This is a comment by Quadruple A on the post “6 Reasons ‘Why Women Aren’t Crazy’ is Only Part of the Story“.
This is probably one of the best and most well balanced article on GMP that I’ve read. I’ve seen a lot of bad articles on here that lack critical thinking and tend toward a sexist bias against men (and unconsciously women) but every once in a while a gem turns up and this is one of them.
There is an amazing lack of genuine dialogue between the sexes and I find it happens very often when I do talk about gender or sexuality with women that the women I am conversing with wants to turn the issue into what other men think or say rather than listening to what I think or feel. It is a pattern that becomes exasperating.
“A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation—pure and simple.” – This is so transparently wrong that I am amazed that anyone can take it seriously and yet it illustrates a pattern which is so common in mainstream feminist discourse. Consider the following definition of “mansplaining” which has become so popular many feminists in the internet community.
“Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate “facts” about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.”
http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2010/01/you_may_be_a_mansplainer_if.php
Of course if this is taken literally it means that if you say something a woman already know then your a condescending patriarchal jerk. Yet feminist rhetoric is often written in a way that taken literally would mean something that the creator of the rhetoric would probably deny. (but maybe not in a literal way!)
Why is this? I think it reveals how their unconscious tendency to assume that anything and everything is misogynistic.
Ginko wrote: “but what Ali is doing is actually quite misogynist. It is a form of male supremacy to frame the problem like this.” – What Ali was doing was paternalistic and possibly chauvinistic but to call him misogynistic is to miss a significant point of the article.
Photo credit: Flickr / ConvenienceStoreGourmet
“Let me ‘splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up.” I agree with Joanna here, for the most part. I think there are many people who are quick to try to explain things or quick to show their expertise to other people, sometimes assuming that the other person won’t understand the details. There is a certain common (not universal!) gender phenomenon of men being more likely to give unnecessary explanations to a woman about something, more than men would do to each other. That kind of “mansplaining” does exist. I tend to see it partly as a socialized gender… Read more »
Femsplaining?
When women do it we call it nagging.
I never heard of mansplaining. I suppose it has happened but I think women do it too. Usually if someone is going on about sonething I know, I just look them straight in the eye and tell them I got it. No fuss, no muss. Why get upset over a guy doing this. And btw, if the guy is cute, he can ‘splain as much as he wants. I understand that there is communication under the communication. Maybe the guy wants to break the ice. Maybe he just wants to talk and will say anything to start the conversation. Maybe… Read more »
I’m as impressed with most of this comment as I was with Mark Greene’s piece. I think there’s something to this “mansplaining” thing that needs to be explored. We’ve been talking about it over in the Ryan Gosling Book piece… The way I see it is this: There are two sorts of truths: The way it FEELS and the way we should try to see things in order to make things better. For instance, mansplaining is very, very real. And there is a sense of it being just fine for men to speak authoritatively to women about things without considering… Read more »
I think part of it is raising men to be knowledgable on such things to the point they probably feel the woman is asking them about it, or they see their helpful contribution is to give detail on stuff they feel they know. I’ve explained things to people not assuming they don’t know, but assuming that IF they don’t know now they do, it’s an automatic thing and I’m not sure where it came from. I guess we hear it from other men maybe, and it’s exacerbated when we’re use to people actually asking for help on a subject such… Read more »
““Did you know that this camera does this? Why are you using this setting? Did you know that to capture the light you need to…” Like really rudimentary stuff. And guess what? They literally have never done it to her husband. Who has been a photographer for maybe two years to her eleven.”
I would consider it a desire to impress to win someone. And demonstrating competence and knowledge for a man is roughly the equivalent of a woman displaying legs or breasts. So for sure, it will happen more to women…but it’s about being hit on.
Personally I overexplain to everyone, think aloud and am generally the Captain Obvious of the place. The sex of the person doesn’t matter.
But I’m also generally not trying to impress them to get with them romantically, but just for them to tolerate my acquaintanceship. And it usually hurts my chances.
I do the same quite a bit. It’s the carpetbombing version of explaining something, it CAN be helpful and educational but it can also be patronizing. I think it’s important though to realize the intention of the man/woman doing the ‘splainin’.
I know I have a different conversational style with men and women in the work place. Men, if they know something say so and the conversation moves smoothly onto what the key part of the communication is. I’ve noticed men used short interrogatives to check whether something needs to be explained or not and other men respond to them with equally brief answers that do not interrupt the flow. Communication is functional and attends to the topic. With women I don’t explain anything, it simply isn’t worth the aggravation. Instead I assume they know what I’m talking about and I… Read more »
I believe that mansplaining as you define it is a very real phenomenon and while I haven’t experienced it off hand but it sounds believable. I think that sometimes you have to be careful with when it comes to ascertaining the motives that technical people have when they explain things. The example with the husband/wife team has a very control variable although I don’t know the full situation.There is a certain kind of technical sort that loves to explains things. They can’t help but explain everything about the world. I have an uncle who works for a large engineering firm… Read more »