What's the worst mansplaining you've ever been witness to?

[plantbased]

Some bloke just mansplained my own business to me, a business I built myself, from scratch. I built the company, the website, the lot. Utter cockwomble! Obviously he knows better than my oestrogen addled brain grrr

@Kanga83 👏👏👏👏👏

I've had men offer to demonstrate hardware that I literally helped develop. When this hardware launched I was one of the people who demonstrated it for the media. I've literally travelled to trade shows to promote it.

At a job interview, a senior academic (younger than me) explained to me the difference between analogue and digital and how you needed converters to translate between them so that the numbers could be processed by the computer. I pointed out the many years of very relevant experience on my cv, but didn't get the job as my most relevant experience was 'not recent'.

I was in John Lewis recently looking at laptops. Male sales assistant comes over and points out the small colourful laptops when I'm after decent battery life, fast hard drive, enough ports...

These are just gold! I'm just catching up post dinner and sort of laughing and sighing with absolute despair at the same time

Dh once mansplained the management of unpredictable periods to me, I looked at him earnestly and asked if that's what he did when he had his period. He shut up then.
Also, this is totally outing but, I'm a nurse and I once performed backslaps on a woman who was choking in public. This was witnessed by a large audience, none of whom had tried in any way to help. Afterwards a man, who I didn't know, who had been witness to this mansplained first aid for choking to me.

@rollingpine are you trying to tell me they DON'T use unicorn spit to attach horse shoes?! Mind blown!

The mixer tap in our kitchen office gets scoldingly hot. Someone was waiting for me to finish washing up so when I finished I warned him that it was really hot. He said thanks, then proceeded to explain to me that the tap is a mixer and can be turned to cold.

A colleague corrected my pronounciation of a Portuguese footballer's name.

I was born and raised in Lisbon.

He's a kiwi and speaks English only.

He also told the women in the office that we should use pads and not tampons. We worked in hedge funds/investment banking, he wasn't a gynecologist or anything!

Can I ask if there's a difference between my understanding of mansplaining: telling you how to do something in extremely condescending tones - because you are a woman - and when my DP listens to my explanation/insight or opinion on something he knows little about and then repeats it back to me as if he just had a great thought?

Sorry to go off topic slightly

I once sat and listened to one colleague (English) explain some French and Portuguese history to another two colleagues: one French and one Portuguese.

When I was learning to drive my uncle spent 90 mins telling me how to join a motorway from a slip road. “Go the same speed, indicate and merge” was apparently insufficient

I was told in great detail, more than once, that every solicitor has to give a free half hour to anyone who asks. I used to be a barrister in the UK. And no, it's not true.

I had a summer student mansplain that you adjusted pH by adding acid. He knew best you see, because he had an A Level in chemistry. I was in the final year of my PhD at the time. I also had an A Level in chemistry. And a degree in chemistry --from
Oxford--

He was awful. We had a party when he left, and didn’t invite him

I’m a senior academic in my mid-40s. I mentioned to a man who ran a secondhand bookshop I was browsing in that I was about to start teaching a particular text next term as we were chatting about it. It was obvious from the conversation that I was an expert in the field. It didn’t stop him telling me that he was happy to ‘check over’ my lectures if I liked.

Not sure if this counts but last year when I was getting ready to go on maternity leave with my now 10 month DS, helpful male colleague said "I bet you are really looking forward to having a whole year off, you will come back refreshed and full of new ideas. It will be like a sabbatical for you." 🙄

My estate agent BIL once wrongly mansplained a biology 'fact' to me in great detail. I have 3 biology degrees.

An ex BF (an IT tech) once proclaimed very pompously that I'd probably overestimated the size of a fish I'd just seen because things look a third larger underwater. I had literally just spent 3 years doing my field-based DPhil that included extensive training and calibration of my accuracy in measuring fish lengths underwater by eye.

And just a couple of months ago I had a sweet undergraduate mansplaining an aspect of Zoology to me in a University museum. I kept quiet while thinking 'I know, I used to teach that course', but DS 11 wasn't so subtle and as soon as the undergrad walked off DS fell about laughing and said pretty loudly 'Omg, Mum did he just MANSPLAIN fish taxonomy to you?'. I was

Not really mansplaining but more like that ongoing sketch from the Fast Show where the men are dicking around trying to solve a problem where the woman in the group is offering the solution but they just ignore it.

I was at a friend's wedding reception and all the tables took part in a quiz with prizes. There were two very Alpha males on my table who took charge of everything. I joined in and took part offering up answers to questions but it was as if they couldn't hear me at all. They totally ignored everything I said.

We - they - lost, coming bottom. And when the MC read out the answers they actually looked surprised. I mentioned it to my friend, the bride, a couple of weeks later and she said 'Yeah, sorry about that. They're being divorced but we felt we still had to include them and we knew you would just ignore it. If we'd put them elsewhere there'd have been a fight.'

Not mansplaining so much as man-doubting; My ex refused to believe there was a station in London called Farringdon. I said -there is I use it every day- he said - are you sure - and looked it up on his phone.

Not mansplaining but as a child we went to stay with some country friends of my parents I was about 10. The friends son and I were the same age. He set up a series of competitions (shooting an air rifle and tree climbing). Our dads the judges. I beat him on both fronts. He started crying and wouldn’t come out of his bedroom for the rest of the visit, was very amusing

My ex refused to believe Enid blyton was a woman. We had a row about it.

I once sat and listened, open mouthed, as my cousin's husband (and new dad) explained the correct way to breastfeed.

I'd been breastfed my daughter for 2 years and his wife, my cousin, had asked me to come and check the latch and offer some moral support.

Her husband told me he'd read all the books and actually said it was different to doing it and that as I hadn't read the books I'd probably been doing it wrong.

I couldn't speak. My jaw was on the floor. I think I managed to say something ridiculous like "OK then".

I've spent the past 10 years thinking about what I should have said 😂

I was putting oil I'm my car at the local garage and this random bloke asked me if I really knew what I was doing. Ofor course I said no and looked really pathetic.
He ended up doing my tyres, oil and antifreeze for me.
Result!! No dirty hands or broken fingernails that day haha.

I've had a man completely re write a poem of mine after a workshop and an hour of unasked for "editing advice". The poem had already been published in a top literary magazine.

Honestly the more I read the more my jaw drops. It's somewhere across my patio currently. Love the story where the mansplainer gets a good kick in the bollocks and told to channel the pain. Priceless. Given how many of this type of bloke are about I'm surprised the whole thread hasn't filed up 😂
Keep em coming, I'm finding it all morbidly fascinating!