Or is Mansplaining getting worse?

[PaperwhiteTheGhost]

Filling up my car screen wash on my driveway. No hose or outside tap at the front so I'm using a big watering can.

Random man: you know that's a watering can right? It's for watering plants. You can put a nozzle on the end to make it sprinkle the water out.

Me: Umm. Yes. I do know.

RM: It's not actually for filling up the car.

Me: Yes. I know. I also use it in the garden.

RM: You can use a hose to fill up the car.

Me: I know, but I don't have an outside tap, so I used this to move water from inside my house to outside. Because its a water moving receptacle.

RM: It wasn't made for filling up the car though.

Me: ........

RM: Hurumpf.

And off he wanders.

I mean.... what!?

I once had a man come over to me while I was putting air in my flat tire at a Tesco petrol station to tell me you can't inflate a rupture. I stared at him. He said I will need to change it to the spare. I stared at him. Long story short, he changed my tire for me, with a full explanation, and ended with a lecture about how I should know how to do this basic stuff. I gave him a baby wipe for his dirty hands and gave his bored-looking wife/girlfriend a wave then went on my merry way.

My new car doesn't even have a spare wheel so if I ever get a puncture I'm fucked.

My dad does this - stands so close behind the car doing his best impression of guiding a 747 in to land, it actually makes it harder and more dangerous to get out.

I ran my own business for years as a qualified and experienced gardener and I can tell some mansplainy tales. One man who manhandled the mower out of my hands and adjusted the height of the cut (it wasn't his garden, he was a RM) when there was a very specific reason I was cutting the height I was. I was too young and shocked to say anything, just waited until he'd finished (which took ages because he was not familiar with MY mower that I worked with every bloody day), then adjusted it back while he watched. Another RM who expressed shock I could cut grass then, I kid you not, said I guess it is a bit like hoovering when you think about it so no reason you shouldn't have a go 😡

Oh, to have the confidence of a mediocre man!

I get mansplained to on a daily basis at work (tech company, only female in team, etc etc), mainly on WhatsApp. I have tried different approaches and the best one I find is to have a blanket rule: if someone tells me something I already know (often), I respond with 'I know'. It looks really curt and cuts them dead and I have never, never had any response to it, even if they were middway through some rambling explanation of something.

My brother tried to mansplain feminism to me recently. That didn't go very well.

Urgh. So annoying.

One of my male friends told me when I passed my driving test "you know you have to get an MOT every year dont you?". I pretended to look shocked and said "OMG no! I've never heard of that- I probably wont do it- cant be bothered" 🙄 Best part is- I passed first time, he took three goes 😂

I like this helpful chart for mansplaining

So essentially unless a woman explicitly asks for help/explaining then it's mansplaining?

See, I think if a man (or anyone) saw me struggling to fit a car headlight bulb and offered to help, or suggest ways to make it easier, I'd be grateful.

Or if a man saw me struggling to lift a large bag of compost into a standard trolley and suggested that I could use one of the garden trolleys (e.g. you'd find that easier with one of those garden trolleys), again I'd appreciate it.

The BBC chart is brilliant! Thanks @TyneTeas

Yes it's brilliant. I might start responding with that!

How often do you see women offering men unsolicited advice?

I thought we all used kettles or jugs?

Have I been doing it wrong all this time?

I have a hose but I think it's a bit large and unwieldy to fill up the screenwash tank.

I had that from a RM a few months ago. Been competently reversing into my driveway for nearly 14 years and told him so, but him gave no opportunity to respond.

I have no problem with men asking "hey, do you need any help?" what I dont like is them assuming I'm stupid due to my gender and launching into a big lecture about the topic when they probably dont know any more than me. I've experienced this many times. For example, one guy at the gym started to lecture me about how to use weights before I'd even picked one up. I am a qualified personal trainer. He wasnt.

The assistant asked if I needed help with a 50L compost bag and said "Oh!" when I hoiked it onto my shoulder - DH had walked off somewhere with the trolley. That was kind though and part of their job, not mansplaining, as he asked.

I use a waterbottle btw. In fact sometimes I gather up all the old half empty plastic water bottles the DC insist on buying and dump all that in. Using a hose sounds bonkers! It would spurt all over the place and make a mess. You're not supposed to deliberately run water all over an engine are you?

I am a rose specialist and had someone mansplain how to prune roses. He told me I should do them with a hedge trimmer. OH happened to be there and told him he could either employ the Bum Crack Gardener method and have terrible looking roses or have them done professionally.

Probably ADHD or something similar or you could go online and take the piss.

I've mentioned this on mansplaining threads previously.

A man aged about early 70s once explained the workings of the clitoris to me. When he'd finished talking he saw the massive grin on my face and my eyes rolling and said... 'I see you've learned something today!' He was so proud, bless him.

I then pointed out that I had owned a clit of my own for 62 years

In addition to this, it's much cheaper to buy concentrated screen wash and dilute it at home. If you buy the stuff that's already at the right concentration to use, you're basically paying a lot for what is mostly water. It's like Ribena: a big bottle of Ribena to dilute at home and a pre-made carton cost about the same per 100ml, but in the case of the carton, most of it is water.

Ladies - the phrase, "Oh right" will solve your problems. As disinterested as possible, like a toddler is showing you a handful of mashed food.

"Do you know you need to xyz?" "Oh right."
"You should really use x to y" "Oh right."
"Didn't you remember to xys?" "Oh right."
"Shouldn't you be doing this?" "Oh right."

It's non committal, doesn't invite anything else (if RMs reply, you just repeat "Oh right.")

THEN if they come back with, "I feel like you're not listening to me"/"Ahh forgot, you shouldn't piss off a woman!" / "Is it that TOM?" - "Oh right" comes out again. It makes zero sense. It confuses their little minds. It's like staying still and waiting for a particularly stupid bumblebee to move on.

A few weeks back i was parking my car at the pool and a RM leaped out of his own car to try and guide me in. Have no idea why. I unwound the window and said to him very politely; 'Thank you, I am able to park'. He called me a fucking bitch and stuck his finger up at me.

I suspect he did not expense the response of two pre-teen boys and an adult woman to start laughing at him at that.

Nothing brings out the Random Men more than a woman driving a lorry. Even worse if it's a small woman and a big lorry.

I once had a man ask me if I needed help parking my 7.5t box as I was having to wrench the wheel to move it. I told him that, as the power-steering had failed and it was on a downwards slope, a huge amount of the lorry's weight was on the front axle hence the wrenching, but he was more than welcome to move it for me if he wanted to. He cleared off sharpish

*expect

RM recently rolled down his cab window to lean out and tell me which lane I should be using at a roundabout: a) the lanes were actually marked with what one you should be in for which road (and I was in the correct one for the exit I wanted); b) he didn't know where I was going so presumably didn't know which exit I wanted.

Oooh I have had similar! Man waving his hands and conducting me, "YEP! ALMOST! ALMOST!"

Wound down my window and said I do have fucking eyes, thanks though. He called me a cunt and went back to his own (poor) wife.