If a man is a disagreeable know it all who persistently butts into topics of all stripes with his unwelcome opinion, I don’t think mansplaining remains an accurate term just because he applied his normal behavior to a female-centric topic.
As an analogy, let’s say some dude named Cheesesteak is a condescending asshole to every single person he meets. It’s unfair to call him a racist if he happens to be a condescending asshole to a black person. He’s not a racist, he’s an asshole who treats all races equally bad.
I’ve never been compleatly on board with the mansplaining thing. I’m not going to fight it as I feel like that would be similar to me, a middle aged white guy, telling someone they’re not experiencing racism.
However, I do feel that it’s an over used word, tossed around as a convienent way to win an argument instead of using actual words and sentences.
Again, I’m not saying it’s not a real thing, I’m saying that just because someone says it’s happening doesn’t mean it is.
I recall one conversation on facebook. A person (female) mentioned that a household appliance wasn’t working. I tossed out a few thoughts I had on the subject and when she came back she tore me to shreds for ‘mansplaining’ this to her and went on to explain that she knew more about fixing it that I did (don’t know how she could know that, we’d only met once). It’s entirely possible this has colored my perception of the word since it was the first time I’d heard it and, more importantly, she didn’t say anything at all to the two females that were also part of the thread, also tossing out suggestions.
I was wrong for literally no other reason than that I was male.
To make it worse, had she said what she said, directed it all three of us and not used that word, I would have been annoyed, but I wouldn’t have stopped taking her seriously from that point on.
No, this is not “mansplaining.” He’s not trying to explain anything. He’s just issuing a brief, incorrect “correction.” There’s no attempt to explain, even in the bullshittiest of ways, what a vagina is, what a vulva is, or why the “correct word is vagina.”
Now that’s mansplaining.
If the method of his condescension is to make a statement like “All lives matter”, then I would happily call him a racist. That is the analogous situation to what happened here.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that he restricted himself to one post…
…although, having said that, yes, even that one post was mansplaining - it was directed at someone who didn’t ask to be corrected, and someone who clearly knew much better than him about the subject. And that someone was a woman. It was brief mansplaining (or would have been if standalone) but it was mansplaining nevertheless. Or are you going to get hung up on the “explaining” part of the word’s origin, like some dumb homophobic motherfucker explaining how they’re not “scared of gays”?
I see where some of your communication issues may be coming from. Some people might not think the same as you do.
If that is the name of the man in the original OP links then no, I don’t remember his name. Having read those links I don’t remember the names of *any *of those involved.
Is it difficult for you to accept that someone might read it and not remember the names?
Is your first response to assume that I hadn’t read it? rather than I had not recognised a name I’ve only fleetingly skimmed over?
That suggests it is being used in a way that relates to one gender only does it not?
Anyway. We’ve cleared up how you are both using the term, not sure what the benefit is of going back over it.
You just won me a biscuit and they are somewhat annoyed that you are so dismissive of their interpretation. They haven’t used that word, but they are thinking it very hard.
What, like, “know what I’m talking about before I spout off about it”, that way of thinking? You’ve made it all too clear.
Sure you read all the links, buddy. Totally. :rolleyes:
One link? No, I can believe a lot of people would do that.
They wouldn’t all see fit to make their damn fool opinions known, over and over again, though.
I know you at least read some of it, since your first reply indicated knowledge of what the idiot’s major malfunction was.
We’ve already established the level of your reading comprehension skills, so no, I’m not really surprised. But I am delighted!
Precisely, knowing that this attitude is widespread regardless of gender, how can you make this assumption? Unless there’s an objective reason to believe so, like starting by “Of course, you’re a woman, you can’t understand that” or a consistent behavior, you’ve no way to know if the gender plays any part in it. And for instance in this particular example I see no reason to assume that this guy made the correction in the first place and then insisted in stating that it was a vagina because he was talking to women.
It’s obvious that “mansplaining” is used whether or not there are evidences that gender is a factor, hence as a result by certain people every time a man mistakenly corrects a woman, treats her condescendingly, etc…and even in some cases when he simply contradicts her or send her packing not so gently. So it says nothing about the interaction or the person it’s applied to, it simply allows to add an implicit accusation of sexism.
You said that a word wouldn’t be adopted if it were useless. But being able to take an extra cheap shot, casting an extra unproved accusation at someone you’re disagreeing with is most certainly useful for the person using it. It doesn’t mean in any way that its use properly describes a situation. It can be at the same time useful for the person using it, and detrimental to the general discourse. Its use gives the false impression that any instance of a man wrongly correcting a woman is motivated and/or explained by misogyny, and that women are victimized for being women much more commonly than it’s actually the case, ignoring the fact people in general have a strong tendency to think that they know better about topics they’re ignorant of, and that such an instance can’t be assumed to have anything to do with gender.
If it were used solely when it’s clear that the behavior is caused by misogyny, I’d have no problem with it. But it’s not the case.
No, it neither offers nor implies an opinion at all. You can feel free to infer what you like if linguistic point scoring is your thing.
I mean I certainly don’t recall denying there is such a concept as “gendered”, there was some clarification done, many, many posts ago on what various posters meant by that term but we’ve cleared it up, I’m fine with the usage of term at play here.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that I’ve read as much of it as pretty much any other poster on here. I knew about it even before you posted it here. I don’t know how many others would have recognised the name either or why you think it my lack of recognition indicates anything other than a bad memory for names.
Hell I can watch the entirety of a cricket match and fail to remember the name of the bowler who took a 5-fer.
I have a co-worker who butts into every conversation. To the point that if I’m talking about TV or Movies with someone else, we make sure we’re out of earshot of them. I don’t understand how that makes her a sexist. Even if she were male and both of us were female, “he’d” still be obnoxious, but not sexist.
There has to be another element to it, like LHoD said upthread, they have to be doing it because they’re male and working under the assumption that the other people couldn’t possibly be correct because they’re female.
Personally, I think that happens far less often than the word ‘mansplain’ is used. Personally, I think it’s more often the case that it’s just someone who either always has to say something (regardless of the topic or people involved) or someone who feels the need to correct someone when they hear something [they think is] wrong.
Mansplaining is a clearly (or explicitly, if you like) gendered term. It puts gender right at the heart of the phenomenon it is describing. To talk about mansplaining is of necessity to talk about gender.
This does not mean that the only time a person talks down to another equally or better informed person is when the first is male and the second female. Mansplaining is not a synomym for one person wrongly talking down to another. (OPWTDTA) Mansplaining is a label for the specific (and majority) subset of OPWTDTA where a man is talking down to a woman he assumes to know less than he does. It is a useful distinction because when mansplaining occurs it is highly likely that it is consciously or unconsciously motivated by assumptions about male vs female status held by the mansplainer.
As witness the guy who assumes that the author of a book on early photography he is talking to cannot possibly the author of the important book on the same subject he read a review of earlier.
As witness the guy who believes his own half-arsed maths over women’s account of their experiences to the extent he thinks it justifies him in telling them to shut up.
Agreed. It’s demeaning and sexist. It implies that an explanation is ridiculous because it is a** man’s** explanation. Trust me, if a man ridiculed an explanation because it is “womansplaining”, there is no way we wouldn’t beat him up for that.
