because the topic interested them. I got two different takes on termite mounds--fascinating. The guides, as you say Mari, were looking to communicate and educate, not impress, although they did impress me. What we call mansplaining, then, seems to result from an attitude of entitlement, rather than a desire to connect. A mansplainer wants to lord his knowledge over someone else. That's obnoxious and is probably covered by a phrase we already had: being a boor. Or even, being a pedant. No need to gender it perhaps, though I understand the impulse, but boorish, pedantic behavior is annoying when practiced by any gender. Is it usually men who act out these behaviors? In my experience, yes, so we call them out and keep trying to move forward.
Oh yes, I am by no means denying that there are men out there (and even some women!) who are so arrogant that they go around assuming that they know more than everyone else, women in particular. Very irritating! I just think that when that happens the best approach is to mention in a friendly way that we actually know something about the topic.
Once upon a time, I worked at a place where a junior male IT guy "explained" to a woman that cybersecurity is hard and only professionals can be trusted with it, and therefore no she definitely couldn't have adminstrator rights on her work laptop. If he'd checked her job title he'd have found that she's an internationally renowned researcher and consultant in cybersecurity ... who quit not long afterwards after one too many incidents of this kind.
I came to this post too with the preconception of "mansplaining definitely exists, I've seen it happen often enough" - but I agree even more with the conclusion, assume good faith until proven otherwise. IT guy, sadly, lands on the list of "proven otherwise".
One of my daughters began college pursuing a computer science degree and couldn't deal with the condescension of the other male students and the faculty. I'm not sure why computer science attracts men who need to constantly demonstrate their superior intellect, but based on what we read about Silicon Valley, it seems that problem is quite real. She landed happily in geology and theater.
I'm sorry to hear that - particularly as you say the faculty, who should really be the ones setting the culture and saying what does or doesn't go in their college, seem to have joined in rather than tried to step in and put a stop to it.
Ugh. What a loss that those incidents drove an expert out of the profession. I do think the problem is particularly bad in STEM, or anywhere where most of the people were the smartest people they knew growing up.
I suspect that perception of someone as engaging at some level of bad faith is mood-dependent. So that 50% or more of what’s really going on is inside us, rather than the interlocutor.
The other is that, because mansplaining is an unfalsifiable charge, it is itself bad faith.
I prefer boresplaining as a gender-neutral term for people foisting their unsought ‘insights’ onto us.
This is an excellent point, and I would add that a big influence on whether we levy the mansplaining charge is how we feel about the man talking to us. Do we like him already and feel willing to give him the benefit of the doubt? Or not? That aspect makes the charge bad faith too. And I like the term boresplaining, because we do need a gender-neutral term!
It's the perils of viewing every minor interaction through the lens of power. It's made people more neurotic and less empathetic
This is an excellent point. Power is in fact rarely relevant in ordinary interactions, and when it is, it often works differently than we might think. For example, are we sure that every man who is telling a woman something actually has more power than she does? Does the guy at that party actually have more power than Rebecca Solnit? Maybe yes, but also maybe no.
Also part of a broader belief that people need to chill the fuck out a little bit.
Oh sure, and fuck up your Twitter engagement numbers
As someone once said, Twitter is not a real place.
Depends if Rebecca Solnit is a friend of mine . . .
I don't really know her . . . but I'm 6'8" and I can squat a little over 600 pounds . . .
Yes! This is also what leads to so many otherwise innocuous statements being taken as “microagressions,” an apparently even more heinous crime than mansplaining.
I so agree! The concept of microaggressions just encourages us to go around with a chip on our shoulders, looking for reasons to be outraged. It’s not a healthy way to live.
On a side note, I recently met my cousin’s teenaged son again, for the first time in ten years. He is white, but he has this enormous natural Afro. I so desperately wanted to touch it, and my kids said the same thing. I know that touching Black people’s hair is something people talk about as a microaggression. And I get that it would be annoying to have people touch your hair all the time (although when I lived in Chicago, Black children liked to touch my long, wavy hair, and I thought it was cute). But my cousin’s son’s hair was so tempting, not because of racism but because it was cool!
Insert applause. This was lovely. As someone who explains things for a living the rise of mansplaining as a concept has been very annoying and led to me intentionally just letting people be confused until they ask me to explain. Unsurprisingly this happens a lot because the law is mostly nonsensical and counterintuitive.
That fossil fact blew my mind, even though it should be obvious, I never thought about it before.
Thanks so much for the kind words! I totally get why you are reluctant to share your expertise with people, but it is sad to me that people feel they have to restrain themselves because their interlocutor might be offended. I think the more knowledge the better!
Sometimes I really think that mansplaining is a symptom of hyperspecialization. Most of the knowledge that all of us have that helps us to make money and essentially have "a place in society" is very specialized. This leads a lot of people to mix up what they know and what everybody knows.
Nobody talks about the reverse of mansplaining which is way worse - it's when you assume everyone knows what you're talking about! People don't want to accept this - that most of the things we think of as "generally smart" are things that we only know because we studied it in school or do it for a living or obsessively follow news about it.
Seeing a mansplainer mansplain makes people uncomfortable because it's a person acknowledging the weird reality we live in! Which we don't want to see! (For example, I'm sure a lot of people who call out mansplaining have failed to explain the context of something they've shared about the Muller investigation, and, rather than risk "mansplaining" it, have just said "well we all know this ukrainian guy said this on this date, we all know that...")
Also just generally enjoyed the Hans story! I can imagine this guy and what it felt like to be on the hike.
This is such an interesting comment! Just today I was listening to an interview with Thi Nguyen, and he said something similar, that our society is so specialized, but that we don’t trust each other, so the information we need from each other is often met with hostility instead of gratitude.
The example of somebody interrupting themselves to define a term they've just used is interesting. I feel like I do this fairly frequently, and then I wonder afterwards if I've insulted somebody by assuming they didn't know. However, I think what drives me to do this is a) a real desire to be understood and b) the sense that a lot of people (perhaps particularly other men) would rather sit in silent ignorance than pipe up and say "sorry, I don't know what that word you just used means".
Maybe it would be better to interrupt yourself and ask, politely, if you need to explain what you just said means? That feels *more* condescending, somehow. And just droning on without checking in to make sure what you're saying is resonating with people seems rude, too.
I suppose some people just like talking to hear the sound of their own voice, or because they process things out loud, or because they're LARPing giving a TED talk. I'm not sure what's gendered about that; I think men do it to other men as well. Maybe other men are more likely to interrupt the speaker and try to change the topic, or just leave the conversation.
Boy, social interaction sure is hard. Is it any wonder it seems safer for some men to just sit alone at home and play video games?
Sigh. It is difficult. I never interrupt myself to define words, probably because of that guy, but you’re right that most people are unwilling to admit they don’t know something, so if we don’t explain better, we haven’t really communicated. I am hoping that we can all be a bit more charitable with one another.
Jewish messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are more recent, but they have only come to reinforce the old Jewish narrative. These are the same ideals.
The transnational, transracial, transsexual, transcultural ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond races, peoples, cultures) and that are the daily sustenance of our schools, in the media, in our popular culture, at our universities, and on our streets . . . have reduced our biosymbolic identity and our ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
I do it all the time too. Good thing I'm female--lol (also an English teacher with tons of international students) The smoothest thing to do is just elaborate naturally so that listeners will likely get what unfamiliar terms mean through context. And you're right that most people will not ask.
Yes! I used to be an English teacher too, and I probably should have defined words from my students more often than I did.
What’s he
That was not born of woman?
Such a one
Am I to fear, or none.
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man
That function is smothered in surmise,
And nothing is but what is not.
Male calicos used to be a collector's item decades ago. Maybe they still are? I mean, they are perishable - it's not like you can store them in a vault.
Nice pics. Two days ago, I did a day hike of Table Mountain (in the Tetons, far western Wyoming). Only 4 miles from parking lot to the summit, but it's 4100' elevation gain. I am 60. Younger me could do it without a problem. 60 year old me had to stop and rest A LOT, especially towards the summit. I hope to walk again by Saturday.
To your topic, having once been scolded for "mansplaining!" by a young women who did not know what she was talking about (had to do with portability of teacher retirement funding between states), I decided best just to not engage in conversation with women I am not already friendly with beyond the superficial. Sort of like "compliments" - I don't give those out anymore (except to my wife under penalty of "unhappy wife"). I never know who is going to be offended, so best just to not engage.
Wow--a 4100’ elevation gain at age 60!? I’m 55, and I think 3000’ is a lot! You are my hero!
I’m sorry your experiences being scolded has put you off talking with younger women. That’s yet another reason we shouldn’t be so ready to sling the “mansplaining” label--we might be missing out on getting to know interesting people!
3000' is plenty. Table Mt. is very popular day hike in this valley. The views from the summit can't be beat. http://mountainjourney.com/table-mountain-tetons-wyoming/
It's a thing to do if you live here. Q: "What did you do last weekend?" A: "Went up Table." It is also used as a fitness standard: "If you can do Table, you can do this hike". I stare at it out the west facing windows of our home. It taunts me. Shot my mouth off to the wife that I was going to climb it again (last time was 3-4 years ago). But, it's an ass-kicker, and mine was kicked.
Now I want to go there and do that hike! I have a project to hike to the summits of as many mountains as I can--I’m at 26 so far, although most of them are a lot smaller than Table Mountain! Thanks for the link!
The video clip of dad jokes is from, I think, the team at Charlie Berens. I did my studies in Wisconsin and everything these guys do is terrific and culturally right (for WI) ...like "drive your sorry ass back to Illinois." Fun way to start the day.
Yes! I love Charlie and, as a native Minnesotan who enjoys our friendly rivalry with Wisconsinites, I think he gets our part of the world exactly right!
I know...WI likes MN but does not like IL. Where I went to school we had a reciprocal program with MN and you people were ok. gophers, badgers.
Yah sure, you betcha!
You’re on your way! Once we re examine our once firmly held beliefs like mansplaining, more and more of these assumptions will become clearer for what they truly are .
Bookmarking this for the next time someone asks me why I'm not bothered by mansplaining!
Let me know how they react!
I’ve never been accused of mansplaining (to my face, lol), but I do wonder if I’ve come across that way. Whenever something “clicks” for me, my first instinct is to go explain it to someone else—because (1) it’s cool, (2) I think others might benefit from this new insight, and (3) explaining it to others helps *me* understand it better than just keeping it in my head would. Does that make me a mansplainer? Maybe! I dunno. Thoughts like “I am smarter or more knowledgeable than this (potentially female) person” never enter my mind. I just…process stuff by talking. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Exactly! I am this way too, and I think it’s an admirable human impulse to want to share cool stuff we’ve learned.
This was a very generous piece of writing, which was also a joy to read - thanks for that!
Thank you so much for this kind comment!
Having read the Solnit essay that birthed the term "mansplaining," I was struck by some salient facts:
1. The boor at the party is pontificating about a topic that she has just written a book about.
2. In fact, he's inadvertently quoting her own book, because he recently read a review of said book the New York Review of Books.
3. He continues to pontificate when informed she is the author of this book.
And one has to ask: how many times does this really happen? Like, how many books has Solnit written that other people inadvertently cite to her? How many topics is she the world's best-known expert about? How many PhDs does she have?
My point being, the essay that made "mansplaining" a ubiquitous term hinges on an anecdote that is interesting for being unusual, the proverbial "story you'll be dining out on for the rest of your life." Any person with expertise on a narrow field of study would absolutely live for a situation like this, where their obscure knowledge proved not just relevant but utterly, uncontestedly dispositive.
Yes it is an interesting and funny anecdote, but as the centerpiece in an an empirical "men are like this, whereas women are like this" statement it falls well short of the mark. Not just for Ms Solnit, but for the rest of us who may not be the world's leading expert on, well, anything.
Of course, once the Genie of the term mansplaining was out of the bottle, within days of making the rounds it predictably morphed to yet another in an ever-growing list of synonyms for "shut up, you!" Which at this point is online culture's primary export.
This is an excellent story. She is describing one man (who, admittedly, is arrogant), but his behavior has no bearing on any other man. In fact I think most men would be like Hans. When you let them know that you do know something about the topic, very, very few of them would persist!
I loved reading this!
I'm part Swiss and got to hike there again for the first time in years this summer, I'd need to get a lot fitter before I could walk up a mountain like the Faulhorn again though. I'm also part autistic, and biologically male - though some of the time I toy with inventing a separate non-binary gender identity because I'm such a bad fit for traditional masculinity, and the bullies in my (Swiss) school certainly let me know.
I both love explaining things and having things explained to me - even things I already know if they're explained in a new way or that makes new connections I haven't realised yet. I guess people with my personality might generalise from that to thinking everyone else likes it too?
I personally really do not like SBC's "extreme male brain" phrasing and think that "extreme systematising brain" would be both a more accurate and value-neutral description. I can agree that most extreme-systematisers are male, but that is not the same thing as saying most males are extreme-systematisers, and as far as I can tell they're not. Personally, I think very little of dominance and aggression having spent a lot of my childhood on the receiving end of it - I wouldn't count correcting someone's misconception about calico cats as dominance here, you were right after all and you didn't punch anyone - and while I'm extremely competitive in board games, that's in a group where everyone knows it's just a game and no-one is hurt by losing.
In my work as a teacher, I find that it's much more of a problem to assume everyone knows something when they don't than the other way round - I NEVER open a class with "As I'm sure you all already know ..." and I've had to point this out to a newer colleague once - but I guess that's an exception as teachers are expected to explain things as part of their job.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment! I have read that bullying is a terrible problem in Swiss schools and am so sorry you went through that. And I agree that “extreme systematizing brain” is a much better term. After all, women can be systematizers too!
Thank you for the basic common sense. I'm sick and tired of activism that overshoots the target.
I really loved this. I've always cringed at the term "mansplaining" but never really thought through why it bothered me. Now I know!
Thank you for this comment! Incidentally, I just shared your lovely and important essay on Facebook, because I think everyone should read it. You are absolutely right that compassion is not a limited resource, and that when we exercise compassion, it renews itself.
Coming late to comment on this as I was out of town. I like the intention behind this post, but also confess that I had a knee-jerk reaction along the lines of, "But, men do mansplain!!!!" Then I thought about what I was trying to say, and realized that as with so many things, the whole context of an interaction matters. For example, the guy who once talked to me about what The NY Times "Well" blog was writing about when I was writing for that blog was mansplaining. Admittedly, I had not written the particular article he was talking about, but his attitude seemed to be that any topic he chose to discuss would show off his amazingness. This is what we mean by the word "entitled." However, I just returned from an African safari and had two different male safari guides explain many things, some because I asked, some because the topic interested them. I got two different takes on termite mounds--fascinating. The guides, as you say Mari, were looking to communicate and educate, not impress, although they did impress me. What we call mansplaining, then, seems to result from an attitude of entitlement, rather than a desire to connect. A mansplainer wants to lord his knowledge over someone else. That's obnoxious and is probably covered by a phrase we already had: being a boor. Or even, being a pedant. No need to gender it perhaps, though I understand the impulse, but boorish, pedantic behavior is annoying when practiced by any gender. Is it usually men who act out these behaviors? In my experience, yes, so we call them out and keep trying to move forward.
Oh yes, I am by no means denying that there are men out there (and even some women!) who are so arrogant that they go around assuming that they know more than everyone else, women in particular. Very irritating! I just think that when that happens the best approach is to mention in a friendly way that we actually know something about the topic.
And I’m eager to hear all about your trip!
Once upon a time, I worked at a place where a junior male IT guy "explained" to a woman that cybersecurity is hard and only professionals can be trusted with it, and therefore no she definitely couldn't have adminstrator rights on her work laptop. If he'd checked her job title he'd have found that she's an internationally renowned researcher and consultant in cybersecurity ... who quit not long afterwards after one too many incidents of this kind.
I came to this post too with the preconception of "mansplaining definitely exists, I've seen it happen often enough" - but I agree even more with the conclusion, assume good faith until proven otherwise. IT guy, sadly, lands on the list of "proven otherwise".
One of my daughters began college pursuing a computer science degree and couldn't deal with the condescension of the other male students and the faculty. I'm not sure why computer science attracts men who need to constantly demonstrate their superior intellect, but based on what we read about Silicon Valley, it seems that problem is quite real. She landed happily in geology and theater.
I'm sorry to hear that - particularly as you say the faculty, who should really be the ones setting the culture and saying what does or doesn't go in their college, seem to have joined in rather than tried to step in and put a stop to it.
Ugh. What a loss that those incidents drove an expert out of the profession. I do think the problem is particularly bad in STEM, or anywhere where most of the people were the smartest people they knew growing up.
A couple of thought offers...
I suspect that perception of someone as engaging at some level of bad faith is mood-dependent. So that 50% or more of what’s really going on is inside us, rather than the interlocutor.
The other is that, because mansplaining is an unfalsifiable charge, it is itself bad faith.
I prefer boresplaining as a gender-neutral term for people foisting their unsought ‘insights’ onto us.
This is an excellent point, and I would add that a big influence on whether we levy the mansplaining charge is how we feel about the man talking to us. Do we like him already and feel willing to give him the benefit of the doubt? Or not? That aspect makes the charge bad faith too. And I like the term boresplaining, because we do need a gender-neutral term!