to thibk there's a lot of mansplaining going on at the moment?

[StealthPolarBear]

On mn I mean. Just something I seem to be spotting more and more.
happy to be told I'm wrong in words of one syllable

There was some good mansplaining recently on a thread about women's pubic hair topiary. A man, who had a wife don't you know, took great offence when it was suggested that women were being influenced by current fashions when they whipped all their pubes off.

He told us that this was insulting to his lovely wife.

I'm interested in the argument that gender is irrelevant, alongside the fact that there seems to be quite a gendered split in the thread, between situations where posters have faced patronising remarks about child-rearing/housework and remarks about professional/intellectual work.

To state the absolute bleeding obvious, childcare has tended (unjustly, in my view) to be seen as a 'female domain', therefore it's not surprising that women are willing to assume the requisite authority to patronise and demean others in this area! It is not, however, necessarily evidence that there isn't more of an assumption of authority by men in the professional/intellectual domain, which was traditionally seen as far more male. The two areas may be governed by rather different histories and embedded assumptions, with different gender politics behind them!

Of course, it's never as simple as a straightforward split, though.

And to Jeanne's 'academic who works on gender studies'. I mean, HONESTLY!!

I used to sit across from a man in work who did this only to women. Thankfully he moved but I sat and listened to him explain the monsoon season to a woman who came from a monsoon region. When she corrected him on something he told her she was wrong

And also Peiya - in both cases I'm assuming someone has managed the double whammy of mansplaining AND whitesplaining.

There is another side to mansplaining which is "I'm sure he didn't mean it" e.g. sexist behaviour by one man given the benefit of the doubt ("perhaps they were all just having an off day when they verbally abused you").

I was bloody spitting feathers, I tell you!

• blindsider

stealthbypolar

you are forgetting the absolute best

which is

1)open nappy
2) gag so much, irritated wife takes over and never asks you again

I often find just gagging isn't enough to get my wife to take over, I usually add words to it also like "oh my god, that's not normal" or "it's burning my eyes it's so strong" or the all time get out is. "AAAAHHH it touched my skin, you need to come now so I can bleach and maybe even amputate my hand"

Is there also a word for mothers doing it to then? Mumsplaining?? Or is that to gender specified for some??

I do it. I am a woman.

People tend to do it when:

-they find themselves in a discussion that they feel they have knowledge or experience of and are unsure of the other participants' knowledge. (They sometimes wrongly assume it is less than their own)

-they are asked a question about an area of specific knowledge or interest to them - and from that assume very limited understanding of an issue

Thus women are more likely to patronise and over-explain to men when discussing issues that they assume men will not understand and vice versa.

In all cases - a little clarification and techniques to establish the level of knowledge of your "audience" will go a long way to solving this.

(I am probably doing it right now in this post!!! )

I also think of it as a middle class thing as it was less prevalent where I was brought up and the perpetrators were more likely to be mocked for it!

Patronising in old money.

Your first bullet. I feel men as a whole ate a hell of a lot more likely to do that than women as a whole

TWat magnet how do you know gender is irrelevant?

What kind of silly-arsed question is that? How do you know it is relevant. I know it's irrelevant because women do this thing too. I can't call it by this stupid name someone made up - mansplaining? What on earth kind of word is that? If you're going to have that word then you must have 'womansplaining' too and since you don't perhaps it's time to accept that 'patronising know-it-all supercilious fuckwad' will do AND it can apply to either gender.

I work as an academic in engineering. I have male and female colleagues who overexplain and I have both male and female colleagues who don't. I have noticed that male colleagues state their opinions as facts, but are quite open to being proved wrong, whereas female colleagues put things forward as hypothesis. So a man says "we should do this" and a woman says "we could try" but both are putting forward a suggestion for discussion and both will accept a better suggestion. I have never found it difficult to persuade colleagues when I have a good idea, or to persuade them that their idea is not good, even when initially stated as a fact. However I can see that for many people a male dominated environment is not their normal one and what is normal behaviour to me would seem domineering. I would probably be completely out of my depth in a female rich work environment, I know I come across badly in groups of women.

I do think blue has a point that there are specific contexts in which women do this.

The media representation of dads as clueless idiots never ceases to boil my piss, and I think that's a good example of a widespread social trend to treat men as if they're stupid.

Of course, that feeds into a wider dynamic, but it is there.

twat, but how many women have to do it, for it not to be a gendered thing? Surely if there's a pattern to it, it's fair to say that pattern might be gendered?

I think the research that shows men and women over-estimate other men's capacities, listen better to male teachers, and expect men to talk more in group discussions, is pretty telling. We expect men to get to explain things.

so some men are arseholes. So are some women. Not news, is it?

doesn't mean all men or all women are arseholes. If someone bores/patronises you, go somewhere else.

I don't think MN or feminism would put up with a generic insult to all women, so why is it acceptable the other way round?

stupid generalisations are not coherent arguments.

Some men do know about sanitary towels, at least this one does:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26260978

I have a PhD in a very male dominated subject, women would be outnumbered by men at least 5 to 1 on conferences. I have to say that in the five years it took me to do it (should have be three, I had major medical problems in the middle), I never had any problems or perceived that I was being treated differently because I'm female. I don't know if I got lucky or just somehow exude some kind of "don't you dare patronise me" air, I can be a bit bolshy.

I haven't seen any mansplaining on mumsnet, might go and hunt out that sanitary towels thread.

Ok.
women do it too does not mean that it isn't a gendered issue.
I am suggesting men do it a lot more than women.
some women play football in this country. There's still no doubt that football is dominated by men.

No Jeanne - I said "some" men do it, women "tend not to " do it and I'm uncomfortable with it being presented as something men (as a homogeneous group) do.

(Also really don't see why that was a 'silly-arsed question'. )

What if a trans gender male to female does it?

What do we call it then?

DarthVader - yy about academia. I particularly love it when my (male) boss explains my own work to me in meetings. I mean, I only did the background reading, designed the experiments, took the data, analysed it and wrote the paper. Why wouldn't I need it explained back to me?

oh look, racism too. Now we don't like white males. The one downstairs at the moment will love that...and I am annoyed on his behalf.

adding more wrongs doesn't make a right.

Drspouse yes the republic is definitely a different nationality from the common wealth however my mum is of mixed races. As you probably know the islands were taken by the french, half of my mums heritage is french and the other half is Arawak, the indigenous people. Thank you for acknowledging.

Cross post.

I don't see the difference between those statements. 'Men do x' doesn't mean 'All men do x', does it? Like 'women can get pregnant' - it's not true of every woman in the world.

Wait, what? We don't like white males?

I feel it was a silly-arsed question because it should take only a modicum of sense to figure out that NOT ONLY MEN do this! Anyway - it's all dependent on personal experience isn't it? Some may have had only men do this to them, some only women, some none at all so for that reason alone it cannot be a gender-specific fault. In my humble opinion, of course.

Worra -

How long before cisplaining is a thing?

Brek I feel your pain! I created a system at work, the director called to shesplain it to me. I just told her bluntly, I know, I set it up. I'm not flavour of the month ever. Grrrrr