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

It's a gendered behaviour that arises from cultural sexism. Boys aren't born with an inherent tendency to do this; it's something they're socialised towards because of various differences in the ways we as a society treat men vs women.

We won't reach equality by pretending sexism isn't an issue.

53rdAndBird

But we also won't reach it by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

Besides which, even within the narrow demographic of this thread, women have said that they do it or that they know another woman who does. This "gendered behaviour" seems to straddle the sexes.

If you take issue with gendered adjectives and compound nouns then don't use 'mansplaining' and expect to not be pulled up on it. If you are fighting "the patriarchy" (if you believe in that sort of thing) then be whiter than white and lead by example.

then be whiter than white and lead by example.

I am leading by example. The example I am setting is 'pointing out that sexist behaviour exists.'

Besides which, even within the narrow demographic of this thread, women have said that they do it or that they know another woman who does. This "gendered behaviour" seems to straddle the sexes.

As you said upthread re: driving, "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."

Isn't part of 'splaining' when a more privileged group explains something about the oppression / discrimination that a less privileged group experiences to a member of that group?

Have I 'splained' that correctly?

Mars that article is about adults. You need to read up on neuroplasticity.

And the reason should bother you seeing as you're pretending to know the reason yourself.

Whatever the physical differences are they cannot be ascertained until we eradicate the social factors. And with people like you spewing out stereotypes that won't help any time soon.

The example I am setting is 'pointing out that sexist behaviour exists.'

By being sexist?

Do BLM protesters beat up a white woman and say "see, we did this because she was white! Racism is real!"?

egosumquisum1

I'm not sure what you mean by "'splain'". I have been a lecturer and a headmistress. Especially in the former, I spent a lot of time explaining. I was privileged because of my education.

The mansplaining examples so far have not been about the 'fight' of an oppressed group (ie. feminism) but rather more academic subjects.

Nothing you;ve said distinguishes mansplaining from simply patronising except for the fact that mansplaining is inherently sexist and offensive.

x-post

Mars that article is about adults. You need to read up on neuroplasticity.

Funnily enough, my first MSc was neuroplasticity and linguistics (2nd language acquisition). What would you like to discuss?

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

This really. As humans started to walk more upright, their pelves narrowed in proportion to the rest of their skeleton when compared to other mammals. This narrowing means having to give birth earlier in the development of the young so that the skull can fit through the pelvis. Human babies are more dependent and helpless for much greater periods of their lives than other species.

Giving birth relatively earlier means the brain is less developed at birth and much neural development happens after birth. Thus humans are actually very susceptible to environmental impacts on the development of the brain. This article on spatial awareness includes the warning that differences in brain anatomy can be developmental. This pretty much explains my own take on it. There are biological elements but they are so bound up with development (and therefore culture and environment) that they cannot be rigidly separated.

The thing that bugs me in all of this is the assumption that I will be less something, or more something because of my sex. The reality is that whilst there may be a greater or lesser statistical chance of me possessing that ability, there's still a good chance I will be able to read a map, for example, particularly with practice. Lacking a y chromosome does not mean I will automatically be less able in any particular field than a man is and we should all be given equality of opportunity to prove this, not shoved in a corner and ignored because we happen to be female.

Do BLM protesters beat up a white woman and say "see, we did this because she was white! Racism is real!"?

Because saying the word 'mansplaining' is just like physical assault? Eh? I have heard non-white people use the term 'whitesplaining', which is probably a better comparison. (As a white person myself I do not consider this mortally offensive.)

Pointing out that men do a particular thing more often than women do it is not sexist. You agree with this when it comes to parking, but not patronising?

Gabilan

I couldn't agree more and anyone with any intellect and and influence is entirely on your side.

Making an assumption about an individual based in their sex is foolish. An assumption based on a large number of people is the only smart thing to do.

We should all be given the opportunity to achieve anything we want.

The brain is enormously plastic and this decreases with age. That doesn't mean our brains all begin from the same point. Many of us believe that women's and men's brains are, on the whole, different from birth.

Funnily enough, my first MSc was neuroplasticity and linguistics (2nd language acquisition). What would you like to discuss?

I like that in the last 160-odd posts, there have been at least two instances of women condescendingly explaining a concept to someone with greater knowledge than they, with the intention of assuming a superior position. And yet here we are, still having a discussion about how it's only men who condescendingly explain things to people with greater knowledge than they, with the intention of assuming a superior position.

53rdAndBird

I think women are more likely to bump in a carpark but I wouldn't say "ladyparking' in real life because I'm not an ignorant twat.

If I heard "whitesplaining" then I'd take the person to task too, although I never have.

Pointing out that men do a particular thing more often than women do it is not sexist.

I have a feeling that this wouldn't be your opinion if it were a negative stereotype (no matter how true) about women. The fact you're telling us that "men" do this shows your ignorance and bigotry,

fernanie

1. I haven't condecendingly explained anything

2. are you suggesting this is evidence of mansplainging - two women doing it? If so, jesus fucking christ. There's no helping some people

We won't reach equality by pretending sexism isn't an issue.

Indeed.

And if "leading by example" helped, then men would not have continued oppressing women for thousands of years, despite women not-oppressing them for exactly that amount of time.

Men do not regard women as role models. The only people who can fight sexism by being a good example are men.

For women, it is much more efficient to react to men's entitled behaviour like a man would react.

Patriarchy teaches men to consider and treat women as subhuman. Reacting like a subservient slave to shitty male behaviour encourages such behaviour.
Reacting like a man would reminds men that women are people, too.

There are people who explain obvious things because those things are not obvious to them.

To find out whether a man is mansplaining, look at whether:

• he also does it to men

and

• he does it in areas he is knowledgeable about.

The perfect example of mansplaining would be a man with zero knowledge on the matter explaining cars to a woman who knows more than he does, while not feeling a need to explain to men who are as ignorant as he.

A man who explains to experts regardless of sex how to do their job is just a jerk, and an expert who likes to explain his area of expertise to everyone might just have bad social skills when it comes to determining whether people actually want to know.

It's 'ignorance and bigotry' to point out that people sometimes behave in sexist ways? What?

I have a feeling that this wouldn't be your opinion if it were a negative stereotype (no matter how true) about women.

But why would you feel that? Of course I think that sexism affects the way women behave as well as men. Do you think I'm some stereotype of a dungaree-wearing militant feminist who thinks feminism is about claiming all men are evil?

And yet here we are, still having a discussion about how it's only men who condescendingly explain things to people with greater knowledge than they, with the intention of assuming a superior position

For my own part, I've been trying to explain my take on things and my opinions. I haven't, I hope, been trying to impart what I consider to be my superior knowledge onto someone I consider lesser than I am purely on the basis of their sex. Also, without outing myself too much, my PhD was on the interaction between science and society with respect to how sex differences are portrayed so there's a fair chance I can hold my own on the topic.

I also think it would be unusual for anyone to state that only men resort to condescending explanations of things. Nonetheless, very often men will make an assumption that a woman won't know something simply because she is a woman. They will then explain that thing regardless of the fact that she may be a world renowned expert in it.

I've had so many conversations in which a man is clearly filtering out anything and everything I say. It's like they just hear a high pitched "blah blah blah. Blahde blah de giggle" when what I'm actual saying is "have you read Stepan's recent book on eugenics in Latin America?" No, condescension isn't an exclusively male trait, she said, condescendingly, but assuming I'm only capable of producing drivel is very much a product of patriarchal thinking.

oh yes, Gabilan. I was once at an event where I was invited to speak on a particular very narrow subject (being vague for anonymity's sake), and was taken out to dinner beforehand by the event organisers and some of their colleagues. One of those colleagues, who did not work in my particular area but had some general interest in it, asked me a question about how something related to that area was going in my country. I said "Oh, it's quite good now, we've seen an increase of blah blah in the past blah..." and he TALKED OVER ME to say "it's all going downhill and that's a terrible shame!" And then went on at length about why he felt this was.

fernanie

I apologize, I wasn't trying to explain you racism so much as I was trying to draw a parallel between people saying "I'm colorblind" and people saying "Feminism/gender equality means don't point out gender". I can see how that came across as patronising.

"explain you racism" --> "explain racism to you"
I used an internet grammatical structure that has the potential to be misread as a typo ridden insult, and I just wanted to clarify that that, too, was not my intent.

Many of us believe that women's and men's brains are, on the whole, different from birth.

Has this theory not been largely debunked?

Many of us believe that women's and men's brains are, on the whole, different from birth.

Has this theory not been largely debunked?

In today's world you only have to believe something to make it a alternative fact.

1) I haven't condecendingly explained anything

No, sorry, that was me being unclear. I was referring to whoever advised you to "read up on neuroplasticity" even though that's the topic of your MSc. (Which I feel.was condescending of them, even if unwittingly.)

faithinthesound

Thanks for clarifying and apologising. Offence retracted

I was trying to draw a parallel between people saying "I'm colorblind" and people saying "Feminism/gender equality means don't point out gender".
Agreed, but I don't think anyone's saying "don't point out gender" - we're saying "don't attribute things to gender (particularly if both genders do them)".

I mean I can get behind "not attributing things to gender" - I'm gender divergent myself, as it happens! But mansplaining, in my experience and in the reading I've done, really is a phenomenon that is predominantly restricted to men explaining things to women, with the underlying feeling of "I know better because I'm a man", education/experience be damned!

I have a degree in Linguistics and I've had I don't know how many men trying to explain me etymology. Just... no. Lol.