I have no idea what you are going on about, I used the term “up front” because I freely, openly and of my own volition told you they are women. That may be a usage you are unfamiliar with but it’s common-place to me and I’ll be fucked if I’m going down another pointless definition rabbit-hole.
And as Stanilaus suggested, I’ll drop it.
clairobscur:
A man is talking down to a woman who he should realise knows at least as much as him. What do you think the chances are that gender is not a factor in his behaviour?
I saw the article a few days back and thought the same thing. IIRC, that’s what the guy was arguing. I don’t know why he was doing it, but it seemed to be what he was doing.
We could also just call the whole thing a “shebang”.
That would certainly put the Ricky Martin song in a whole new light.
I’d say it’s something over 50% that gender is a factor, but not that much over. My observation is that a condescending attitude is consistent in many people no matter who they are talking to. In others it will be situational based on perception of superiority, and that sometimes is not specific to women but when it is not may still be mansplaining if such a person consistently considers themselves superior to women among others.
Overall I’d be surprised if gender was a factor more than 2/3 of the time, or even that much. But when a man tries to explain what a vagina is to a female gynecologist I’ll need some serious convincing that it’s not gender based.
It is indeed and any word with utility runs the risk of misapplication.
It does concern me that giving a word the de facto power to end an argument seems to be a growing trend.
Pick your topic of discussion, “racist” “sexist” “islamophobe” “transphobe” Homophobe" “misogynist” can be trotted out and the user will consider that enough to win the day. Almost like the facts of the individual case don’t matter. Adding new words to that list of conversation-stoppers doesn’t seem like a win to me. Offer people a short-cut to winning an argument and human nature dictates that enough will do precisely that. Even worse. if it becomes accepted that by applying that label, the argument is won, when people try to explore the nuance behind a case they must part of the problem.
Is “mansplaining” the biggest problem in the world? no. But it is a symptom of a wider malaise within reasoned debate and increased, reflexive use of it seems unhelpful to me.
The concepts above are real things, real problems, depressing examples can be found the world over but they aren’t solved or even properly addressed by broadening the scope of the words used.
Stanislaus, you see the risk/reward equation differently to me, that’s fair enough. I’m not sure that either of us could make a slam-dunk case for our position.
So let me step in to this part with something that may illustrate my point and I’ll ask you a question.
Do we know that? I don’t know that but I’m perfectly happy to be swayed either way.
Not that “women are spoken to condescendingly by men” that’s obviously and clearly true and a bad thing that should be condemned but it is easy to segue from that to the wider claim above.
Now I know that the above is often said, that it is accepted as true but how do we know it? is it just anecdote? Are men actually more often condescending to men than women? There is certainly no downside to claiming the above quote to be the case and lots of brownie points to be won by doing so but is it actually true?
If anyone’s gut reaction to my even questioning it is one of indignation, surprise, anger or a bit of outrage then good. Examine that reaction, if you had a easy conversation-stopping tool at hand would you now use it or would you examine how you know what you think you know.
The thing about this argument is that it assumes that people are so stupid that they can’t tell when a charge of mansplaining is being levelled just to stop the conversation. I’m not so pessimistic.
Speaking for myself, my reaction is one of slight frustration because I laid out the reasons why I believe this to be true in the post you snipped it from. I took the time to list both the evidence available to me and walk through the chain of reasoning from that evidence that led me to my conclusion. You seem to have ignored this while insinuating that I’m only making this claim to win brownie points. Do you think there’s a flaw in my reasoning? Did you even recognise that I’d made that reasoning plain?
My thought for his comment was he thought “vulva” was being used as some genteel euphemism, as if the publication/blog was afraid of using the word “vagina” directly, and was trying to call them out on it, only to be shown that, no, they’re two quite different things and one is not a euphemistic word for the other. That’s the only way this craziness makes any sense to me.
And “mansplaining” is so wrought in politics, just like “virtue signaling” is, but they both (in my opinion) do point out real social phenomena. Is this an example of mansplaining? Without going into Paul’s head, we don’t know for sure, but, casually, it does look like it. Do I care? Not really, but just enough to answer this thread, I guess.
But it is not extremely common regardless of gender. It is more common in men than women, and more common in men towards women than towards other men.
Other than that, sure, carry on.
I think the concept of mansplaining can be put in the same category as “Driving While Black”. Yes, white people sometimes get pulled over for no particularly good reason, and yes, not every instance of a black person being pulled over is due to racism, but that doesn’t mean its not a real phenomena that should be called out when obvious examples of it happen.
Also like DWB, it is most easily dismissed as a non entity by those who don’t experience it.
In my experience, men who are blowhards and talk down to everyone talk down to women differently than they do to men: they interrupt more and they are more absolutist (they never say “As I understand it” and the like to women, but may when talking to a man.)
Also, in my experience, the mythical non-racist misanthrope doesn’t exist. The guy who hates everyone doesn’t hate everyone for the same reasons–he hates black people because of stereotypical black people flaws, and always points them out. He hates every other group (including women) for their own stereotypical flaws. He hates his “own kind” for failing to meet standards he at least theoretically holds himself to. Misanthropes are virtually never equal-opportunity non-bigots. They are much more often super-bigots, adopting every form of bigotry and self-loathing at once.
And I almost never hear women use “vagina” or “vag” to refer to the whole pubic area. Women are typically very aware of the difference.
My point is, what you wrote in that post was not hard evidence of anything. It was qualitative and anecdotal and open to confirmation bias. Now that may be all we have, it is certainly all I have, and I don’t doubt for a second that it is convincing to you and you interpret it and base your actions on it with the best of intentions but it is a massive leap from that to claim, as you did,
bolding is mine, I wonder if we do actually know that, or is it just accepted as true?
What I wrote was my perception in general and not an insinuation of your motives, Let me state clearly that I don’t think you personally do it for brownie points. I do think that that it can be a position held, unthinkingly and with little social jeopardy by others.
Not that I want to defend him, but he acknowledges that there is a difference and goes on to say “vagina” is the common term, while vulva is the technical term and says that it’s pretty normal for people to use the word “vagina” to refer to both parts.
Anyways, I have no idea why he decided to jump in with his initial comment. It’s also entirely possible, based on the first comment that he was (unknowingly) wrong, but corrected it along the way and acted like that’s what he meant all along.
However, if a female said the exact same thing ie “The correct word is vagina” in response to an article that mentions the word vulva…it wouldn’t be worldwide news, even if she too wasn’t asked, isn’t an expert and knows less.
I also find it interesting that one of the things several of the tweets attack is how much sexual experience he has. Personally, I’ve never received an anatomy lesson before, during or after coitus, so it’s little more than a random character attack. Along the same lines of suggesting that men that have big pick up trucks, obviously, have small penises. Never understood that one either.
I think it’s very common for women to correct men. Men may not have created a term for it or taken to whatever the male version of feminist (MRA?) websites with it. But it absolutely happens. I doubt there’s any real research on how much it happens one way vs the other.
And, again, if man is explaining (even if it’s unwanted and wrong) something to a woman, but he’s not doing it because he’s a man and because she’s a woman, it’s not mansplaining. It’s annoying and rude, but it’s not sexist…or maybe it is. I guess I don’t technically know. If it’s simply the act of a man explaining something to a woman (rudely/condescendingly etc) and that’s it, that would change things.
Also, unrelated, this has been floating around for a while, I always thought it was kinda funny.
Domestic violence is by far the least gendered form of violence, being the only one where women are almost as likely as men to commit it (something like 60:40 male to female as opposed to 90:10 for other forms).
Unless you meant that the experience of suffering domestic violence is significantly worse for men these days, as they are not believed, denied access to services for victims, and treated socially as being emasculated if they talk about it.
As for mansplaining, it’s a thing that many men do, yes, but they do it to other men as much as they do it to women. It’s unpleasant and disrespectful, and wome are certainly right to pushback against it, but as with many things related to “the patriarchy” they are not the only victims.
It is incidental to any point I’ve made so far but as an additional data point I can state that my wife has never, to my knowledge, used the word “vulva” to refer to her genitals. She has used “vagina” exclusively as a shorthand for it even though she knows the correct medical term. Rather like one might say “stomach ache” when what is actually hurting is the intestines.
Asking her now she confirms that she’d use “vagina” or multiple euphemisms over vulva when referring to that whole area.
We are in the UK so that may be a language quirk but certainly hearing the medically accurate “vulva” in an informal setting would be a double-take for me.
It would explain why we have a “vajazzle” rather than a vuljazzle" (well…not "we " exactly…but never say never)
No, in my experience, when we women say vagina, we mean the vagina, and nothing else. When referring to the vulva or clitoris, we may say vulva or clitoris, or we may more likely use such euphemisms as lady bits, nether regions, crotch, genitals, or simply, down there. The accepted vulgar term is pussy. Cunt is rarely used.
but clearly that’s not universal is it?
Is that an example of mansplaining?
Here’s a link to a Guardian articlethat touches on some of this issues raised in this thread.
I make no comment about the body of the article but if you look into the comments section you will see many people (my assumption is that a lot are from the UK) commenting on alternative words for the female genitalia rather than “vagina”. It is notable that “vagina” seems to be generally accepted as referring to the genitals in general and that “vulva” is not a very commonly suggested alternative. This would be very much in line with my experience. i.e. that “vagina” gets used or one of the alternatives far more than “vulva” ever is.
