Have you looked at the guy’s other cartoons? On the whole they aren’t exactly insightful, interesting, or funny.
From Latin “denarius”, the Roman coin eventually superseded by the “penny”, “pfennig”, etc., among speakers of Germanic languages. Just as the symbol for the British pound is “L” from Latin “libra” (and the pound as a unit of weight is abbreviated “lb”).
Nobody said that it did.
Perfect example of my point. Women find themselves unable to win debates with men honestly, so they trot out this canard as a magic trump card. :rolleyes:
I don’t accept the argument that women are inherently less effective debaters. Why should gender matter, all else being equal?
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Thanks for the link. By the way, it looks like we’ve been working from a slight paraphrase of the cartoon caption, which actually says “I said ‘I wonder what it means’, not ‘Tell me what it means’.”
And I think you might be somewhat jumping to conclusions about the “don’t want to llsten what the other person has to say” bit? I mean, there are many different ways that conversation could have gone down, including the following:
Female gallery visitor looking at very non-representational abstract artwork: I wonder what it means.
Male gallery visitor accompanying her: I’m not sure. The strongly marked splatter makes me think of some kind of explosion or catastrophe. I think it might be about the unsuspected imminence of destruction or something like that.
And also the following:
Female gallery visitor looking at very non-representational abstract artwork: I wonder what it means.
Male gallery visitor accompanying her: Ah, well, you see, the strongly marked splatter clearly represents some kind of explosion or catastrophe. The artist is evidently trying to convey the unsuspected imminence of destruction.
I could imagine the woman replying in scenario 2 “I said ‘I wonder what it means’, not ‘Tell me what it means’”, without necessarily implying that she wouldn’t want “to listen to what the other person has to say” in scenario 1.
Would you be equally angered about the woman making that response in both scenarios?
An interesting question that undoubtedly has a complex set of answers. All I can tell you is that it is my experience. Furthermore, the kind of women who are exceptions (as on two of my favorite shows, “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight”) are not likely to use this crutch. So it self-selects for women who want to spout off in public forums but not be challenged.
He’s hedging this response almost to the point of dumbing it down. Art interpretation being subjective by nature, shouldn’t it be generally understood that any explanation he offers is open to refutation or debate? Must every statement be qualified with “or something” or “maybe” or “I think”?
Moreover, it’s reasonable to assume that the woman isn’t an authority or expert in the subject because otherwise she wouldn’t have said she wondered what it meant.
Both answers are basically the same, except in this one he seems much more sure of himself. Too sure? Well probably so but then should the genders matter?
And what if the man looked like Brad Pitt and the woman were as overweight and dumpy as the man the actual cartoon?
I don’t know why the cartoonist did that.
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IME many women (including my wife) do believe this is what is proper. And many men (including me) chafe against this. Mars and Venus…
The “mansplaining” interpretation of this cartoon doesn’t fit if you’re assuming that the concept of “mansplaining” necessarily entails a man explaining to a woman a subject on which the woman herself is an authority or expert.
But “mansplaining” is frequently used in the broader sense of a man giving an unnecessary and/or overconfident explanation to a woman that she didn’t really need or want from him, whether or not she herself is an expert. There’s even a flowchart.
That’s basically the broader concept of “mansplaining” in a nutshell: man too sure of the rightness and value of his opinions, lecturing about them to woman who didn’t ask for them and doesn’t need them.
If it’s a joke about mansplaining, yes. As I noted above:
Well, that would add a different layer of implications. How would your reading of the cartoon change if the artist had done that?
To make the man look like an arty hipster, a stereotype widely associated with conceit and pretentiousness, thus reinforcing the implication that his “explanation” of the artwork to the woman is ill-informed mansplaining.
A good example of why accusations of mansplaining can be so infuriating. Because now it’s not just about telling jokes or introducing topics that aren’t appropriate in mixed company, but also not hedging our language enough. And this, sunny daze, is why I believe men are equally entitled as women are to debate exactly what mansplaining is, or ought to be.
I have no quarrel whatsoever with the original, narrower definition of mansplaining.
Note,
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Wait, you’re married already? I thought you were hooked up with some Russian heiress while being an Instagram gypsy on the side.
The narrow definition makes sense to me. I am not following the leap to the wider definition that covers slackerinc’s example of who prefers to insert modifiers in conversation. Yes, I agree conversations about communication are valid, and I’m not trying to argue that men can’t join the discussion. I would suggest that a new term might be appropriate rather than trying to change the common meaning of the “mansplaining”, however.
I admit that I remain amused at the mansplaining about mansplaining in this thread. (C’mon - it’s funny.)
To be clear, I don’t mean to assert that the woman necessarily has to know more about the topic than the man does, in order for mansplaining to occur. I agree that any uninvited explanation by the man could be mansplaining. My issue with the cartoon is that ISTM the woman does in fact invite his opinions on the painting by saying she wonders about it.
ETA: Yes, Gaudere’s law is usually funny, or am I thinking of Godwin?
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But as I tried to illustrate with my two conversation scenarios, there’s a difference between discussing your opinions about what something obscure might mean, and laying down the law about what you’re definitively asserting it does mean.
ISTM that when the woman objects to being “told what it means”, it’s the latter type of discourse she’s complaining about, rather than the former.
I think you all are putting far more thought into the cartoon than the cartoonist did.
Welcome to the SDMB.
Why don’t they just read the little card with the title, artist, medium, and go from there?
There’s a selection of the cartoonist’s work further down on the linked page. A brief perusal suggests that your observation is not terribly surprising.
Well, not terribly helpful if the title is something like Untitled 19, which frequently occurs with nonrepresentational artworks…