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.

Do men not have elbows???

How the bloody hell do they bend their arms?

Trills has already covered 'womansteryia', Mars. Look at the etymology of the word 'hysteria' - that's essentially what it means!

I missed that Asmoto.

SmileEachDay

I didn't say have elbows. Didn't you know that they are different? The carrying angle of our elbows is around 15deg more than a mans. It's the main reason we find it more difficult to throw.

here you go

Thanks Trills!

I have just had a really excruciating memory resurface after chatting with you all - I teensplained fashion to my mum when I was about 12 or so. Did she know that hemlines and collars and things change with the fashions every year? And the colour schemes of things too? (I think I had just discovered Vogue.)

She did know that, yes, not only because she is an adult human being but also because she was a textile designer.

Mars I properly love how the genitals and of both and the nipples of the woman have been blocked out in the "scientific" diagram in that article. There's a whole other discussion to be had about why female nipples are seen as being less acceptable for public display.,,

The elbow angle thing I did not know. Mine are hyper mobile so can go at unusual angles in many directions. I'm shit hot at parking.

Having a low speed collision isn't the same as parking badly. I call bullshit. And so would you if you'd been in my local Sainsburys car park yesterday afternoon...

And hysteria originally referred to the idea that your womb could wander around all over your body. Most odd.

Mansplaining is a ridiculous (and sexist, ironically) term which is applied to men who like to condescendingly explain the obvious As if no women do this...

DP does it sometimes, but then I have noticed him doing it to even his male friends on occasion.

If he starts doing it in a really annoying way these days, I simply walk away and he gets the message. We've had enough arguments about it in the past that it doesn't all need repeating again, he gets my point and we both just go off and cool down for a bit.

DH once mansplained breastfeeding to me

I think that's the point at which to say "thanks, I didn't know that. Please could you give me a practical demonstration?"

summarised as 'thank God, a man has arrived'

I hate that one. It so demonstrates the way in which men and women are socialised to think that men are the authoritative, knowledgeable ones. A female colleague once asked me to check if her bike had a puncture. I checked and said it was just slightly soft and was unlikely to be a puncture, since she said it had been like that for a while. I said it just needed a bit more air in it and got my bike pump out. Oh, she said, it's OK, I'll wait for my boyfriend to come back from holiday and he'll do it.

Me: so you're not going to use your bike, which you use daily, for 2 weeks until your boyfriend comes back? Her: yes, I'll wait for him to pump the tyre up.

I have no idea what she thought he would do that I couldn't. Put a different sort of air in it perhaps.

Interestingly, both were serial singletons which suggests to me that inability to tolerate mansplaining, or allowing it to aggravate you, might be a factor in some breakups ?

Oh I see, to keep a man I just have to filter out their patronising bullshit. That's where I've been going wrong all this time, I should just filter out men explaining stuff to me that I quite literally have a PhD in. How about we turn that around and say that for a man to be able to keep me, he has to stop being a patronising, irritating bellend. Then I might want to stay with him.

SmileEachDay

There was a thread about nipple (DD wearing a bikini) not long ago. I don't think societal norms are anything to fight simply 'because'. They cock and balls are blacked out too. Men and women aren't the same. pretending they are does us all a disservice.

I'm betterer at parking than you

My father made me practice with a very small tractor and a free-axle trailer. Growing up in the SW, he was also sure hat knowing how to "right a rolled landrover" was an essential part of growing up.

MontyPythonsFlyingFuck

Um. Good for you.

We are better drivers on the whole but we tend to hit things at low speed such as when parking. We do it much, much more than men.

"The figures also showed that men had caused nearly two-thirds of all rear-end crashes. Women, on the other hand, were responsible for more minor accidents, making nearly two-thirds of all claims for hitting parked cars."

here

"Female accidents appear in ever increasing numbers when taking into account a reduction in harm and property damage"

[[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15389580309857 Adli H. Al-Balbissi (2003) Role of Gender in Road Accidents, Traffic Injury
Prevention]]

I have always done office admin and secretarial work, which I enjoy.

Years ago, quite early on in our marriage, DH once started explaining to me in minute detail how to pick up the phone, dial a number and then ask for the person or department i wanted to speak to!! He got a death stare from me and a huge flea in his ear. He hasn't done it since, not that I can think of.

The phrase "mansplaining" hadn't been coined back then.

I would agree that it isn't unique to men though. Probably more common, but not uniquely a male thing.

Mars
Cock and balls blacked out = vulva blacked out. Both sexual body areas (although obs cocks are also used for weeing and vulvas for giving birth) Nipples though? Both sexes have nipples. Why are female nipples lumped in with genitalia? As I said, it's a whole other convo.

And you're not. I parallel parked in a double parked narrow street with 2 inches to spare behind yesterday.

Re. patronising vs mansplaining. Patron/ patriarch/ pater have the same derivation so being patronising is just as gendered, but with a Latin root. That said, I occasionally use the word "matronise" to denote a woman who is older than me explaining something to me that I have decades of experience in. Only they sometimes assume that because they're older they must know more. They don't necessarily. My riding instructor is 2/3 my age. I still listen to him, because he knows more than I do, though I was riding horses well before he was born.

SmileEachDay

Haha. Maybe. I'm a demon in a muddy field with the pick up put into RWD though.

Breasts (as opposed to moobs) are secondary sexual organs. They can be aroused. They give arousal. They are used in reproduction.

Similarly to my example of elbows, pretending men and women are the same is a disservice to all of us. Celebrating our differences is the best way forwards. Not every man is a better parker than a woman and not every teenage boy will write-off his hatchback in n adrenaline-fueled B-road dash. You and I are clearly awesome but others (of either sex) have their limitations.

I agree that celebrating difference is the way forward.

Breasts are not used in reproduction though. Unless I've been doing it wrong, which is possible I guess.

They are used to feed babies, and one of the reasons woman feel funny about doing this in public (and sometimes have negative reactions from others) is that breaths are so sexualised. I think that's an issue.

I'm jealous of your muddy field experience. I may dump my Golf and buy a tractor.

Breasts (as opposed to moobs) are secondary sexual organs. They can be aroused. They give arousal

This was specifically a discussion about nipples being blocked out, not breasts. Both men and women have nipples. Men's nipples can also be aroused and cause arousal. As for being "used in reproduction" they're used to feed babies and do we really want to go down the route of arguing if that makes them suitable for blocking out of the public domain?

In some cultures, women's nipples are not regarded as being particularly arousing and the sight of bare-breasted women goes without comment. There's a large cultural component in how body parts are viewed and accorded significance. NB it isn't solely cultural, but there is a very complex interplay between cultural and biological significance.

Smile and Gabilan

Of course it's cultural, but in ours (yes, I'm making assumptions), we cover our breasts. The same can be said of genitals. Covering them is cultural.

Feeding infants is a part of reproduction. It doesn't end at birth. "Men's nipples can cause arousal". Can they? I've never met a woman who was turned on by man's nipples. I assume they were less hairy than DH's

I don't take issue with it being unacceptable for me to 'need' to cover my nipples and for men not to. Do you?

I'm jealous of your muddy field experience.

Any RWD will be as fun. The AWD helps after you mess up. It was embarrassing a few weeks ago when DH needed to tow DS2 and I out.

DH "what were you doing to get stuck on the way home from nursery?"

Me (mumbling and looking at my shoes) "whizzies"

Feeding infants is part of reproduction? IS it? How? By that definition bottles and that crazy bent baby plastic cutlery would be part of reproduction.

I take issue with nipples being so sexualised that women don't feel comfortable getting them out to feed babies, yes. That's their primary job (the nipples, not the women).

Smile

Rear Wheel Drive
'
All Wheel Drive (4WD)

Proper off-roaders can switch between rear-wheel and all-wheel drive.

Anyway -

Women shouldn't be embarrassed to breast feed and men shouldn't be embarrassed when they see it. But, of my 55 years, assuming I was 'sexual' for 38 of them, I breast-fed for 2 x 1 years (I have 2 sons). For 36 of my adult years, my breasts have been sexual. Their primary job is not milk delivery.

My lodger does this. He also seems to need daily doses of female fawning attention. He is incapable of holding a proper conversation with me, just goes off on some speech or 'funny' stories and talks over and at me. Even when I'm agreeing with his points and adding to them he HSS an annoying habit of saying, 'no no no...' Then repeating whatever I just said. He doesn't do this with other men and I feel so sorry for the young women he works with. I have long stopped trying to argue and just let him rattle on and give him mummy gold stars and well done good boy noises instead.

Pissed me off last night though. I was happily asleep in front of the TV so when he came in from work I just did not have the energy or patience to listen to him prattling on for half an hour. So I pretended to still be asleep. He stood in the door way for a good five minutes and helped himself to a glass of my rum in the hope that he would wake me up so he could get his attention fix. Like wtf??? He also just waltez in when I'm deep into a film and will just chat over it or tell me completely irrelevant facts about it. I have pulled him up in this and he basically just admitted he doesn't care. Thank God for live pause.

The parking thing is probably down to stereotype threat. I always feel it when I park because I've heard the stereotype so many times the words "you have no spatial awareness" play out in my head as I do it. And if anyone is watching me then I just give up.

Lessthanaballpark

But what about the statistically significant proportion of women who don't give up because someone's watching but do hit other cars and lamp posts?

It's an average, not a concrete fact. Giving up is letting us all down.

Well they probably are feeling low-level nervous because of the very reason I've just given. I should imagine that men are more confident because they've had a lifetime of Jeremy Clarkson, racing drivers and reinforcement that the driving world is a man thing.

The difference in spatial awareness are actually tiny but are seen to increase with age. Guess what else increases with age? Socialisation.

But what does this have to do with Mansplaining? One is a physical difference that can't be helped (if that is indeed the case). The other is a behavioural one.

Conveniently I already had this on my computer

xkcd.com/385/

LessTHan

You're right insomuch as this has nothing to do with mansplaining and actually goes against my standpoint that mansplaining isn't a thing and is sexist nonsense.

If someone is nervous enough to hit another vehicle then I'm not that interested in the reasons for it. You're talking nonsense re. spatial awareness though. Don't fight our differences. Embrace them!

I think that if you're arguing for sexual equality then you can;t use words like mansplaining and expect to be taken seriously.