Today, with the help of a bunch of stick figures, I am going to talk about mansplaining! I have no doubt that, no matter how carefully I phrase the stuff in here, the comments are going to be a shithole. Be warned.
So! Lo, these many years ago, someone came up with the term “mansplaining.” What does it mean? Well, let’s ask the stick figures!
Specifically, ‘splaining is when one person of a group stereotyped to know more about a particular topic feels the need to explain to a member of a group stereotyped to know less about a particular topic exactly how that topic works, even if the member of the second group happens to know all about it. Computers. Magic: the Gathering. Indie rock. Fantasy novels. It gets old, guys.
Let me be clear: the vast majority of members of groups that are stereotyped to know more about a particular topic are not ‘splainers. You have to be a douchebag to do it to begin with. I’m just saying that you very rarely see female Magic players condescendingly explaining to male Magic players how tapping works.
Does this only happen to women? Of course not.
In fact, I am almost entirely certain that there are a fuckload of stay-at-home dads out there who can report how they’ve been womansplained to about how to change diapers, because of course dudes don’t know how to do that.
Unfortunately, this quite useful term went through some linguistic drift, and came to describe people like this:
But the thing is that that is not just a dudely behavior! There are all kinds of people who want to be Nongendered Ruler of Feminism now, and regard this whole “you have no idea what you’re talking about” thing to be a completely moot point. Katie Roiphe, for instance. Christina Hoff Sommers. Sarah Palin. And I don’t think that we should be letting them off the hook just because they happened to be born cis women.
And, you know, this behavior is also not just limited to people talking about feminism.
So I vote we reserve “mansplain” for the rather useful “people condescendingly assuming someone who actually knows things is fucking stupid, because KYRIARCHY” and come up with another term for the apparent need of people to opine on topics they know nothing about. “Instant Expert Syndrome,” maybe? Or “Mount Stupid“?
We need to cut the gender out of words like this as if only men/women do them. It’s as ridiculous as those girl-logic memes.
I’ve also noticed how the attitudes in the comments of that post seem to be more about the attitudes they believe are behind PUAs than the PUA community itself. It’s essentially the inverse of the Tone Argument, which I find ironic. Even the PUAs with good intentions are dismissed as outliers. And, of course, they’re sterotyping wildly. Note how basically no one calls PoliticalGuineaPig out for her misandrist post about how men are ruled by their testosterone.
I looked at the article, SWB.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/01/19/well-known-pickup-artist-allegedly-shoots-woman-in-the-face/
I note how angry people got at being told to calm down, but have no problem dictating how men should react, or declaring it “mansplaining” or “derailing”. Strangely, it’s never “derailing” when it’s something they want to talk about.
Derailing is moving the conversation from something they want to talk about, in the forum which exists to talk about it, to something that they don’t want to talk about. It’s not ‘strange’.
You know SWB if that commentator on that post you linked to was a man then I think with the way they nearly pretended you didn’t say there are times when its appropriate and just basically went on for a bit almost counts as mansplanin.
http://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/mansplainin/
hahaha, I wrote “what about teh menz” before I heard of your blog, ironic, I guess
It does bug me how people who complain about gendered language (like “bitch”) have no problem using gendered language to deride their opposition. I have seen this term used repeatedly when it was actually a man trying to explain something to women about men. While it is not impossible to know more, generally, about someone else’s gender than someone who actually has it, it’s pretty unlikely. What’s wrong with just “explaining condescendingly”? There, gender neutral. Or must the system of secret Social Justice passphrases be preserved at all costs? Because a lot of the specialized vocabulary seems, to me, to… Read more »
I’ve never actually seen this term used in a situation outside of “man condescendingly speaks to woman/perceived woman about something she’s quite aware of”.
Hell, if throwing the word mansplaining at a man doing the mansplaining actually did shut him up about shit you know more about than he does the term would never have been invented.
more commas
Hugh R, you mean dungone.
To me, “mansplainig” is a word use to dismiss anything a man says that a feminist doesn’t want to hear.
@debaser,
Which is starting to bother me more and more. Maybe there is a sex difference in the propensity to give a condescending or misplaced explanation… but where is the evidence? If there is a difference, is it big enough to justify the term “mansplaining”?
Comparing “mansplaining” to “lady logic” makes sense, except it’s not a hypothetical comparison: PUAs really have a term called “chick logic.” As far as I can tell, the quality of evidence for each term is similar.
What I miss in the LA Times article was any actual explaining. I’m also insanely curious to know how you talk for so long about a book you’ve only heard about that someone can get in three or four interruption attempts because they don’t think you’re going to stop anytime soon enough to explain your error. Brainy Smurf- Archetypical mansplainer! But, wait… I love Brainy Smurf; he was my fave! They say he’s based on Trotsky. Confliction! Also, this won’t stop bothering me: The LA Times peice doesn’t seem to have any obvious kyriarchal groupings. Would we implying that the… Read more »
Ozy:
The problem is that “nobody should lecture anyone” (although some people, myself included, might not even notice that they are lecturing until they are mid-lecture 🙁 ) is really the only reliable way to make sure that one is not perceived as a mansplainer. Or alternately, “never lecture women”, but that would, by your definition of affecting people differently because of gender, be sexist.
@Ozy: Well, yes, but if you talk at everyone about things they already know, it’s not ‘splaining. 🙂 If you only talk at women (or other groups generally considered by the kyriarchy to know less) about things they already know, but listen to men (or other groups generally considered by the kyriarchy to know more) when they say they already know it, that is ‘splaining. It’s the differential treatment that makes it bad. 🙂 From Dr. Ladypants’ perspective, how do you tell the two apart, without Dr Ladypants observing McDudeperson at length? Likewise, how can one declare someone mansplaining on… Read more »
RF: Well, she could observe your actions over the course of a few hours or days and notice that you tend to lecture people regardless of gender. 🙂 Besides, saying “no one should lecture anyone” is incredibly ableist, because it’s not making allowances for people with autism (not to mention people like me who have difficulty with the “but I’M interested in this, why aren’t you?” concept).
I mean… if it is not affecting people differently because of gender, it is not sexist. That’s tautological.
If you think that people who take a public speaking lessons to learn how to be effective communicators are assholes I think it depends on your definition of “effective”. My father considers himself a “truth-seeker”, but I see him as a vindictive, petty, biased POS half the time, and I can rarely go a phone call without him making me feel like shit. So I think our definition of “truth” are about as different as it gets. If you’re being an offensive ass, but don’t think you are, shouldn’t you be giving a little credence to the person you’re possibly… Read more »
Ozy: I personally do that with almost all people, regardless of age, gender and educational background, unless I remember not to (which, given sufficient enthusiasm, I am, unfortunately, unlikely to), or unless someone tells me – bluntly – that I am doing so. A woman on the receiving end of a long monologue on something that interests me will have no way of knowing that I might have given the exact same monologue to a man ten minutes earlier, and would therefore be right in being offended – to her, it might look like I assumed her to be ignorant… Read more »
RF: Well, yes, but if you talk at everyone about things they already know, it’s not ‘splaining. 🙂 If you only talk at women (or other groups generally considered by the kyriarchy to know less) about things they already know, but listen to men (or other groups generally considered by the kyriarchy to know more) when they say they already know it, that is ‘splaining. It’s the differential treatment that makes it bad. 🙂
Adam:
I think that might be because geeks just tend to become very enthusiastic about the subjects that interest them (that is arguably the defining characteristic of geekhood), and that geeks do not necessarily presume condescension in being told all the gory technical details of something they already know. Perhaps the more socially un-intuitive geeks simply are less likely to read intentions into actions.
RocketFrog: “My RL friend and I practically have no interactions which are not essentially taking turns “talking at” each other. She will tell me a lot of details about what interests her (many of which I already know), and I will do the same (and many of the things I say are also already known to her).” I went to a super geeky convention (kind of) about a decade ago and I noticed that something like this was the standard way of talking there. I haven’t been to many geeky conventions other than that but I wouldn’t be surprised if… Read more »
Schala: My RL friend and I practically have no interactions which are not essentially taking turns “talking at” each other. She will tell me a lot of details about what interests her (many of which I already know), and I will do the same (and many of the things I say are also already known to her). We share several interests (mostly related to the natural sciences), so we often tell each other things the other already knew. I suspect the difference between this and mansplaining is that we both find it enjoyable – and, obviously, that she is not… Read more »
“See, another important social skill is called listening, which doesn’t just mean “waiting for the other person to stop making word-noises.” That’s the root of the problem with ‘splainers of any stripe: They fail to listen. They talk at you, not with you. This is what happened with my aforementioned Disney-splainer: he ignored everything I said after he heard that I like the Disney parks. It went something like this:” Me and my brother talk at each other. We were raised this way. We find it stunningly effective for discussing with each other, even if it means only half-listening to… Read more »
@Hugh Tipping Ristik, yes it is a very vague pejorative and that seems to be a problem with pejoratives in general. 🙂 And like a lot of pejoratives, it gets backed by straw-man examples to justify its continued use. But the troubling thing about this particular word is that, owing to its prevalence in an online written environment, we generally don’t have a way of knowing if the examples that crop up to defend its use are of a “mansplainer” as defined or of an unassertive speaker. There’s a lot of hearsay and lack of real evidence. Someone such as… Read more »
“And while you’re at it, can the patronisation. Contextually, it’s particularly moronic.”
*facepalm*
It is misrepresenting *general* behavior, it is very rare to find such a clear cut example of such douchebaggery, even amongst “mansplainers”. Similarly using Solanis or SCUM as examples of misandry in feminism would be a misrepresentation. Sure she was misandric, and sure there is misandry present in feminism, but Solanis is, due to extremity, a poor example of the general case (not to be taken as an implication that feminists are in general misandric).