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

Nope Polly. You explain things to him because he demonstrates he does not "get" them.

Mansplaining is men explaining things to women when the woman is the expert. e.g. I work in IT. I've lost count of the times when men have explained to me exactly why a system is not working despite knowing full well that I am the one who set it up and manages it. They are always talking absolute bollocks. My assistant is never subjected to this. My assistant is in possession of testicles.

worra, you accused the OP of 'lazy stereotyping' and declared you weren't going to post any more, because you got called on it. You can't expect to dish it out and not get a bit back.

And no, I don't think it's the same thing as mansplaining, either. I think it's you being a bit short-tempered with feminism and thinking you can insult the OP without being noticed.

So limited, he (who had second hand experience of childbirth) explained something to you (who had zero hand experience). That doesn't see odd to me. It's really unfair to be so dismissive of the massive and life changing experience childbirth can be for some men. They may not pish the baby out but they still experience it in their own way.

limited, are you my SIL's sister?!

Limited what did he say? Did he give you the birds and bees talk first?

"posting a shit ton of research on a thread where people are chatting, then basically patting them on the head and telling them to go away and read it, is no different to mansplaining really is it?"

It's absolutely different.

The thing about mansplaining is that it's structural: it's the assumption that a penis basically equips you to be an expert at anything. It's a kind of privilege precisely because it's not based on any actual work or expertise but simply on the ability to inhabit a culturally gendered position of authority to have your voice heard. A male professor of philosophy explaining Heidegger to an undergraduate is not necessarily mansplaining. A male professor of philosophy explaining a subject in which he has no expertise, say microbiology, to a female microbiologist is far more likely to be a case of mansplaining!

Presenting carefully gathered evidence in support of your position is, in many ways, the absolute opposite of mansplaining. It's situating your own argument amongst the voices of other people (often of both genders) who have thought deeply about the issues, in a way that is relational. It's not simply claiming that your voice ought to be heard because it's your voice, but saying 'I think this point is valid because studies x, y, and z suggest it is'.

No I didn't say I wasn't going to post any more because I 'got called on it'.

What I said was, Anyway, I'm out of this thread now because it just appears to me, to be an outlet for some to unleash sexist sarcasm, so I'll leave them to it.

You posted 5 links in a row to a shit ton of research and expected me to leave the thread, to read it all.

That is definitely mansplaining.

Stealth! For goodness sake. If that isn't sexist I don't know what is.

Ok, it's mansplaining.

Mea maxima culpa.

Tell me: when you tell someone they're 'lazy' and talking shite, what's that? Just ignorant rudeness for the sake of it?

Why? She said she was patronised by her bil. I extended that to ridiculous extremes for comedy effect.

Actually I disagree that signposting other people to relevant research is mansplaining - it may be a bit patronising (not the same thing despite etymology) but at least it gives the other people credit for being able to understand the research and come back with their own views. The essence of mansplaining is that there is only one possible authoritative version of events - i.e. the speaker's - where that authority doesn't rest on expertise.

My DP is a serial mansplainer, he does it to everyone though be that man or woman. It was easily solved by saying "Oi, DP, we're not stupid. We have brains that we use, stop mansplaining things to us!" and he's not done it since! It's like actually communicating something to another person rather than bitching about it behind their back, worked....

Has this thread kicked off yet?

Back when my job involved working on these machines all day, I just bashed them with my tits and hoped for the best.

I now know you don't have tits toast so it obviously wasn't you, but thanks for sharing that gem

Some men and some women are equal opportunities know alls who assume that everybody in the world knows less than them and should benefit from their superior knowledge. Holding my hands up here, because I totally do this.

Some other men however assume that only women are in need of their omniscient explanations, and that's what makes them mansplainers. There are a few cases where this is unambiguously obvious but IRL you normally can't be sure whether a one-off example is mansplaining or just know-all, because you don't have enough data points. On the Internet in general it's an easy accusation to throw but more difficult to back up.

Mansplaining is fairly rare in MN, but when you see it it's normally more obvious that that's what it is and that the man in question wouldn't have dreamed of making the same comment on Pistonheads.

The difference between mansplaining and womansplaining is that the womansplainer is assuming that her sex automatically gives her superior knowledge over any man on certain gendered subjects like child rearing or laundry, whilst the mansplainer assumes that his sex gives him superior know leg about everything.

Go on adult education courses, regularly, even 'hobby' courses and you will see this a lot.

My SIL is a die hard Everton Fan, Season ticket holder, football fanatic, she's also an area manager in banking. I have watched her been 'mansplainsed' at, at lots of events. The same men have discussions with the other men, who usually don't follow the football, but they don't need things explaining because they have penises.

I wouldn't have picked up on this when younger, though, I would have thought I was just being patronised, but there is a gender issue going on.

The Matt Damon/Effie Brown is a good example, but I think that, that is Racial, as well as Sexist.

If you don't mix in unfamiliar groups much and think this gendered stuff doesn't go on, watch reality shows like 'Come dine with me', 'Coach Trip'.

Once you do know the signs to look out for, it's quite shocking how many men, don't like women.

They used to try and say that the burden of housework and raising children wasn't a 'thing' that needed a name, it was just a natural phenomenon that came about.

These 'things' need naming and challenging and that includes general patronising.

Watch four in a bed how many b&b owners have NPD?

There's certainly a lot of casual and not so casual bigotry against men and it's largely culturally accepted. The piece linked about "mansplaining" is about as shallow, vapid, lazy and ignorant as anything I've read in a long time.

It has every stereotype going, and even "some of my best friends are men". It's actually a piece about how men are patronising to women and women aren't patronising to me. Pathetic, intellectually.

No jeanne there are a lot of them about.

Stealth He was telling me how painful it was . And added the proud nugget that his son had a big one. I said swollen genitalia in babies of both sexes was a common side effect of female sex hormones in utero and that his son's winkle would soon shrink to baby size, so not to be alarmed.

He sort of gave me a birds and the bees talk when he advised me against my friendship with a girl who was keen on casual sex because men would think I was the same. 'I know what men are like', he gravely warned.

I told him I knew what men were like too having shagged a number of them. Did he share my experiences, by any chance?

I was 20 at the time. He probably thought I needed his manly guidance because my own father fell down on the job by never lecturing me like that.

polly if I'd have wanted an explanation of childbirth I'd have gone to someone who'd done it. Or perhaps someone who hadn't done it but knew more about it than my BIL, such as a midwife or obstetrician.

But as it happened I didn't ask. It was something my BIL thought I needed to know because I was a young woman who he presumed would go through this thing.

For me, that's a pretty good definition of mansplaining

"Maybe it's something that comes from both sexes around things which are stereotypically associated with that sex - so a woman might 'mansplain' to a man over things to do with parenting or the home and a man might 'mansplain' to a woman over things associated with business or technology."

This is just about possible. But mansplainers generally take their "area of expertise" to be absolutely everything except, possibly, housework and childcare. The world, in other words. English lit, car maintenance, architecture, marine biology, medicine, economics, town planning - who knows what else.

The baby comes out of your front bottom you know or ocassionaly your tummy
thanks for reminding me though. I need to have this discussion with the dcs. The advice is always wait till they ask questions, mine ask questions about everything else!!

I'm seeing more of it too, especially - weirdly - on subjects where men can have no possible knowledge or experience of it. The scented towels and liners is good example.

I read on a thread elsewhere yesterday a discussion of the 'nice guy' syndrome that so many women worldwide have come across. Then a man arrived to tell all the women they were wrong and imagining it and it couldn't happen because, as a man (who, funnily enough, described himself as a classic case of 'nice guy') HE knew it wasn't real, therefore it wasn't.

That, to me, is classic mansplaining. I do think it's a gendered thing and I wasn't aware of it as 'a thing' until I'd mooched around on FWR for awhile.