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 think that a lot of people confuse mansplaining with "being an over explaining boot so doesn't listen", which God knows I've been guilty of on a lot of occasions.

But mansplaining has a very specific nuance - it's not just "man explains something to woman in a boring way", it's where the woman should be reasonably expected to know something (eg how to turn the coffee pot on, from that earlier example) and the man explains it to her in a way that assumes she has no prior knowledge at all. It's that sexist "woman isn't expected to know things" part, often combined with the woman trying to point out that she does know the thing and being ignored, that makes it mansplaining.

For instance - I have worked in big unis in a sort of admin sort of teaching role for years, usually in business subject areas. I've discussed my job at length with my interested father. One day he phones me all excited to ask me "Did I know what an MBA is?" Yes, intimately familiar with them. He then spent ten minutes explaining what an MBA is and why I should do one despite me pointing out repeatedly that it's not suitable for my career trajectory right now.

Also. Yes I know what an MBA is. I teach on one, Dad.

Normally my dad is not very sexist so I think in his case he had temporarily forgotten that I'm a grown up so this was actually dadsplaining, but that's the general idea.

I will give you an example of mainsplaining.

Taking a colleague to an off site meeting, washer fluid running low so I pop round to fill, colleague appears and tells me that:
"You need to dilute that"
"no I don't it's already diluted"
"Are you sure"
"Positive - I've already used half the bottle"
"Lets have a look"
showed him the bottle and he backed off. He the proceeded to say "just a little bit more" and "that should be enough".

TBH I'm glad he was there because fuck knows how I have managed all this time without his insightful guidance

I think it's a shame that it is called mansplaining, but that is now the word. Arguing about the word does not seem to be a productive use of my time. People who argue about the word, I assume they are trying to deflect the conversation away from the problem at hand.

It does exist
It is done predominantly by men
It is done predominantly to women
It is a product of a culture that values men's contributions more than women's, and assumes competence in men and incompetence in women

To add to Trills post, Just because you've never seen a thing doesn't mean it does not happen or exist.

A thread where women mansplain, mansplaining.

Somewhat ironic.

DH does this now and again, I tell him when he does it because it seriously pisses me off. We were having lunch the other day and I'm a self-confessed picky eater, he made a joke about the very particular way I made my sandwich. I replied by saying that if I had the money I'd open a cafe called Mrs Finicky's and it would specifically marketed towards picky eaters. Everything on the menu would be fully customisable and served however the customer likes it. Sandwiches would go way beyond "white bread or brown bread?" you could have butter/no butter, choice of sauces (or no sauce), bread cut into squares or triangles or not cut at all, crusts on/off, lots of filling or barely any filling, and any combination of fillings you want (including Nutella and Wotsits, like DS has). DH then proceeded to explain to me exactly how I should manage and run my entirely made up, 100% never gonna happen, fictional, imaginary cafe including thing me what I should and shouldn't have on the menu, how seating should be arranged and what my five year plan should be.

I already run my own business. DH does not. I thanked him for explaining my dream to me and that I would never have known how to run my cafe without his help. His response: "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

"I think what sonja REALLY wants to say is ...."

So annoying when that happens! "I'm think what Bear is trying to say is..." I didn't try mate, I fucking said it so why sit there rewording the exact same point I just made!?

DH once tried to mansplain mansplaining itself to me.
(He thought it was to do with typically 'male' topics only, like engineering and testicles I guess.)
How I laughed and laughed.

"dadsplaining" that's a whole new dimension. My Ddad has form for not listening too well and talking at his daughters. Thinking about this, my dmim does this too to my sis and me. With her it's definitely underestimating my ability and overestimating her own. Not in a mean way just used to being mum in charge even though I'm 44.

The MBA example is an interesting one. I suspect that your dad felt so excited at the concept of an MBA and slipped into as org of tunnel vision mode, ignoring your response to his question "do you know what an MBA is" and staying firmly trapped in the line of though that he had before he called you. I sometimes think that my dh does it because due being inflexible in his though processing, and ignoring the responses I give him. He also never gives a simple succinct answer that is directly in response to my question. He give answers to questions that I haven't actually asked maybe he is a politician deep down.

"How I laughed and laughed." oh this thread has cheered me up but there is a more important element to it as well that I hadn't quite considered before. e.g. sexism and established gender roles.

Apologies for dreadful typos and missing whole words and adding imaginary ones, not enough coffee and late night.

As a man, I think whilst it is usually a man explaining something to a woman, it sometimes is to a man.

Nowhere near as bad as manspreading, for which I can understand the offence it can cause.

Thanks Lessthanaballpark

To be clear, it’s s not all men that do this, but all the people who have done this to me have been men. And to be frank, I don’t pay them much attention because they quite literally don’t know what they’re talking about (that’s the problem) and therefore their opinion on the subject is irrelevant. The more someone knows about a subject, the better they are at correctly assessing other people’s expertise (the Dunning-Kruger effect). Last week a guy I worked with found out I had been involved on a piece of research and was talking about how cool it was. That counts because he works in the field and therefore can make an assessment of the work on its merits.

Expertise is a strange thing, often gained when you think you’re doing something else. It may be that you don’t ever gain respect from random man on the street. However people who know about the subject will be able to tell, and it’s always worth pursing knowledge if it interests you, I think (and never too late.)

Michelle about Barack and his points 1, 1a, 1b...
At about 5 min.

It just doesn't seem in keeping with the idea of gender equality to name a person's actions according to their gender

The whole theory of colorblindness as it pertained to racism has been widely debunked, because it serves no one to pretend that race doesn't exist - it does, and people of color have been dealing with the consequences of being non-white for generations. White folks coming along and blithely claiming that "they don't see race" isn't just sweeping that problem under the rug, it's pretty insulting, because it's denying these people a huge part of their identity, their lens through which they view the world for better or worse. Race DOES exist. People who are not white are societally disadvantaged, whether we want to believe it or not, and until those issues are resolved then racial equality, while a nice ideal, cannot be a reality, no matter how enthusiastically you go around declaring you "don't see color". Right?

So I think the whole theory of gender equality meaning that you can no longer divide/classify by gender is equally disingenuous. The fact of the matter is that there IS a gap between genders, and cisgender men have been in power just as long as white people have, and everyone else is, for better or for worse, living with the consequences of not being a cisgender man. It helps no one to attempt to blithely wipe the gender slate clean. People who are not men are societally disadvantaged, whether we want to believe it or not, and until those issues are resolved then gender equality, while a nice ideal, cannot be a reality, no matter how militantly you go around declaring that feminism means you can't point out gender differences.

And for the record:
It's called mansplaining because it's a thing that men do to women. It's that sense of "Let me explain you a thing, because as a woman you couldn't possibly know it, but I, a man, despite no actual training in this area, know All Of The Things by virtue of being a man." If you're a woman, you're not mansplaining. You're just boring and officious.

In some ways dadsplaining is to be expected.

Or parentsplaining anyway.

For the first X years of your acquaintance, your parents DID know more than you about absolutely everything.

So it's not surprising if they slip into "I know more than you about things" every now and again.

My DP does this, I just laugh at him. I do wonder how he thinks I coped before he came along.

He told me I should tie my shoelaces differently recently because there was a better way. He provides advice on a whole range of menial issues which I am perfectly capable of (do you know which knife I would use if I was chopping that carrot? Etc)

I mercilessly take the piss. I've realised he does it to other people too, and I mercilessly take the piss then as well.

Showing no signs of improvement so far

Argh! Just typed a huge post about a mansplaining holocaust denier & it was eaten by the MN gremlins.

Anyway, Mr Holocaust Denier seemed to be working from what he'd read in a pamphlet/on some mad website. Or maybe what he'd been told by some big old Nazi one. Or a mix of the three. Whatever, he'd a veneer of knowledge, but that really was all it was. Didn't let that stop him, even when repeatedly bewildered by what I was saying. At one point he got stuck on a loop telling me to read one particular book by Solzhenitsyn, I think because normally people haven't & certainly don't start telling him they prefer other works by him. Blargh. Was possibly the most disturbing mansplaining I've ever come across, so to balance out that grimness, please enjoy this pic.

Yes many times, I believe he can't help it. He isn't patronising when he manslains more like going into vast detail, and branching out giving me the whole freaking 360 picture, when a simple answer would suffice.

Well my children accuse me of doing that and I am very much not a man.

Can I add Britsplaining?
:)

When I first moved to the UK to do my PhD, I rented a room with a Portuguese family who all worked at fairly low paid jobs.

They were good friends with an elderly English couple who had a granddaughter who was doing a PhD somewhere at Oxbridge. Great that they were very proud of her, and they should be. But I found it kind of funny how she'd explain it all to me as if I wasn't doing one too, at a very prestigious institution. But the worst part was when she explained to me how the PhD was so expensive. She really was quite sweet and I didn't have the courage to tell her that I had a studentship and that most PhD students had one. The good candidates, at least.

@faithinthesound People who are not white are societally disadvantaged, whether we want to believe it or not, and until those issues are resolved then racial equality, while a nice ideal, cannot be a reality, no matter how enthusiastically you go around declaring you "don't see color". Right?

Thanks for this helpful explanation of racism and colourblindness, but I'm not white, and I'm well acquainted with the societal disadvantages associated with that.
It's just fortunate you don't have a penis, so that this incredibly patronising explanation of something I've experienced my entire life is somehow legit and isn't written off with a derogatory term like "mansplaining".

Maybe we all need to try and listen more and explain slightly less?

Branching out from the topic ever so slightly do people generally feel that others hear them out? Family, friends, colleagues? Do you feel you listen to others paying full attention to what they are saying?

I work with someone who is a serious mansplainer. He is the world´s expert on everything and tells you all about it in the voice some people use when talking to a small child.

I know a man like that. To be fair, he does it to other men as well as women. His wife is completely normal and nice and I honestly do not know how she hasn't smothered him with a pillow in his sleep yet.

He is the most insufferably patronising person on the planet and he has no idea. No self awareness whatsoever. Needless to say they don't have many friends.

Featherstickers and Trills, yes I think you're both right - it was a mixture of tunnel vision and him used to being the one that knows more than me! (though obviously that finished when I hit 13,as we ask know teenagers know everything ).

But it's interesting that parentsplaining is also a behaviour people recognise, because that has an inherent power structure in the interaction which is more noticeable - your parents assume they know more because they are your parents and so they don't always actively engage with the knowledge of the adult child. The same thing is happening with men who do this but they (presumably unconsciously?) assume they know more than women.

an inherent power structure in the interaction which is more noticeable

V good sentence :)

Yes it is real.

What I have realised though, is that certain types of men do 'mansplaining' to everyone regardless of sex.
DH browses various technical forums and uses YouTube when he needs to learn how to do specific DIY tasks. There are hoards of men (very few women) who love to tell others how they should be doing something and be perceived as the expert.

Can be useful, but damned annoying and unempowering when uninvited 'advice' is proffered.