In individual cases yes, is it “explicitly” a gendered phenomenon? no.
indeed, my typo.
The phenomenon, as I understand it, isn’t simply that a man is explaining something to a woman when he’s unwelcome, incorrect, or both. It’s that he’s doing this because he’s a dude and she’s a woman: his sexist beliefs about the superiority of his own knowledge and the inferiority of hers come into play.
He almost certainly doesn’t realize it, and he 100% won’t admit it, but that’s a part of the phenomenon.
But, as you already conceded, on aggregate also “yes”.
Wow, So there is no domestic violence from women against men, or women against women or men against men?
That will be news to many unhappy people and a pretty bold stance to take.
I have difficulty with neither which is why I am able to confidently state that you are wrong. I’m certainly having less difficulty with those words than you are with “domestic violence”
Now, the defence here might be that we can’t know that the dude in question is so motivated.
My counter to that would be him calling a female doctor he’s interacting with (not the original gynaecologist) , “Chick”. Says it all, really.
I 'm not even going to touch his racist defence of using the word “Negro”…
You’re missing the context of the calculation. The last para from the screengrab, with the conclusions we’re being invited to draw from the calculations that periods should cost women £20, is:
The guy isn’t idly calculating the costs of periods on a whim. He’s trying to prove (to women) that they don’t know how much their periods cost. And based on his back of an envelope calculations, he presumes to tell them to shut up about it. How could it not occur to him that if his calculations differed from what women said was their actual experience, that the problem might be with his assumptions? How could he not think that if he wanted to know what periods cost, he just had to listen to what women were telling him? You say doing the calculation is not a bad thing but it was. He didn’t need to do the calculation, he just need to ask women how much they spent on sanitary products and accept the answer. But no. He came steaming in to tell women to “stop whining” based on perhaps as much as 3 minutes of thought. That’s, let us say, highly suggestive of some underlying assumptions about the worth of his opinion vs the worth of women’s.
Aah, it’s “gendered” you have no comprehension of, then…
Also, “explicitly” doesn’t mean “entirely”.
OK, but let’s be clear. Being talked down to by idiots is not something explicitly done to women by men.
Using a special word to bestow special importance on *that *sort of condescension is unhelpful in my opinion as it runs the risk of being deployed as a argument-ender in situations where it is not warranted.
i.e. A knowledgeable man correctly explains to a idiotic woman that they are wrong, having “arghhh! mansplaining” as the first response is bollocks as it can negate the need to actually put forward an argument. I don’t see that as helpful in any way.
Who gets to decide?
Yeah, that’s my understanding. The incident Solnit relates in her essay is pretty astonishing, and it’s pretty clear both that a) the fact that he’s speaking to women, not men, is a big factor in how the man in question treats Solnit and her partner and b) he wouldn’t particularly be aware of that.
But he talks down to them “Stay, I want to talk to you.” “I hear you’ve written a couple of books”. When she says her most recent (of several) books is on topic X, he doesn’t say, “Tell me more.” He interrupts to talk about a “really important” book on X he’s heard about. Clearly, the person he’s talking to now can’t have written a “really important” book. What was it about this younger woman that led him to think that? Of course, it turns out that not only has she written a really important book, she wrote the very book he’s trying to lecture her on. But he has to be interrupted three times before he actually takes this on board. Again, why did a woman have to repeat something three times before he heard it?
And yet, I’m sure if you asked his version of it, he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) acknowledge that gender dynamics were an element in his attitude to the people he was trying to have a conversation with.
I could be convinced that this is more this than mansplaining.
However, I’d need more of this dude’s history taken into evidence, and see if he’s an equal opportunity know it all jackass.
Words don’t have intrinsic meaning they have usage, I take from the context of your posts that “explicitly gendered” means that is a phenomenon that it is something that happens to one gender but not the other. Feel free to clarify.
I’ve just asked three other people around me what it means to them, they all gave variations on that theme so someone is not being clear in their language.
Seemed a strange choice of words to use about something that clearly crosses gender barriers. **Stanislaus ** helpfully cleared up that they meant “mansplaining” itself is an explicitly gendered phenomenon, which I agree with. It has to be that pretty much by definition.
If you are not on the same page as that then fine but a better explanation of an “explicitly gendered” phenomenon might be in order because as it stands you, Stanislaus and me plus my colleagues are all using it in a different way.
Can’t it be both?
I don’t use the word “explicitly” to mean “entirely” or “solely”.
On the one hand, you’ve got that risk. On the other, you’ve got the reality that there is a specific male-to-female kind of condescension and that this is has actual negative effects on women today. Giving up the ability to accurately call out mansplaining because of the risk that some people might start using it inaccurately to defend themselves is putting a very high premium on that risk and/or a very low value on calling out sexist condescension. Given that the people who value using the word are mainly women on the receiving end of sexism, I’m disinclined to say that their risk/reward analysis is askew.
Sometimes people who are being rightly criticised will claim prejudice on the part of their critic. This is true and regrettable. But it’s not an argument for giving up on the idea that we can identify, label and call out prejudiced behaviour using concise, accurate and meaningful terminology.
I mean, if the idiot woman in your example had said “aargh! sexist” as the first response, would you be saying we should stop using the word sexist?
You real name is PaulBullen and I claim my prize!
Why the fuck would you think that? It’s something that happens with a clear gender differentiation - either an increased frequency of occurrence for one gender OR a qualitative difference in outcome, not something that happens exclusively to one gender.
So, which was it, that you thought “explicitly” meant “entirely”? Or that you thought “gendered” necessarily meant “happens exclusively to one gender”?
Am I going to have to explain “necessarily” to you as well?
And I don’t give a particularly wet shit what your “colleagues” think, BTW. What kind of dumb-ass argument tactic is “these three people sitting around me think…”? Does that ever work for you?
No-one decides
The gender pronouns and term “mansplaining” add absolutely nothing to what is a simplistic map of pretty standard human interactions regardless of gender.
Then it’s a meaningless qualifier, isn’t it? So it’s just an argument-ender, and you don’t like it because it’s both effective and accurate.
my emphasis.
Well, we’ve already established you have no idea what something being gendered means, so I’m going to take your manpinion and give it all the due consideration it’s worth…flush Alrighty, then.
Not a reference I’m familiar with, the statement is true though regardless of who has said it (whoever he is I bet he’s not the first person to say it).
Both, and that apparently is how Stanislaus first intended it to be used it in relation to the term “mansplaining”
All I can tell you is that three women of high educational standards, well-read and erudite (plus me) take the term “explicitly gendered” as suggesting that it is relating to one gender and not another. I’m in the UK and it is entirely possible that makes a difference. One thing is for sure, it seems to be a phrase with high possibility of misinterpretation. That seems to be cleared up now.
You aren’t claiming that being talked down to is a purely male to female phenomenon or that domestic violence is purely one gender to another. Super, we’ve cleared that up and we agree. Just as I agree with Stanislaus that “explicitly gendered” is a good descriptor for the term “mansplaining”
Are you fucking shitting me? Did you just see the word “mansplain” and feel the need to make you damn idiot opinion known without actually reading the OP and its damn links??