Mansplaining

[Featherstickers]

Is it a thing? Or another media cliché?

I believe Dh is a huuuuuge mansplainer and I find it frustrating infuriating at times.

AIBU to ask if it's a real thing and how to cope with it to protect my sanity.

I do this to DS. We laugh and call it "over answering". The question is, if you point it out to him in a loving jokey manner will he laugh at himself or get offended?

Sometimes, after asking a question I say 'and please just say yes or no'. Other times I find myself saying 'so tell me the rest then please'. 🙄

haha, looks like dh is more a bore than a mansplainer. It's doubly annoying as I usually catch on pretty quick and know what he mean or is referring to. Oh well... the joys of being a slightly middle aged couple.....

Guy here - i thought you ladies would appreciate a male perspective on this. Your understanding is not quite correct, mansplaining is when a man believes a woman couldn't possibly know more about a certain topic than he does and patronises her with her expertise - particularly when she does know more

This leads to men mansplaining period, men who aren't dentists/engineers/etc mansplaining that field to a woman and men mansplaining an essay to the woman who WROTE the essay because even after years of working in that field, or a lifetime of being a woman, men who read an article once still think they know more by virtue of being a man.

That's mansplaining

(And no i'm not a man, but that's how MN mansplainers post)

I always notice this when I walk round an art gallery. In any mixed sex couple, the man is usually explaining the art to the woman.
Once you notice it it becomes incredibly striking.

Here's a joke.

Where does a mansplainer get his water?

From a well, actually

(Also 'men explain things to me' is a very good essay on this topic)

""I think what sonja REALLY wants to say is ...." and then tell them whatever he wanted." Oh dear!!!

Less he doesn't get offended easily but he reacts a bit puzzled and is likely to explain why he did it at length- gah!

Fauche that's funny!!

Fauchelevent

I think mansplaning is so ingrained In a patriarchal society men don't even realise they do it

Even though it doesn't seem patrolling in the car of my dh, I think it's a 'male' way of communicating. It's 'talking at', 'broadcasting' mode, rather than connecting and sharing experiences. But it's defiantly boring.

*Patrolling in the car? ok, patronising in the case is what I meant.

Or when they explain stuff that you really have no interest in. Like war stories and football. Yet women's stuff is supposed to be kept under wraps in mixed company because men couldn't possibly be interested.

Featherstickers you would love the book "you just don't understand" by David Tannen.

Ooh that was supposed to be "Deborah Tannen" but my phone mansplainingly auto corrected it to a man's name

That reminds me of another one, Lessthan.

This time it was a woman who said it. We were sitting round in the lunch room at work - five women and one man. Talk turned briefly to a new women´s clothes shop in town. After a minute of so, one of the women announced we had to stop talking about it as it wasn´t interesting to the man who was sitting with us. His interest in the conversation was obviously more important than the four women´s.

This thread is quite cathartic.

I was going to say that DH does this, but he's fairly indiscriminate about who he over explains to. He will do it with other men.

He's used to being an expert in an obscure technical field and gets well paid to explain things to other people, so it's not all bad . Conversations with his brothers get very detailed. If we're lucky it's just DIY, but they can go on boring on for hours when they get going.

His most annoying trait is telling you that you need to be doing something... when you're quite obviously halfway through doing it anyway!

DS has come in while I've been posting and gone through a detailed account of all the "action features" on his latest Lego creation. He's doomed isn't he...

Feather When I started your post I thought it was real. Good satire

I see this at work all the time. Woman makes a point, is ignored, repeats it, is ignored again. Man makes exactly the same point and everyone agrees.

Man then explains to woman the point she has already made.

My pet hate is asking a perfectly sensible question, being given a 'comedy' answer, followed by an 'only joking'. "How do I change the gears up again?", "You can't. They're stuck now...... Only joking, had you there didn't I."

It's a way of keeping women out of some discussions by belittling and trivialising their input in the hope that they'll eventually just shut up.

I am a doctor. I've worked in psychiatry, general practice and in hospital so I see plenty of people on drugs, and received teaching on drug addiction and it's management, as well as the psychology of addiction. My brother was also a drug addict. However I was once dating a guy who proceeded to tell me exactly how drug problems should be tackled in society. He had absolutely zero experience or knowledge on the topic, but he genuinely believed he knew better than all the "experts". And had the audacity to look really hurt when I told him he was talking shite. I particularly enjoyed (not) the conversation we had about FGM. He is an ex thank god.

DH once mansplained breastfeeding to me. I was suffering from the third day blues at the time and did not respond well - he hasn't tried it again since!

What drives me really nuts is the kind of reverse of mansplaining. I have run a very large group for years as part of a team with two women and two men. Whenever we have to share any kind of important information with the group, like annual membership or changes to the website login, I and the other women can post all this info to the group.

We then get female members who get upset that they don't understand, can we explain again. We do. They still don't get it. We explain in even smaller detail with a step by step plan. They still just can't understand what to do.

You know what works? You guessed it. Sending one of the male group leaders to email them or talk to them. On occasion one of the male group leaders has copied and pasted my fricking email word for word. Instant flood of emails that can be summarised as 'thank God, a man has arrived'.

There are some women in the group who only accept and process information if they know it has come from one of the male leaders. It isn't deliberate provocation on their part, they're lovely people. What I can't decide is whether it's genuinely can't or won't.

As an engineer in a very technical field and I know loads of blokes who do this, not to only women in particular but they seem to be the main recipient. What is funny is that of the blokes I know who do it, they also do it to each other. It's almost like there way of trying to dominate others.

My usual tactics for avoiding it is to make a joke out of something they have just said, that tends to throw their ego off.

Best ive seen is this vicious old professor we had at a test laboratory in Portugal. The equipment failed its test and the next step is it investigate why. The design team where all female engineers and I kid you not he started lecturing them! On their own product! Half way through his diatribe the commissioning engineer for the power station stood up and threw him out of the meeting for being so rude and condescending to the design team from our suppliers!

Bottlesoflove I'm a college lecturer. Certain older male colleagues have attempted to explain my PhD thesis to me. I do think there's a change at work though - younger men are more aware.

Job interview I was in once:

(Male) colleague: asks technical question
Candidate: gives technical answer
Me: asks another technical question
Candidate: explains how clever all these technical things can be, and how they can help people like me do the things we need to do! And on, and on...
Me:

I think mansplaining exists but woman'splaining definitely exists too.

Loving the sexist autocorrect on Deborah Tannen.

On that topic True, DT would say exactly that, that men certainly in America are socialised to use language to improve their position in a hierarchy.