To wonder whether mansplaining is, at least sometimes, something that men do to other men as well as to women?

[Carla786]

I've not come across mansplaining much irl but when I have I'm pretty sure it's been for sexist reasons. However, I read this article recently and it made me think.

I think some mansplaining is definitely sexist but could some cases be communication failure due to men sometimes using different ways to bond with each other than women do with their same sex friends? Other cases could be men using it to show dominance, but not necessarily precisely in a sexist way as they may do this with other men too.

YABU - no this generally isn't the case.

YANBU - yes it is, at least sometimes.

Like you I compete in a sport (rowing) to a decent level (Henley Royal, Nat Champs) and I am also a qualified coach at my club and I still get blokes down my gym wandering up me while I'm on the erg doing tech drills telling me what I am doing wrong 😂

Never mind the fact that I have my club training kit on with 'XXX Rowing Club' across my back these morons think that they are experts because they watched a YouTube video once. They just cant help it.

He’s 16 and not sexist in any other way. It just seems ingrained in the male population to mansplain. I’ve met few men that don’t do it.

I once had someone explain the atom to me in a pub I had a PhD from Cambridge in Physics.

The way boys speak to women starts very young rudeness to female staff in schools that men just don’t get - sexism in schools is very difficult to prove eg we won’t put the ball away for the female member of staff is just ‘being a bit rude’ but does it when a man tells them - isn’t classed as a separate issue. I know of friends at a local independent school where all the senior staff are male and the boys just don’t respect female staff and the blame is put on them.

Women don’t do it. That’s kind of the point.

As has been said above ‘mansplaining’ properly used is not just about a man explaining stuff to a woman, or indeed another man. It’s specifically about a man explaining stuff to a woman that he has reason to know is better informed about that topic than he is.

I think I'm lucky in that the men I know (mainly partners of friends) are lovely, quiet men who almost have to be persuaded to talk at length and are modest about their knowledge and experience.

There's one, though, and he's basically a decent man, but he's a big noise in IT and although I get on with his wife (who's a linguist, which is relevant here...), his determination to rubbish anything that's not modern and to over-value new developments like AI does bug me a bit, and I get into arguments with him.

We were discussing the sad down-grading of language teaching in schools and universities and his attitude is a very forceful and dismissive 'We don't need to learn languages nowadays - we've got translation apps etc" Oh God! We learn languages for much more nuanced reasons than just translation...it's about engaging with other cultures and modes of thought etc. Also...is there no need to painting now we've got photography??? But he knows best and always has a patronising smile when we're on this topic which I can't eradicate whatever I say.

I did get my own back once, though. For him, every technical innovation is GOOD. But he's also a petrol head, so when I innocently remarked that eventually all cars would be driverless, he shut that down straight away and denied it absolutely. Think I touched a nerve there....

You don’t seem to know what the word ‘empathise’ means. Maybe look it up? It has nothing to do with trying to teach someone else something, and nothing to do with implying that your life is more together than theirs - rather the reverse.

There is a stereotype that men explain and women empathise. That’s the parallel I’m drawing, so it isn’t an accident that I alighted on it.

I’m also not sure that explaining does assume a lack in a way that empathising doesn’t.

At least, maybe this is itself a gendered difference.

If a man explains something to me (I’m a man), I don’t hear it as him saying I’m defective in some way. He is trading information or knowledge, inviting me to do the same back, creating some bond based around a topic.

I could hear an attempt to empathise as saying I’m unable to cope or broken in some way, or need to be cared for, and I could see that as infantilising.

I think it would be unhelpful to see either knowledge-sharing or empathising as some sort or hostile or belittling or unwelcome act. Of course both can be. But making a flow-chart that treats that as the default is what I think is a pretty unhelpful framing.

For about 10 years I worked as the only woman in an otherwise all male team.
The mansplaining was off the scale sometimes, not to me, but between themselves. Trying to get one over on each other etc etc and they were all intelligent, evolved men.
I think it's just how some men operate to assert their dominance, for want of a better word.
I suppose it's better than standing up in the office and beating their bare chest gorilla style 😂.

You didn't need that "(I'm a man)" 🤣

So you agree my flowchart would be misconceived, makes unwarranted assumptions about what the speaker is trying to do, and would generally lead people who took it seriously to constantly misunderstand or problematise otherwise normal interactions?

We’re on the same page then as that’s what I’m highlighting about how I see the mansplaining one.

I thought it was not so much a case of the man knowing the woman he is lecturing is better qualified/informed then he is but rather him just assuming he is the most intelligent person in the room without even bothering to know what other people credentials are.

Yes, it's at least preferable to that! 🙄🤣

I heard a psychologist explaining mansplaining and they said when women have a problem they want to work through it in their head whereas men think they can help the woman out by laying out the problem step by step and that’s where mansplaining comes from. He was a man and cringed as he explained 😅

Mansplaining is one of those words used to shut people up like "Karen" is used against middle aged women standing up for themselves and "snowflake" is used against young people.

It's a stupid term and seems to be used against men for just explaining anything or expressing an opinion.

🤣 That sounds likely for at least some cases. A bit like the dichotomy where a woman wants empathy for a problem and the man tries to give her advice on how to solve it.

We recently had building work done so had many different men working away within hearing distance.... and they just communicate to each other differently than women. Quite often they seem to take it in turns to explain what they are about to do... they both already know and both just keep repeating the same things when it is their turn but happily get on with it. I think this could be misinterpreted as mansplaining if they try to talk to women the same way.