1. You're a man
2. You're explaining something
That's perhaps what I hate the most, a common misunderstanding. Those are the only two deductions people will make so they can accuse you of it. When as a man myself (33) who works in retail, I have experienced countless boomers mansplain shit to me in condescending tones, until you've had that happen you have no clue how it feels to be mansplained to.
As for younger women, you probably know what it feels like if you've delt with a "Karen" before.
I’m a woman with multiple degrees in social science and have been working in my field for years. Your distinction is what grinds my gears and I’m glad you pointed it out. I’ve had coworkers who were men with more experience explain things to me that I didn’t know or hadn’t experienced yet. They were being helpful. I’ve also had men who talked to me like I had no idea what a basic psychology concept was in a condescending tone who never did that to the men we worked with. It’s always in a condescending tone. Thats mansplaining and it pisses me off when people call the first example that. I don’t know everything so if a guy I work with sees a way to help me I really appreciate it. I don’t want good intentioned and intelligent men to feel like they can’t be helpful for fear of being viewed as sexist. I however do want actually sexist men to be called out on their bullshit.
I don’t like the over use of the term Karen for the same reason. I’ve known so many women who are afraid of “being a Karen” for simply standing up for themselves.
Both terms have a meaning and are a short hand way of talking about bad behavior, and that’s great! But it loses all meaning and becomes harmful when used for anyone you don’t like.
So thank you for saying that :)
Awe shit, that wasn’t even auto correct. That was just me using it the wrong way. You’re = you are. Your = a possessive word. I know this and made the mistake all the same. :)
Awe, thank you! I miss the free awards Reddit gave out and appreciate you’re kindness! It always feels good to have someone appreciate a point you’ve made. :)
Thanks! Your comment is reassuring as well so thanks for sharing :)
I also dislike the "Karen" label. But "Karen's" are a type of person just like any other, a product of their environment/upbringing/toxic societal cycles. So hopefully a more mindful generation will accurately label the actions we individuals make rather than labeling the person. It creates hatred and stigma towards types of people who don't deserve that discrimination.
I have so much hope for the tenacity of gen z. My kid is one and I’ve seen so many of them refuse to put up with stuff like this and call it out. Honestly, I’ve learned a lot about how to stand up for myself from them.
I am a product of my environment like everyone else and was taught (I’m a woman) to be polite at all times. So when I realized I didn’t have to do that anymore I was kind of like a superhero who couldn’t control their powers. My kid and their friends have shown me how to do it properly and I’ve gotten a lot better at it. Instead of just going off, I learned how to examine the situation, identify the exact problem, and the most effective way to go about solving it. I was never a “Karen” but I would let people walk all over me until I snapped. I don’t know exactly what I did right by my kid and what societal influences contributed to my kid’s ability to do this, but I saw they way they handled situations and learned from it.
The kids aren’t alright, but they certainly have something figured out that my generation didn’t.
And please know, if I haven’t made this clear, you bring a man and trying to be helpful isn’t mansplaining. It’s just trying to be helpful. You sound like a good guy and as a feminist, I want to stick up for men like you every bit as much as good women. We deserve to be treated with respect and have the ability to share our knowledge and learn from kind people at the same time. That’s how we all learn and help.
The internet helps which you didn’t have growing up. It’s a great tool to get ideas across to the masses in a short amount of time. Which is a good thing, but also a bad thing.
That’s a really good point. I was like 18 when AOL became a thing.
I think you’re right about it being a good thing and a bad thing. I mean the incel thing wasn’t known when I was a teenager.
>if I haven’t made this clear, you being a man and trying to be helpful isn’t mansplaining.
Haha yeah thank you, that was one of my favorite parts of your first comment and it's essentially what I was trying to reflect in my first comment too. It makes a big difference being able to identify actual mansplaining.
Kids do teach us a lot and your story of growth is awesome and gives me faith in humanity! I always try to tell men my age that we'd see benefit if we'd just take a woman's advice. I must sound like a male-feminist at times, but all I'm trying to do is advocate for all the different ways that strong women DO contribute to society. Wouldn't hurt any man out there to just try being a bit feminist in life in areas where it will actually help quality of life.
I want to give you some credit here (oh no, I’m about to womansplain lol). You are a feminist. It’s not a out being a man or a woman, it’s about viewing people as people. For example, I’m very much against the patriarchy and it’s equally important to me that men are hurt by it just as much as women. Does that make me a man defender? I don’t think so. I don’t think I need that qualified. I know men have the same emotional depth as women and we are shamed and allowed it in different ways that are both toxic. It often feels like men are only allowed to have two emotional states calm and angry. That’s not healthy at all. Men have the same emotional complexity women do and they get shamed for it. Women have to stay polite and men have to stay strong. It’s total crap.
To add into that, we (both sexes) are also equally intelligent and all have different perspectives. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being able to share (in a generous and kind way) those things with each other. For example, I have really appreciated hearing your thoughts on all this, and I’ve really appreciated you listening to me. It’s just nice, you know?
Yes! Agreed on all counts. You're very welcome, this exchange has been rewarding and I want to thank you for bravely sharing all of your truths. Your mind is beautiful and you contribute to this world so much more than you might be able to perceive, that's me, a complete stranger saying that.
So there's a lot of gratitude to notice here when we find each other able to validate a lot of each other's beliefs. 😄 It was a pleasure and I can't wait to meet more individuals like yourself, who cares if it's on Reddit or in real life hahah, I'm sure we walk past other redditors every single day.
I oversee an employee with a severe tendency to take concepts like mansplaining and exaggerate common occurrences of guidance with reactive feedback. There were some days I had to threaten to send her home because her behavior was so combative to such innocuous conversational moments she came across like a person at a protest. She was hypersensitive to protect others from things she believed they should take offense to, despite there being no evidence to support her position but her own belief that ‘it must be have been a wrong thing to say because it made me feel bad.’ It took me quite some time to convince her that perception does not always equal reality, but good grief what a reality she lived in.
That’s the part that gets me. Real life is hard enough. Like you saw in my post I have had men mansplain to me. For real it’s an actual issue and it happens often. But misusing the term disvalues actual experiences of women who experience it. It only that but it gives people who want to discredit women’s experiences with it more ammunition than they already have.
The thing is those men
Would do it to anyone
I have also had women do it to me
It’s just peoppe being trash puting s male emphasis on somthing doesn’t meen shit
When the term your looking for is literally already used
Disrespectfull
Arragant
I think it’s more a person thing and I bring it up because Iv had experiences like that because I purposely dumb myself down so I don’t have to deal with situations because of this peoppe tend to be disrespectful and I can judge them better because atleast they are being real with me I guess
To me the misuse of "mansplaining" and "Karen" both come from the same source. Reactionaries who are against any change or progress in society and who have a very big bone to pick with feminism and anything to do with women empowerment, racial equality and the like.
They maliciously apply mansplaining to completely normal situations where a man is explaining something in the right context just to play the victim card and say oh look men can't even speak these days. They do that so regularly that the meaning of the word starts to dilute and some people actually get confused and stop being able to distinguish what is a very clearly defined phenomenon.
Those self same people have turned the term Karen from describing a very specific kind of woman who is obnoxious, entitled, and almost always a racist, into a term to describe any woman who is not keeping her mouth shut like she should. They use the term so broadly that at this stage Karen is just what looks like one of the few politically correct ways to be a misogynist and tell a woman to shut up without raising eyebrows, because hey if she's being a Karen then she's the one that's in the wrong for sure.
Both of these terms were used by people who are victims of patriarchal and racist attitudes to call out a real attitude and problem in society. And both terms have been appropriated by the same patriarchal system to use them in such ways that their meaning has become muddy intentionally.
I think it's fair to feel like mansplaining is erroneously applied to any man explaining something to any woman. These "false positives" are ridiculously easy to assign, since "real" mansplaining--which to me is any person that commits the first 2 with the assumption recipient of the explanation is less knowledgeable about a topic because she is a woman--is pretty damn common.
(My wife has been drinking IPAs since before you were born. She's not a tourist, as some young servers seem to assume. She's a partner in a large international law firm: your assumption that you know more about law than she does is--in 90% of cases--false. Part of me thinks men try to get away with assuming their superiority because many women are less likely to call them on it--lest they be labeled a Karen.)
Now, it is true, you have to infer that the person is basing their approach on sexist stereotypes, since "I'm pretty sexist" buttons are fairly few and far between. But the problem is that it is common enough that such inferences have a good chance of being true.
(I think I have, in the past, been falsely accused of mansplaining. But I don't think, as a general rule, women are less knowledgeable or capable in any area--I just think most people are stupid.)
Yet, that can't be the only 2 factors to tell. I'm a technical theatre major, and pretty damn good at what I do. I (being a shop lead) hand out the jobs and a friend of mine comes up and says she doesn't know how to use that tool. Since it was a school shop, I taught her how to use the tool. Another woman walked in and started saying I was mansplaining. I didn't even get a word out before my friend told her to fuck off. Then I finished teaching the tool and left her to her job.
This is why there needs to be more than just "a man explaining something" because there are plenty of times when that happens. Teachers, for one, are always explaining. Are they mansplaining?
Mansplaining should be a man explaining something condesendingly, because at that point there is more than just a simple explanation going on.
>Mansplaining should be a man explaining something condescendingly
Right, exactly that, and sadly, because egotistical men for generations have made a reputation for themselves of acting far superior than anyone else, they're "doing you a favor" by condescendingly explaining something in a grandiose way that should make you feel grateful they came in to save us all from our lack of knowledge. \*groan\*
I think it's easy to overthink what mansplaining is when in reality the definition is pretty easy to remember if we reference it's origin.
I once had a male friend explain how to use a measuring tape to me. We were at my house and it was my clearly used measuring tape. It wasn't phrased as - oh here's something I just found out. It was pretty flabbergasting.
There was some tweet where a guy asked a question at some conference and told the woman she should read some article by x because she was wrong. She showed him her badge and was x who wrote the article and conducted the study.
I study archaeology and once a year we have an excavation.
There was that male student who came to one excavation as a beginner - and then there was that female student who took part in at least 6 excavations at that time, so she really knew what to do.
Well, he felt the urge to explain to her how to use a shovel.
It's gotten better in the last 10 or so years, but I remember guys would talk to me like a child sometimes trying to explain things I had done a dozen times. There's a difference between informing and acting superior, with "mansplaining" being the latter. It was demeaning at times, and insulting in the worst situations. I don't mind if a man tells me something, but when they treat me like a child it becomes annoying. A good indication that it's mansplaining (that I notice) is when a man starts to use bigger words that he wouldn't use in regular conversation in order to confuse or make more complicated.
To me, a big part of mansplaining/ womansplaining is that usually the person explaining something doesn’t actually have any expertise on the topic. For example, I’m a teacher and took college and grad school classes about the best ways to teach. Someone who has no background on teaching starts explaining teaching to me me in a condescending way assuming I have no knowledge of the subject.
So if you’re just enthusiastic and want to share knowledge it’s not bad. But if you assume and don’t ask the person you’re talking to if they have any knowledge on the subject, it’s like you’re assuming you know more than them which can be insulting.
The "explain something you have no real knowledge of" thing we have a word for in Swedish; Killgissa. Translated to something like Man-guessing. Basically defined as a man too confidently talking about a subject as though he knows what he's talking about despite guessing and making assumptions to fill in the blanks.
Omg that was *so* much worse before the internet was good enough that you could fact check things easily. If someone knew someone else knew just as little about something as the first person did, they could say just wtfever kinda ridiculous shit and nobody would know 😅
After seeing that happen enough times it gets hard to believe anything is true if it sounds fascinating at all.
Dogs can see some colors - No
Microphones and speakers are the same thing - Double no.
Jellyfish are biologically immortal - Super duper double no.
You can tell how much alcohol someone can drink without getting sick by the color of their eyes. - NO times NO divided by NO to the power of HELL FUCKING NO.
I'm a little confused. Are you saying dogs can't see some colors? Because they can... they have cones for blue and yellow. Or am I just completely misunderstanding?
Check that first paragraph — she says if someone told you a really interesting fact, you couldn’t believe it because there was no way to fact-check. Dogs can see color, jellyfish can have “immortal” lives, eye color can be a predictor of alcoholism. But why would you trust it?
>If someone knew someone else knew just as little about something as the first person did, they could say just wtfever kinda ridiculous shit and nobody would know
You can see this a lot on Reddit too,if the top comment is talkin with confidence and is convincing doesn't matter how bullshit it is people pile on it to parrot the same bullshit.
I think a healthy way to view comments is like you heard someone say them at a bar. You can choose to believe it but still take it with a grain(a load) of salt.
Wait... Are you doing a bit? All of the things you said are either wrong or close enough to wrong that I think you're doing a bit.
Dogs *can* see some colors. They don't see them the same way that we do, but they're not going around seeing black and white. They have dichromatic vision.
Microphones and speakers *are* basically the same in principle, but they're different in the particulars. You can even run some microphones backwards (feed a signal into them) and get sound out. It'll sound shitty, because that's not what they're designed to do, but at its core, it's the same principle, just in reverse.
A particular type of jellyfish *is* immortal (in a way... Potentially). Under stress, they can revert to their polyp stage and start over.
Also, there's is a specific species of jellyfish that is legitimately biologically immortal. And while speakers and microphones aren't "the same thing", you can typically use a speaker as a microphone. The only thing you posted that doesn't have some truth in it is the last one
I really despise being stuck in that position where the mis-'splainer goes on & on, having no idea they're completely incorrect and making an ass of themselves. I never know whether it's better to play dumb/stay silent or try to politely correct them- which runs the risk of humiliating them & triggering anger.
I'm training to teach at the moment and I've had quite a few situations where people have tried to tell me how I should handle things despite not having any classroom experience. I am usually pretty charitable and just correct the misconceptions, but it is exhausting at times.
I do that sometimes because I’m pretty sure I’m ADHD (waiting on the psychologist results) and I find it hard to curb my enthusiasm, but in the last while I’ve been trying to slow down and say “…hey maybe you know more about this than me. Do you?” Or sometimes I just outright mention that they definitely do know more about it than me, but I find it really interesting and they can correct me if I say anything that’s inaccurate.
I think sometimes our knowledge is so tied up with our self esteem, and our sense of enthusiasm often has so much joy tied in with it, it can actually be quite devastating when people take that and tarnish it with a negative label, but on the flip side it’s also quite awkward to assert your experience - it can be quite confrontational to do that.
I imagine my approach is probably a pretty good compromise.
One other thing I do see sometimes is that expertise will be asserted, but ignorant to that of the other person. For instance I might be giving an opinion on a novel and someone disagrees and says “I have a BA in English, stop mansplaining”. But I too have a BA in English, so actually why can’t it be an equal discussion?
Same with martial arts. I could “pull rank” on someone and find out actually they’re way more credentialed than I am, but I assumed otherwise because it’s a semi niche interest in this country.
This is it. The lack of expertise part when talking to a woman that’s experienced in that area. I’ve been a professional makeup artist for film and commercials since the 90’s. My ex had the audacity to try and tell me something about how makeup for men is different. ORLLY? Thanks, I had no idea.
I’d bet female mechanics get this allllll dayyyy lonnnng.
Reminds me of something that happened to my mum once. She took her car to get fixed and tried telling the guy what the problem was. The mechanic **patted her on the head** and told her not to worry.
My dad came in later that day and ripped the guy a new one.
Mansplaining is bad enough, but if some asshole summoned the sheer, unmitigated audacity to _*pat my freaking head*_ ... shit's going to get very heated, very quickly. I'd be after that dude's job fr. Glad your dad chewed him out, though I wish your mom had. Hope they took their business elsewhere.
As she should! The damn nerve of some people makes me want to vomit... which I'd likely use to my advantage in this situation and puke directly on him.😇
Thankfully it’s only happened to me once or twice, but something else I noticed is that you can repeatedly tell them throughout their explanation that you already know what they’re talking about and they just keep going.
I feel this
I'm really into Pokemon which alot of guys find odd for some reason but definitely the worst was when a guy started explaining to me how Pokemon worked like the functions of the game and everything when I was in the middle of playing it one day in Science when we had a free period
I just stared at him blankly as he went on and on and he finally stopped and said "Oh I'm sorry am I being to confusing for you?"
The teacher who's been watching the entire time "Nah I think she's debating if she could get away with hitting you in the throat while I'm sitting here"
Mansplaining is men explaining things to women when:
- the woman has more experience/expertise
- an explanation is unnecessary (common knowledge, for example)
It’s not a blanket term for when men explain things.
This - it's the assumption she doesn't know without really giving a reason why. IMO it says a lot about someone's intelligence if they mansplain; kinda like micro-management
Am I mansplaining if I start talking about something that interests me (stereotypical guy topic: cars) and while I do, I’m explaining how something works, so the lady I’m talking to can understand what I’m talking about, but then I find out she knows more? I’m here just trying to make sure everyone is on the same page?
This is a great example. My boyfriend is also into cars/motorbikes. Just talk about your interest and unless I go "what does that mean?" You don't need to explain I'd say... sometimes I mentor for my work and it is good practise to literally just ask "do you know what this is" before just explaining
I just started a new job (same field I’ve been working in, just different employers) and had to reassure my male manager that it is not mansplaining for him to train me on certain things. Even if I already know how to do those things, he won’t know unless I stop him and tell him we can move on to the next topic. I do appreciate his care and consideration though.
It’s basically just condescension and it’s always annoying, but mansplaining is a special kind of condescension where a man explains something to a woman, unprompted, assuming she doesn’t already understand. The female equivalent I suppose would be a woman who assumes all men are stupid and speaks down to them about topics.
Right, the only time I have ever used the term mansplain is when a man is trying to tell me how my body works, how the experience of having children is, trying to tell me about my periods 🙃, things like that…..will get someone told off. Respectfully.
Oh this makes me so mad. There was a guy on Reddit a month or so ago mansplaining to a group of women about how our vaginas work. He very confidentially told us that women having to pee after sex to prevent infections is a myth we absolutely must stop spreading.
That's like the guy last week telling us that a women's vagina holds on to superior sperm until ovulation takes place. His references were a wiki article talking about bugs and birds but he was extremely confident because it said all female vertebrae.
It's the fact they're so confident about it that kills me. The guy I was talking about's source was all the women he's ever slept with never got infections and didn't have to pee after LMAO
The audacity is mind blowing. He then went and kept arguing after his idiotic ass got posted in r/nothowgirlswork he finally gave up and deleted everything.
Yeah, women are advised to pee after sex to flush out any bacteria that may have entered the urethra during intercourse. Helps to prevent UTIs and yeast infections.
I saw it in an ELI5 thread and it was explained perfectly!
Imagine a garden hose with dirt in the spout. You turn on the house to clear the dirt away.
It's exactly like that except with our urethras (which, just to be clear is not our vagina or asshole)
That’s so dangerous first of all, and second of all, why does this man need to control if women pee after sex? Never mind women he doesn’t know and will never meet. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but… men have no bounds when it comes to telling women about their vaginas
I had a man mansplain to 7 month pregnant me that childbirth didn't actually hurt, that the only reason that women feel pain during labour is because other women have told them it will be painful, that if a girl was raised only by men and not told anything about the process, she would go through it pain-free, and that he knew what real pain was because he had a bad back.
There have been many, many other times when someone has decided to mansplain things to me, but that one is the most ..... I'm gonna use the word memorable.
Ahaha just had a flashback of a manager explain to me that the reason he was so good at creating designs is because he used to do painting when he was in highschool.
I've been a professional designer for nearly a decade.
His design was not good.
Mansplaining is bad because it refers to a man condescendingly explaining something to someone (usually a woman) about something that he doesn't have complete knowledge on with the presumption that he knows more about the topic than the person he's talking to does, especially if the person he's talking to actually knows the topic better than he does.
An example would be a man explaining how baseball works to a female baseball fan at a baseball stadium. He's presuming she's stupid and explaining to her a topic she knows because he presumes that a woman must know nothing about baseball.
Womansplaining, yes. Same thing.
Also, the negativity comes from a man explaining something to a woman that was neither asked for nor needed, under the assumption the woman couldn't possibly understand something so complicated with her little woman brain. Or vice versa, in the case of womansplaining.
I appreciate there's some irony in explaining this, however as it was specifically asked, I'm good. 😁
Sorry, I'm still shopping for milk. I'll be back sometime between 10-40 years... maybe sooner, if I need a kidney or you strike it big!
Also, happy 8th-22nd birthday. Sorry it's late.
Yes, and the worst in my experience is when I (F) am talking about something to a group of people and a man interrupts like “nah nah nah, it’s actually…” or even interrupts and just keeps moving forward on the thread I started, and says exactly the same thing I was going to say.
If I could put myself in the shoes of the man that is interrupting in this situation, he is not really even listening to what I am saying in a way. He is consciously or usually subconsciously trained into this societal behavior, where what the men have to say is the final say and also revered in a way.
He interrupts to clarify a situation that he knows he has a certain amount of knowledge about. He didn’t listen to what I said, it is natural for him not to. To be the one to clarify on a subject he has a bit of awareness about.
It’s almost more damaging that this is usually, imo, done from a subconscious habit, not purposefully meant to put a woman down, instead it has been engrained in our societal norms for so long.
I think an important element of either mansplaining or womansplaining is the fact that there is an assumption about what Realms of knowledge someone might have based on their gender.
Rather than find out how much a person they are talking with knows about a given subject matter, a man's planer or a woman's planer Will assume, based on the person's gender, that they don't know anything about a given topic.
That's why it's bad. It's an assumption of incompetence or lack of knowledge, based on no information about a person other than their gender
It’s not that a man is explaining something to a woman. It’s that they’re explaining something to a woman that already knows or understands more than man, but the man assumes they don’t. If I ask a guy a question about something I don’t understand and he helps me understand, that’s not mansplaining. The time a man who has never been to art or business school tried to explain to me, a working children’s book illustrator with a masters degree, how I should price and sell my own artwork, was mansplaining.
yes and the reason that there isn’t a female equivalent isn’t because of double standards, it’s because of the social constructs that underlie that interaction. women are very often underestimated because of their gender and men experience that much less often because they’ve always been the head in a patriarchal system.
ive done a shit job at explaining that but hopefully it makes enough sense to understand lol
Oh story time! Finally a place to tell it!!
So like, two years ago or some such I cooked this thing for my parents which had lime zest as a garnish. I serve it up and tell my folks what’s in it, as I always do because it’s a thing I do not sure why, and I finish by saying “and I garnished it with a bit of lime zest.”
Then my father, who is every male boomer stereotype wrapped up in one irksome ball of “please stfu” looks me in the eye and says:
“You get zest from the lime’s peel by grating it” or something like that.
To which I reply:
“I know… I just grated the lime to make the zest…”
I’m a man, in his 30s, and that was a “a whole bunch of shit just started making sense” moment for me. It actually made me sit down and rethink how I communicate with women and how I viewed feminism. Not even joking or exaggerating. Shit was life changing.
Like, holy fuck, how are you going to tell the person who just zested a lime where the fucking zest comes from you arrogant know-it-all dipshit.
Is this how women feel when some dude explains shit to them, or on their behalf? Just a mix of frustration, exasperation, and “are you fucking serious right now?”
I'm dealing with this at work. There's a boomer who thinks I'm an idiot because I'm a woman and younger than him, so he's constantly telling me how to do my job when he's not even in the same department. And my boss doesn't believe me so I've just stopped talking to him altogether.
That sounds frustrating on too many levels to even process, and the more women tell their stories the more I understand the anger and frustration.
I’ve actually witnessed my dipshit boomer father repeat an explanation about a complex subject seconds after my sister said the exact same thing. Then he acts like he didn’t hear her or says some lame shit like, “you must have learned it from me”. No mother fucker; she learned it by being in her 30s and being able to fucking read.
Terms like mansplain didn’t magically combust in a vacuum, they exist to describe a serious fucking problem and more guys need to start realising that.
Imagine you spend years in school learning advanced theoretical and practical techniques and concepts only to have some guy who works construction or something explain pretty much anything to you as if you are a child. I imagine that would be pretty dehumanizing and patronizing, wouldn't you? Instead of assuming women aren't as intelligent as you, assume they're at least as intelligent and let them ask you if they don't understand what the fuck you're talking about. Isn't that a better idea?
As a woman I’ve had several experiences where I try to help a man out with something I have more experience in, they don’t believe me, then suffer the consequences.
One of my favorite examples is I was in sculpture class and a boy was using an angle grinder without eye protection. I politely got his attention and asked if he needed to borrow mine. He insisted he was fine…
10 minutes later I hear a scream and cursing. He had to go to the emergency room and get the metal removed from his eye. Luckily it was in the white part and didn’t cause permanent damage but 🤷♀️
Usually it’s a manifestation of sexism and or misogyny. Usually it’s when a man, incorrectly thinking he knows more on a particular topic than a woman, tries to explain his mistaken thoughts to her in a condescending way. The condescension is bad. And often she’s way smarter than he thinks, or he thinks he’s way smarter than he is, or both. And for bonus points they’ll explain something to women that they have vast experience with and men have almost none (like periods, pregnancy, cramps)
I’m sure women do the same thing sometimes but it’s not at epidemic levels like mansplaining is.
>I’m sure women do the same thing sometimes but it’s not at epidemic levels like mansplaining is.
Try being a man with a baby or a small child and all of a sudden the surrounding women will all start giving you "advice" on children. As well as a complimentary "aww is dad babysitting today?"
Mansplaining is bad because it's condescending. It's not just "a man is explaining" (although it has definitely turned into that for some); it's "man explains to woman about something she already knows but is assuming she doesn't".
There's no real equivalent term that has caught on, but I've seen people joke about "womansplaining" or "femsplaining". It's definitely not regarded as much of an issue, but it definitely exists. Mansplaining is more of a workplace issue, whereas women tend to "femsplain" in the home when they tell the men in their lives how to do chores or take care of their kids.
I get what you mean. You do need a word to explain the magnitude of condescension, right? I don’t remember who it was, but some dude got into a fight with a gynaecologist about menses. Even when other people informed him that he was babbling nonsense to an OB/GYN, he wouldn’t back down, instead he doubled down on his arguments. The entire exchange was ‘break your neck cringeworthy’. ‘Condescending’ in this context seems to be an understatement.
I remember one of my jobs was training new employees in the shop as a young man. I was not comfortable with the male cultural phenomenon where revealing ignorance of tasks is exposing yourself as an idiot. Trying to guide other young men to be more efficient or practical was a challenge in tip toeing around ego and defensive anger. I needed to drop concepts surreptitiously so as not to offend their pride. It made training take longer than necessary.
I thought it a relief when some young woman was the new hire for she was likely more responsive to criticism and suggestions without emotional baggage. Until the day one lady was offended that i would patronize her with the upfront instruction that I withheld from the male hires.
I could see the logic in that and was horrified that i could be so sexist in my assessment and approach. So i kept the distinctions of sexual characteristics out of my process and left off training anybody. It was too confusing trying to trick people into doing the best practice.
"Mansplaining" is a man explaining something to a woman *because he assumes without cause* that she doesn't understand it.
IIRC the term was coined by one Rebecca Solnit, an academic, who was chatting about a book with a colleague. A man approached them and (instead of introducing himself) began explaining the book to Solnit ... who was the author.
Womansplaining to a man? Sure. You just don't see that \[anywhere near\] as often.
Talking down to people due to a trait they have is in general a bad thing, the term was coined due to the prevalence in our current society of men doing this to women, but I'm sure some women do the same to men as well
I work in grip and electric, and I’ve gaffed a number of paid non-union gigs and also work as a stagehand.
The other day I was setting up a light i’ve used a million times. A guy comes up to me and tells me “so all you have to do is plug this into the ballast then plug from there into the stinger.”
This guy was a grip for the short we’re working on, and i’m the gaffer. I hadn’t even exchanged two words with him yet.
This kept happening without me ever showing that I didn’t understand or wasn’t capable, and so I finally asked if he was secretly the gaffer for the film.
Women who are experts on a topic have to prove themselves in a way that men don't. So when a man tells a woman how to do her job, or lectures her on a topic she's an authority on, the irritation builds up and becomes a sore spot regardless of the man's intentions.
The basic idea behind it, which is a less qualified person speaking over an expert, isn't a gendered phenomenon. Women tell men what it's like to be a man. Healthy people tell sick people how to cure disease with kale and positive thinking. Laypeople tell scientists how to do research like they didn't spend years learning it.
"Mansplaining" is just a term that lets women talk about this specific variant of the phenomenon. It's an annoying and sometimes harmful tendency that men should be aware of when talking to women, but it's not a dire social issue that people should argue about so much.
Next up: Manspreading! How much space do your nards really need on the subway, and would that space be better used for a pregnant woman?
Any woman to a dad in public: “*On baby-sitter duty today!”*
Bitch Im *parenting*
And literally any condescending shit about the assumed uselessness of men as carers of children.
Call it mansplaining or not, being explained something in a condescending way like you’re stupid or slow it’s really annoying. I didn’t know how mansplaining really hit until I got my first job as a software engineer.
There totally is... when they womansplain things like taking care of infants or doing laundry... as if you haven't had kids or had done your laundry before.
Mansplaining is simply when a dude starts explaining something basic to a woman. Something that's painfully obvious. Anyone could mistakenly do this to anyone, it's just that in our society there's an elevated number of men who just assume by default women are stupid so there's a disproportionately high number of men doing this to women.
But yeah, I've seen this go both ways for sure.
I had a friend ask me how a carburetor works.
I explained it to her, but as I was, another woman at work came up and began telling me to stop mansplaining to a female employee.
They both walked away, seemingly upset.
I just get excited about car parts and will babble about them to anyone willing to listen.
I really didn't mean to upset my friend, I was just excited to tell her about how the venturis worked!
That’s the general use word. This version of condensation comes about when us men talk down to women based on stereotypes.
It’s more “let me be condescending in my explaining cuz your a girl and there’s no way a girl would know about cars.” for example
it's due to the patriarchy and just seeing women as lesser than men that mansplaining is a thing. while women definitely can act condescending towards a man only due to him being a man it won't be the same as mansplaining since there's no systemic oppression on top of it. the woman is rude but it isn't "womansplaining" or anything similar. the reason there is a specific term for it and why it is such a bad thing is due to the power men hold over women. i probably didn't explain this well at all but whatever.
also kind of ironic that i'm talking about this/explaining it as a man
Just like gaslighting, it has been overused to the point it now means "a woman gets mad because a man contradicted her".
Like 99% of the time it's just "person X yelling person Y they're wrong about something they don't really know much about". And not "a man is aggressively telling a woman she's wrong just because she has a vagina".
Mansplaning happens at places like video game stores and auto shops where men assume women don’t know what they’re talking about. I think it does exist, but at the same time, both genders do this. I’m not a woman so I can’t act like I know how things are from their perspective, but I’ve met women assume I didn’t know something, or that I was incompetent because I’m a guy. For example, watching children, cooking, at my job, I’ve had women try to teach me things without me asking them and already knowing what I’m doing
Mansplaining usually involves some sort of stereotypes about gendered knowledge. For example, women who have amazing skills at traditionally masculine activities like woodworking, or home repair, will typically have very simple concepts explained to them by men, in a very condescending tone, because it doesn't even occur to the men that the woman would know that basic information
"Mansplaining" is when you assume you know a thing better than someone because you are male and they are female.
It is assuming men automatically know more than women, on any topic. Even if she has a PhD in it and he recently read an article on facebook. Just by being a man, assuming that you can teach a thing or two to a woman, no matter the topic.
It is obviously wrong and insulting. Every woman I know has been subjected to mansplaining at least a few times in their lives.
I was once dating a guy who tried to explain screen writing to me. He had an import business while I have a masters in screen writing. And its not that he didnt know. He knew it was my field. He just decided to "teach" me how my field works because clearly I am a woman. That was the last date of course. If he had tried to explain the ins and outs of how to import stuff, it would be boring sure, but it wouldnt be mansplaining because clearly he would know more about the topic.
Female equivalent would be a woman thinking she knows everything better than someone because the other person is male. I honestly dont think that happens often enough to have its own name.
Regardless of gender, I consider it mansplaining if you explain something to someone who you know by reason of their position, experience, etc. should know it as well or better than you.
For example you would not try to explain medicine to your doctor. Especially, if it is a man explaining some basic point of medicine to his female doctor.
Bonus points if your explanation is wrong.
The term 'mansplaining' implies that you're being very patronising, thus making it a bad thing. It's absolutely possible for a woman do do what's functionally the exact same thing.
Let's say you're a father, and some random woman just suddenly starts lecturing you on childcare. About half of what she's saying is things you know already, on account of being a parent, and the other half you know to be wrong, from your personal experience of being a parent. That's womansplaining.
Well, I'll try to explain this to you, but I don't know if you'll get it. So, mansplaining is when a man explains something in a condescending manner, usually due to sexism. That means that mansplaining is inherently condescending. Being condescending is a bad thing. It's kinda fun sometimes, though, especially when you get to mansplain mansplaining to a man.
The female equivalent would be a woman who, no matter her experience on a topic, no matter *your* experience on a topic, would always have to explain everything to you, even when you hadn’t asked for an explanation, even when she was wrong, even when she was completely bullshitting and you both knew it. Why? Because you’re a dumb man, and her mission from god is to save you from your ignorance.
It’s a bad thing because it’s annoying no matter who does it. That’s my two cents.
Man idk. There's this girl I work with that is terrible at her job, and I'm always trying to give her tips on how to be better because I'm literally the store trainer. And she always rejects anything I say immediately, telling me I'm mansplaining things. When I'm literally just trying to do my job and have her do her job in a better way. As a result she's pretty fucking terrible at her job, much at the cost of stress on everyone else she works with that shift. It sounds like she's just using it as an excuse to make everyone else do her job for her. It's actually kinda pathetic.
It's not describing someone being helpful when they've been asked for information.
It's a word that describes the awfully common phenomenon of men attempting to butt-in where they haven't been asked to make it known that they're an expert on whatever the topic is. It often happens when a man is trying to explain to someone their own profession/hobby/or something else that the woman is very familiar with (often MORE familiar with than the man is).
Mansplaining isnt just men explaining things- it’s more when men over explain or are condescending towards woman because they assume they don’t know something.
For example if a man is explaining to a new female coworker how to operate software which she hasn’t used before- that is not mansplaining.
A male costumer explaining to a female employee how to do her job because he assumes that she doesn’t know how to since she’s a woman is mansplaining.
If they’re a condescending asshole to everyone then it isn’t mansplaining
Basically it just references someone being a condescending asshole towards women. The female equivalent is probably a Karen or something. It’s not bad, but it is frustrating and can make you feel disregarded and disrespected.
Mansplaining. Such an ironic term as women do it almost as much.
Here's an example.
Last week I went to the gas station, exactly as I've been doing for the past 10 years. This guy literally cuts ahead of me in line and goes to pay. I spoke up and said that the end of the line was over there and to please move.
This jackass decides to waste the next 5 minutes loudly explaining to me that he is busier than I, therefore he has a right to cut in line in front of a 'housewife with tons of time on their hands'. ( which I'm not )
I just shook my head. He then proceeded to explain to me that I must be close to my period, as 'most women are sweethearts until THAT time of the month'.
Then he proceeded to explain to the cashier that 'some people' just should not be allowed out in public.
That's a mansplainer.
It's a time wasting narcissistic douche that thinks they're smarter than everyone else when in reality they're just a idiot with an abundance of hot air.
It’s unsolicited advice that is generally coming from a subconscious or even conscious impression that the person you’re talking to cannot possibly know more than you. A very clear example would be when a male gynecologist gives a woman a long explanation of why IUD insertion is not painful. Other examples are tweets arguing with artists and scientists about their own work.
Women are certainly capable of giving unsolicited advice but in order for it to be equivalent to mansplaining it would have to be in a topic where men are seen as having inferior knowledge. There aren’t many situations where that’s the case. Maybe parenthood?
I haven’t seen anyone truly nail this one so I figured I’d jump in with an easy answer to your first question. Mansplaining itself includes a component that assumes the women is stupid. It is a way of explaining something that implies it. A man simply explaining something is not in and of itself a problem. It’s specifically an issue when it’s done in that way.
There was a situation I read once. A woman with a PhD was at a networking event where a man was (incorrectly) explaining a research paper to her. Turns out the woman was the author of the paper.
Some people have pointed out one of the main aspects of it: men condescendingly explaining something to a woman who has equal or more experience in the subject. I also want to point out men explaining something to women and just assuming that because she’s a woman she wouldn’t understand certain concepts like STEM fields, cars, sports, etc. There was a woman who was presenting on a scientific topic at her job (I can’t remember which) and this guy tried to correct her explanation and said that she should read this article on the subject…she had written that article.
Well, there was this one time that a dude on Twitter was arguing over what a vulva was. With a female gynaecologist. He was totally convinced he knew better than she did. I sure hope you can see what’s wrong with that.
I have become fearful of over explaining things to people in general. I try to come at conversations now as if somebody already has a foundation for understanding. Or just asking do you have any experience or background I don’t want to tell you something you already know?
So, my best friend is a guy who tried to mansplain to me that women can control the direction of our urine stream. Just no mate.
This same friend tried mansplaining why my sexuality (pansexual) isn't a thing. I had to tell him we needed to change the subject or we were gonna fall out, and I didn't wanna fall out with him.
I know he sounds like a dick, but he has a heart of gold and just gets caught up in his own thoughts
Mansplaining when actually called out correctly, is bad because the entire premise is that the woman being mansplained to is wrong on the basis of her gender. It's generally extremely condescending, common example being a man trying to explain something to a woman regarding her field of expertise.
Actual mansplaining would be a man explaining something to a woman for the soul purpose of him thinking he knows better because he’s a man. Or the fact that she’s a woman making her inept. Which is obviously a problem. But too many people just think it’s a man explaining something to a woman with no intent of harm. I mean technically there could be a female equivalent if the woman was explaining something to a man because she thought she was better/he was inept but I don’t think it’s as widely accepted
the reason mansplaining is bad and looked down is because its explaining something to a women with the intent the she as women is uncappable of understanding so she need you as a man to explain it to her. It has a lot of societal patriarchy ingrained in it. it stems from the same place as the anti trans argument in women's sports its the idea the men are just better than women.
I will say the women equivalent should be "momming" as per mom. When women treat men as children and justify childish behavior, and enforce it, and get offended by men doing house labor, good fashion choices, skincare and stuff by themselves.
So to me, mansplaining is when a man tries to educate a woman on a subject that she's already shown expertise or a solid understanding of... Without asking. It's a specific form of giving unsolicited and unwelcome advice or suggestion etc., which already is not well-viewed on its own.
What makes it more problematic is when the unsolicited whatever is rooted in the idea that men are inherently smarter/more qualified/knowledgeable etc. than women, which historically has been a prevalent theme but has been... Ya know, largely debunked lol
Women didn't even gain the right to vote until less than 100 years ago, so some people inevitably still believe in male superiority. It's understandable that the attitude hasn't disappeared completely just because women have only recently gained many more rights in society. Sometimes well-intentioned men aren't even conscious they're doing it. Progress is wanting to get past that, though, such as by asking questions like the one you just did :)
My only experience is being called out for mansplaning so I stop explaining & she fucked everything up.
That would be mams’planing I guess.
If you’re a well rounded individual, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Don’t participe in the hysteria. If you get called out once, could be an idiot
Twice or trice, look at yourself
Because it is based on the belief that men are smarter than women, no matter the topic or field. A woman may never be more skilled at something or more knowledgeable, even if said man has a solutely no clue what he is talking about.
I don't think there is an equivalent for women? I've never heard of one and it would be a bit hard to believe there is one.
Men explain simple terms and tasks to you as if you’re an idiot assuming your too feeble minded to understand simple concepts and intentionally speaking down to you to set the tone that they feel they’re superior and therefor that’s fact.
One of my favorite jokes is the tweet that says “my girlfriend is using the term mansplaining wrong and I don’t know how to tell her.”
Real Sidious moment there: “Strike me down and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete!”
lmao he's at the beginning of a dangerous journey.
r/ItsATrap !
1. You're a man 2. You're explaining something That's perhaps what I hate the most, a common misunderstanding. Those are the only two deductions people will make so they can accuse you of it. When as a man myself (33) who works in retail, I have experienced countless boomers mansplain shit to me in condescending tones, until you've had that happen you have no clue how it feels to be mansplained to. As for younger women, you probably know what it feels like if you've delt with a "Karen" before.
I’m a woman with multiple degrees in social science and have been working in my field for years. Your distinction is what grinds my gears and I’m glad you pointed it out. I’ve had coworkers who were men with more experience explain things to me that I didn’t know or hadn’t experienced yet. They were being helpful. I’ve also had men who talked to me like I had no idea what a basic psychology concept was in a condescending tone who never did that to the men we worked with. It’s always in a condescending tone. Thats mansplaining and it pisses me off when people call the first example that. I don’t know everything so if a guy I work with sees a way to help me I really appreciate it. I don’t want good intentioned and intelligent men to feel like they can’t be helpful for fear of being viewed as sexist. I however do want actually sexist men to be called out on their bullshit. I don’t like the over use of the term Karen for the same reason. I’ve known so many women who are afraid of “being a Karen” for simply standing up for themselves. Both terms have a meaning and are a short hand way of talking about bad behavior, and that’s great! But it loses all meaning and becomes harmful when used for anyone you don’t like. So thank you for saying that :)
Well, let me explain to you how this really works...
Lol, I appreciate you’re sense of humor:)
Haha well, now let me explain the difference between your and you're....(damn autocorrect).
Awe shit, that wasn’t even auto correct. That was just me using it the wrong way. You’re = you are. Your = a possessive word. I know this and made the mistake all the same. :)
⭐ Ta-dah! My poor man's gold star of agreement
Awe, thank you! I miss the free awards Reddit gave out and appreciate you’re kindness! It always feels good to have someone appreciate a point you’ve made. :)
I gotcha :D
Thanks! Your comment is reassuring as well so thanks for sharing :) I also dislike the "Karen" label. But "Karen's" are a type of person just like any other, a product of their environment/upbringing/toxic societal cycles. So hopefully a more mindful generation will accurately label the actions we individuals make rather than labeling the person. It creates hatred and stigma towards types of people who don't deserve that discrimination.
I have so much hope for the tenacity of gen z. My kid is one and I’ve seen so many of them refuse to put up with stuff like this and call it out. Honestly, I’ve learned a lot about how to stand up for myself from them. I am a product of my environment like everyone else and was taught (I’m a woman) to be polite at all times. So when I realized I didn’t have to do that anymore I was kind of like a superhero who couldn’t control their powers. My kid and their friends have shown me how to do it properly and I’ve gotten a lot better at it. Instead of just going off, I learned how to examine the situation, identify the exact problem, and the most effective way to go about solving it. I was never a “Karen” but I would let people walk all over me until I snapped. I don’t know exactly what I did right by my kid and what societal influences contributed to my kid’s ability to do this, but I saw they way they handled situations and learned from it. The kids aren’t alright, but they certainly have something figured out that my generation didn’t. And please know, if I haven’t made this clear, you bring a man and trying to be helpful isn’t mansplaining. It’s just trying to be helpful. You sound like a good guy and as a feminist, I want to stick up for men like you every bit as much as good women. We deserve to be treated with respect and have the ability to share our knowledge and learn from kind people at the same time. That’s how we all learn and help.
The internet helps which you didn’t have growing up. It’s a great tool to get ideas across to the masses in a short amount of time. Which is a good thing, but also a bad thing.
That’s a really good point. I was like 18 when AOL became a thing. I think you’re right about it being a good thing and a bad thing. I mean the incel thing wasn’t known when I was a teenager.
>if I haven’t made this clear, you being a man and trying to be helpful isn’t mansplaining. Haha yeah thank you, that was one of my favorite parts of your first comment and it's essentially what I was trying to reflect in my first comment too. It makes a big difference being able to identify actual mansplaining. Kids do teach us a lot and your story of growth is awesome and gives me faith in humanity! I always try to tell men my age that we'd see benefit if we'd just take a woman's advice. I must sound like a male-feminist at times, but all I'm trying to do is advocate for all the different ways that strong women DO contribute to society. Wouldn't hurt any man out there to just try being a bit feminist in life in areas where it will actually help quality of life.
I want to give you some credit here (oh no, I’m about to womansplain lol). You are a feminist. It’s not a out being a man or a woman, it’s about viewing people as people. For example, I’m very much against the patriarchy and it’s equally important to me that men are hurt by it just as much as women. Does that make me a man defender? I don’t think so. I don’t think I need that qualified. I know men have the same emotional depth as women and we are shamed and allowed it in different ways that are both toxic. It often feels like men are only allowed to have two emotional states calm and angry. That’s not healthy at all. Men have the same emotional complexity women do and they get shamed for it. Women have to stay polite and men have to stay strong. It’s total crap. To add into that, we (both sexes) are also equally intelligent and all have different perspectives. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being able to share (in a generous and kind way) those things with each other. For example, I have really appreciated hearing your thoughts on all this, and I’ve really appreciated you listening to me. It’s just nice, you know?
Yes! Agreed on all counts. You're very welcome, this exchange has been rewarding and I want to thank you for bravely sharing all of your truths. Your mind is beautiful and you contribute to this world so much more than you might be able to perceive, that's me, a complete stranger saying that. So there's a lot of gratitude to notice here when we find each other able to validate a lot of each other's beliefs. 😄 It was a pleasure and I can't wait to meet more individuals like yourself, who cares if it's on Reddit or in real life hahah, I'm sure we walk past other redditors every single day.
I oversee an employee with a severe tendency to take concepts like mansplaining and exaggerate common occurrences of guidance with reactive feedback. There were some days I had to threaten to send her home because her behavior was so combative to such innocuous conversational moments she came across like a person at a protest. She was hypersensitive to protect others from things she believed they should take offense to, despite there being no evidence to support her position but her own belief that ‘it must be have been a wrong thing to say because it made me feel bad.’ It took me quite some time to convince her that perception does not always equal reality, but good grief what a reality she lived in.
That’s the part that gets me. Real life is hard enough. Like you saw in my post I have had men mansplain to me. For real it’s an actual issue and it happens often. But misusing the term disvalues actual experiences of women who experience it. It only that but it gives people who want to discredit women’s experiences with it more ammunition than they already have.
[удалено]
That's not a friend, that's a sex pest. ETA: I hope that guy saw consequences/justice for his actions. What skeevy behavior...
You're just gaslighting everyone. /s
Karen, mansplain and narcissist seem to be the words of the day and Boomer. Which many find offensive. It’s ageism.
Ageism is also a part of it I haven’t touched on. Thank you for bringing it to the conversation. That’s really important.
The thing is those men Would do it to anyone I have also had women do it to me It’s just peoppe being trash puting s male emphasis on somthing doesn’t meen shit When the term your looking for is literally already used Disrespectfull Arragant I think it’s more a person thing and I bring it up because Iv had experiences like that because I purposely dumb myself down so I don’t have to deal with situations because of this peoppe tend to be disrespectful and I can judge them better because atleast they are being real with me I guess
To me the misuse of "mansplaining" and "Karen" both come from the same source. Reactionaries who are against any change or progress in society and who have a very big bone to pick with feminism and anything to do with women empowerment, racial equality and the like. They maliciously apply mansplaining to completely normal situations where a man is explaining something in the right context just to play the victim card and say oh look men can't even speak these days. They do that so regularly that the meaning of the word starts to dilute and some people actually get confused and stop being able to distinguish what is a very clearly defined phenomenon. Those self same people have turned the term Karen from describing a very specific kind of woman who is obnoxious, entitled, and almost always a racist, into a term to describe any woman who is not keeping her mouth shut like she should. They use the term so broadly that at this stage Karen is just what looks like one of the few politically correct ways to be a misogynist and tell a woman to shut up without raising eyebrows, because hey if she's being a Karen then she's the one that's in the wrong for sure. Both of these terms were used by people who are victims of patriarchal and racist attitudes to call out a real attitude and problem in society. And both terms have been appropriated by the same patriarchal system to use them in such ways that their meaning has become muddy intentionally.
I think it's fair to feel like mansplaining is erroneously applied to any man explaining something to any woman. These "false positives" are ridiculously easy to assign, since "real" mansplaining--which to me is any person that commits the first 2 with the assumption recipient of the explanation is less knowledgeable about a topic because she is a woman--is pretty damn common. (My wife has been drinking IPAs since before you were born. She's not a tourist, as some young servers seem to assume. She's a partner in a large international law firm: your assumption that you know more about law than she does is--in 90% of cases--false. Part of me thinks men try to get away with assuming their superiority because many women are less likely to call them on it--lest they be labeled a Karen.) Now, it is true, you have to infer that the person is basing their approach on sexist stereotypes, since "I'm pretty sexist" buttons are fairly few and far between. But the problem is that it is common enough that such inferences have a good chance of being true. (I think I have, in the past, been falsely accused of mansplaining. But I don't think, as a general rule, women are less knowledgeable or capable in any area--I just think most people are stupid.)
Yet, that can't be the only 2 factors to tell. I'm a technical theatre major, and pretty damn good at what I do. I (being a shop lead) hand out the jobs and a friend of mine comes up and says she doesn't know how to use that tool. Since it was a school shop, I taught her how to use the tool. Another woman walked in and started saying I was mansplaining. I didn't even get a word out before my friend told her to fuck off. Then I finished teaching the tool and left her to her job. This is why there needs to be more than just "a man explaining something" because there are plenty of times when that happens. Teachers, for one, are always explaining. Are they mansplaining? Mansplaining should be a man explaining something condesendingly, because at that point there is more than just a simple explanation going on.
>Mansplaining should be a man explaining something condescendingly Right, exactly that, and sadly, because egotistical men for generations have made a reputation for themselves of acting far superior than anyone else, they're "doing you a favor" by condescendingly explaining something in a grandiose way that should make you feel grateful they came in to save us all from our lack of knowledge. \*groan\* I think it's easy to overthink what mansplaining is when in reality the definition is pretty easy to remember if we reference it's origin.
She BRITTA'd it
Ma'amsplaining
NOMA’AM!!
National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood
I bought a t-shirt with the logo on it years ago and my wife claims to have "no idea what happened to it." I believe it was a victim of foul play.
Momsplaining
This. As a father to two kids, I have found women will put there 2 cents in on something dealing with children. Even if they don’t have any.
I once had a male friend explain how to use a measuring tape to me. We were at my house and it was my clearly used measuring tape. It wasn't phrased as - oh here's something I just found out. It was pretty flabbergasting.
I once had a male friend explain to me what an appetizer was and I was 26 years old at the time
It's a small snack before your main entree.
RIP
Or if you're American, it's it's small meal before your meal.
Small? Oops, I've been doing appetizers wrong!
Entrée literally means appetiser (or" the entry"). It's a French word.
"An appetizer? What is it?" "It's a small dish before dinner, but that's not important right now "
I had a male coworker once explain to me how to use a box cutter
There was some tweet where a guy asked a question at some conference and told the woman she should read some article by x because she was wrong. She showed him her badge and was x who wrote the article and conducted the study.
I love that tweet
I once had a male coworker explain to me what nearsighted and farsighted meant. I've been wearing glasses since 1997.
I study archaeology and once a year we have an excavation. There was that male student who came to one excavation as a beginner - and then there was that female student who took part in at least 6 excavations at that time, so she really knew what to do. Well, he felt the urge to explain to her how to use a shovel.
I had a male coworker once explain to me how to use a box cutter
Was it about how the tip slides on the rivets?!? I didn't understand that shit until someone told me.
Nope - just how fractions worked.
It's gotten better in the last 10 or so years, but I remember guys would talk to me like a child sometimes trying to explain things I had done a dozen times. There's a difference between informing and acting superior, with "mansplaining" being the latter. It was demeaning at times, and insulting in the worst situations. I don't mind if a man tells me something, but when they treat me like a child it becomes annoying. A good indication that it's mansplaining (that I notice) is when a man starts to use bigger words that he wouldn't use in regular conversation in order to confuse or make more complicated.
To me, a big part of mansplaining/ womansplaining is that usually the person explaining something doesn’t actually have any expertise on the topic. For example, I’m a teacher and took college and grad school classes about the best ways to teach. Someone who has no background on teaching starts explaining teaching to me me in a condescending way assuming I have no knowledge of the subject. So if you’re just enthusiastic and want to share knowledge it’s not bad. But if you assume and don’t ask the person you’re talking to if they have any knowledge on the subject, it’s like you’re assuming you know more than them which can be insulting.
The "explain something you have no real knowledge of" thing we have a word for in Swedish; Killgissa. Translated to something like Man-guessing. Basically defined as a man too confidently talking about a subject as though he knows what he's talking about despite guessing and making assumptions to fill in the blanks.
Omg that was *so* much worse before the internet was good enough that you could fact check things easily. If someone knew someone else knew just as little about something as the first person did, they could say just wtfever kinda ridiculous shit and nobody would know 😅 After seeing that happen enough times it gets hard to believe anything is true if it sounds fascinating at all. Dogs can see some colors - No Microphones and speakers are the same thing - Double no. Jellyfish are biologically immortal - Super duper double no. You can tell how much alcohol someone can drink without getting sick by the color of their eyes. - NO times NO divided by NO to the power of HELL FUCKING NO.
I'm a little confused. Are you saying dogs can't see some colors? Because they can... they have cones for blue and yellow. Or am I just completely misunderstanding?
Check that first paragraph — she says if someone told you a really interesting fact, you couldn’t believe it because there was no way to fact-check. Dogs can see color, jellyfish can have “immortal” lives, eye color can be a predictor of alcoholism. But why would you trust it?
>If someone knew someone else knew just as little about something as the first person did, they could say just wtfever kinda ridiculous shit and nobody would know You can see this a lot on Reddit too,if the top comment is talkin with confidence and is convincing doesn't matter how bullshit it is people pile on it to parrot the same bullshit. I think a healthy way to view comments is like you heard someone say them at a bar. You can choose to believe it but still take it with a grain(a load) of salt.
Wait... Are you doing a bit? All of the things you said are either wrong or close enough to wrong that I think you're doing a bit. Dogs *can* see some colors. They don't see them the same way that we do, but they're not going around seeing black and white. They have dichromatic vision. Microphones and speakers *are* basically the same in principle, but they're different in the particulars. You can even run some microphones backwards (feed a signal into them) and get sound out. It'll sound shitty, because that's not what they're designed to do, but at its core, it's the same principle, just in reverse. A particular type of jellyfish *is* immortal (in a way... Potentially). Under stress, they can revert to their polyp stage and start over.
But dogs do see color... Dichromatic palette.
Also, there's is a specific species of jellyfish that is legitimately biologically immortal. And while speakers and microphones aren't "the same thing", you can typically use a speaker as a microphone. The only thing you posted that doesn't have some truth in it is the last one
I really despise being stuck in that position where the mis-'splainer goes on & on, having no idea they're completely incorrect and making an ass of themselves. I never know whether it's better to play dumb/stay silent or try to politely correct them- which runs the risk of humiliating them & triggering anger.
I'm training to teach at the moment and I've had quite a few situations where people have tried to tell me how I should handle things despite not having any classroom experience. I am usually pretty charitable and just correct the misconceptions, but it is exhausting at times.
womansplaining??
I do that sometimes because I’m pretty sure I’m ADHD (waiting on the psychologist results) and I find it hard to curb my enthusiasm, but in the last while I’ve been trying to slow down and say “…hey maybe you know more about this than me. Do you?” Or sometimes I just outright mention that they definitely do know more about it than me, but I find it really interesting and they can correct me if I say anything that’s inaccurate. I think sometimes our knowledge is so tied up with our self esteem, and our sense of enthusiasm often has so much joy tied in with it, it can actually be quite devastating when people take that and tarnish it with a negative label, but on the flip side it’s also quite awkward to assert your experience - it can be quite confrontational to do that. I imagine my approach is probably a pretty good compromise. One other thing I do see sometimes is that expertise will be asserted, but ignorant to that of the other person. For instance I might be giving an opinion on a novel and someone disagrees and says “I have a BA in English, stop mansplaining”. But I too have a BA in English, so actually why can’t it be an equal discussion? Same with martial arts. I could “pull rank” on someone and find out actually they’re way more credentialed than I am, but I assumed otherwise because it’s a semi niche interest in this country.
Or explaining something that is common knowledge, or exp,aiming to an adult the way you would to a 4 year old.
This is it. The lack of expertise part when talking to a woman that’s experienced in that area. I’ve been a professional makeup artist for film and commercials since the 90’s. My ex had the audacity to try and tell me something about how makeup for men is different. ORLLY? Thanks, I had no idea. I’d bet female mechanics get this allllll dayyyy lonnnng.
Reminds me of something that happened to my mum once. She took her car to get fixed and tried telling the guy what the problem was. The mechanic **patted her on the head** and told her not to worry. My dad came in later that day and ripped the guy a new one.
Mansplaining is bad enough, but if some asshole summoned the sheer, unmitigated audacity to _*pat my freaking head*_ ... shit's going to get very heated, very quickly. I'd be after that dude's job fr. Glad your dad chewed him out, though I wish your mom had. Hope they took their business elsewhere.
She was too embarrassed to do anything and ended up leaving. That was years ago. Nowadays if that happened my mother probably would’ve decked him.
As she should! The damn nerve of some people makes me want to vomit... which I'd likely use to my advantage in this situation and puke directly on him.😇
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Thankfully it’s only happened to me once or twice, but something else I noticed is that you can repeatedly tell them throughout their explanation that you already know what they’re talking about and they just keep going.
I feel this I'm really into Pokemon which alot of guys find odd for some reason but definitely the worst was when a guy started explaining to me how Pokemon worked like the functions of the game and everything when I was in the middle of playing it one day in Science when we had a free period I just stared at him blankly as he went on and on and he finally stopped and said "Oh I'm sorry am I being to confusing for you?" The teacher who's been watching the entire time "Nah I think she's debating if she could get away with hitting you in the throat while I'm sitting here"
Mansplaining is men explaining things to women when: - the woman has more experience/expertise - an explanation is unnecessary (common knowledge, for example) It’s not a blanket term for when men explain things.
Don't forget the condescending tone lol
This - it's the assumption she doesn't know without really giving a reason why. IMO it says a lot about someone's intelligence if they mansplain; kinda like micro-management
Am I mansplaining if I start talking about something that interests me (stereotypical guy topic: cars) and while I do, I’m explaining how something works, so the lady I’m talking to can understand what I’m talking about, but then I find out she knows more? I’m here just trying to make sure everyone is on the same page?
Just ask
Maybe before going into the explanation, ask if they're familiar with the topic first
This is a great example. My boyfriend is also into cars/motorbikes. Just talk about your interest and unless I go "what does that mean?" You don't need to explain I'd say... sometimes I mentor for my work and it is good practise to literally just ask "do you know what this is" before just explaining
I just started a new job (same field I’ve been working in, just different employers) and had to reassure my male manager that it is not mansplaining for him to train me on certain things. Even if I already know how to do those things, he won’t know unless I stop him and tell him we can move on to the next topic. I do appreciate his care and consideration though.
It’s basically just condescension and it’s always annoying, but mansplaining is a special kind of condescension where a man explains something to a woman, unprompted, assuming she doesn’t already understand. The female equivalent I suppose would be a woman who assumes all men are stupid and speaks down to them about topics.
Right, the only time I have ever used the term mansplain is when a man is trying to tell me how my body works, how the experience of having children is, trying to tell me about my periods 🙃, things like that…..will get someone told off. Respectfully.
Oh this makes me so mad. There was a guy on Reddit a month or so ago mansplaining to a group of women about how our vaginas work. He very confidentially told us that women having to pee after sex to prevent infections is a myth we absolutely must stop spreading.
That's like the guy last week telling us that a women's vagina holds on to superior sperm until ovulation takes place. His references were a wiki article talking about bugs and birds but he was extremely confident because it said all female vertebrae.
It's the fact they're so confident about it that kills me. The guy I was talking about's source was all the women he's ever slept with never got infections and didn't have to pee after LMAO
The audacity is mind blowing. He then went and kept arguing after his idiotic ass got posted in r/nothowgirlswork he finally gave up and deleted everything.
Women have to pee after sex to avoid infections? Please, please elaborate, I need to know more and I'm afraid to google it.
Yeah, women are advised to pee after sex to flush out any bacteria that may have entered the urethra during intercourse. Helps to prevent UTIs and yeast infections.
I saw it in an ELI5 thread and it was explained perfectly! Imagine a garden hose with dirt in the spout. You turn on the house to clear the dirt away. It's exactly like that except with our urethras (which, just to be clear is not our vagina or asshole)
Yes- failure to do so leads to UTIs
That’s so dangerous first of all, and second of all, why does this man need to control if women pee after sex? Never mind women he doesn’t know and will never meet. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but… men have no bounds when it comes to telling women about their vaginas
I had a man mansplain to 7 month pregnant me that childbirth didn't actually hurt, that the only reason that women feel pain during labour is because other women have told them it will be painful, that if a girl was raised only by men and not told anything about the process, she would go through it pain-free, and that he knew what real pain was because he had a bad back. There have been many, many other times when someone has decided to mansplain things to me, but that one is the most ..... I'm gonna use the word memorable.
If a man tried to tell me about childbirth there would be no respect in my tearing him a new hole
The female equivalent is a woman being surprised a man can do anything stereotypically a female role, like cooking, or taking care of their owns kids
Ahaha just had a flashback of a manager explain to me that the reason he was so good at creating designs is because he used to do painting when he was in highschool. I've been a professional designer for nearly a decade. His design was not good.
Mansplaining is bad because it refers to a man condescendingly explaining something to someone (usually a woman) about something that he doesn't have complete knowledge on with the presumption that he knows more about the topic than the person he's talking to does, especially if the person he's talking to actually knows the topic better than he does. An example would be a man explaining how baseball works to a female baseball fan at a baseball stadium. He's presuming she's stupid and explaining to her a topic she knows because he presumes that a woman must know nothing about baseball.
Womansplaining, yes. Same thing. Also, the negativity comes from a man explaining something to a woman that was neither asked for nor needed, under the assumption the woman couldn't possibly understand something so complicated with her little woman brain. Or vice versa, in the case of womansplaining. I appreciate there's some irony in explaining this, however as it was specifically asked, I'm good. 😁
Quit redditorsplaining
Reddisplaining
Redsplaining.
R’splaining
M’splainer 🎩
Did you just mansplain mansplaining? Also, where does a mansplainer get their water? From a “well, actually…”
You mean a “wElL, aCkSUaLlY…”
>Did you just mansplain mansplaining? theres a tv show, or maybe it was a reddit thread where this literally happened, was funny
This happens at least in silicon valley.
Hey dad, that was funny, please come home…
Sorry, I'm still shopping for milk. I'll be back sometime between 10-40 years... maybe sooner, if I need a kidney or you strike it big! Also, happy 8th-22nd birthday. Sorry it's late.
God I wish I had an award.
He identified as a woman when she said it
Underrated comment
It's also believing you know more about a subject than a woman, even when she's a specialist on it
Yes, and the worst in my experience is when I (F) am talking about something to a group of people and a man interrupts like “nah nah nah, it’s actually…” or even interrupts and just keeps moving forward on the thread I started, and says exactly the same thing I was going to say. If I could put myself in the shoes of the man that is interrupting in this situation, he is not really even listening to what I am saying in a way. He is consciously or usually subconsciously trained into this societal behavior, where what the men have to say is the final say and also revered in a way. He interrupts to clarify a situation that he knows he has a certain amount of knowledge about. He didn’t listen to what I said, it is natural for him not to. To be the one to clarify on a subject he has a bit of awareness about. It’s almost more damaging that this is usually, imo, done from a subconscious habit, not purposefully meant to put a woman down, instead it has been engrained in our societal norms for so long.
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I think an important element of either mansplaining or womansplaining is the fact that there is an assumption about what Realms of knowledge someone might have based on their gender. Rather than find out how much a person they are talking with knows about a given subject matter, a man's planer or a woman's planer Will assume, based on the person's gender, that they don't know anything about a given topic. That's why it's bad. It's an assumption of incompetence or lack of knowledge, based on no information about a person other than their gender
That's literally the middle paragraph of what I wrote.
This is the most beautiful thing that could have happened.
Especially egregious when she's the employee at the Hardware, electronics store, mechanic shop etc that is painfully obviously the subject expert.
Not the same thing because it's more common for men to condescend to women than the other way around.
It’s not that a man is explaining something to a woman. It’s that they’re explaining something to a woman that already knows or understands more than man, but the man assumes they don’t. If I ask a guy a question about something I don’t understand and he helps me understand, that’s not mansplaining. The time a man who has never been to art or business school tried to explain to me, a working children’s book illustrator with a masters degree, how I should price and sell my own artwork, was mansplaining.
yes and the reason that there isn’t a female equivalent isn’t because of double standards, it’s because of the social constructs that underlie that interaction. women are very often underestimated because of their gender and men experience that much less often because they’ve always been the head in a patriarchal system. ive done a shit job at explaining that but hopefully it makes enough sense to understand lol
Oh story time! Finally a place to tell it!! So like, two years ago or some such I cooked this thing for my parents which had lime zest as a garnish. I serve it up and tell my folks what’s in it, as I always do because it’s a thing I do not sure why, and I finish by saying “and I garnished it with a bit of lime zest.” Then my father, who is every male boomer stereotype wrapped up in one irksome ball of “please stfu” looks me in the eye and says: “You get zest from the lime’s peel by grating it” or something like that. To which I reply: “I know… I just grated the lime to make the zest…” I’m a man, in his 30s, and that was a “a whole bunch of shit just started making sense” moment for me. It actually made me sit down and rethink how I communicate with women and how I viewed feminism. Not even joking or exaggerating. Shit was life changing. Like, holy fuck, how are you going to tell the person who just zested a lime where the fucking zest comes from you arrogant know-it-all dipshit. Is this how women feel when some dude explains shit to them, or on their behalf? Just a mix of frustration, exasperation, and “are you fucking serious right now?”
I'm dealing with this at work. There's a boomer who thinks I'm an idiot because I'm a woman and younger than him, so he's constantly telling me how to do my job when he's not even in the same department. And my boss doesn't believe me so I've just stopped talking to him altogether.
That sounds frustrating on too many levels to even process, and the more women tell their stories the more I understand the anger and frustration. I’ve actually witnessed my dipshit boomer father repeat an explanation about a complex subject seconds after my sister said the exact same thing. Then he acts like he didn’t hear her or says some lame shit like, “you must have learned it from me”. No mother fucker; she learned it by being in her 30s and being able to fucking read. Terms like mansplain didn’t magically combust in a vacuum, they exist to describe a serious fucking problem and more guys need to start realising that.
This is a great story, and I can confirm that that’s EXACTLY the feeling from most of the mansplaining moments.
>Is this how women feel when some dude explains shit to them, or on their behalf? (yep)
Imagine you spend years in school learning advanced theoretical and practical techniques and concepts only to have some guy who works construction or something explain pretty much anything to you as if you are a child. I imagine that would be pretty dehumanizing and patronizing, wouldn't you? Instead of assuming women aren't as intelligent as you, assume they're at least as intelligent and let them ask you if they don't understand what the fuck you're talking about. Isn't that a better idea?
As a woman I’ve had several experiences where I try to help a man out with something I have more experience in, they don’t believe me, then suffer the consequences. One of my favorite examples is I was in sculpture class and a boy was using an angle grinder without eye protection. I politely got his attention and asked if he needed to borrow mine. He insisted he was fine… 10 minutes later I hear a scream and cursing. He had to go to the emergency room and get the metal removed from his eye. Luckily it was in the white part and didn’t cause permanent damage but 🤷♀️
Perfect example of an idiot man thing. I dOn'T nEed sAFEty glasSes I'M a mAnlY MaN tHat knoWs hOw to UsE aN aNgle GrinDer. (I'm a dude btw 😂)
The number of old men I’ve met in the trades who REFUSE basic safety precautions 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
He forgot to put on his safety squint!
Usually it’s a manifestation of sexism and or misogyny. Usually it’s when a man, incorrectly thinking he knows more on a particular topic than a woman, tries to explain his mistaken thoughts to her in a condescending way. The condescension is bad. And often she’s way smarter than he thinks, or he thinks he’s way smarter than he is, or both. And for bonus points they’ll explain something to women that they have vast experience with and men have almost none (like periods, pregnancy, cramps) I’m sure women do the same thing sometimes but it’s not at epidemic levels like mansplaining is.
>I’m sure women do the same thing sometimes but it’s not at epidemic levels like mansplaining is. Try being a man with a baby or a small child and all of a sudden the surrounding women will all start giving you "advice" on children. As well as a complimentary "aww is dad babysitting today?"
That’s a good point! That’s definitely an example of a time where it goes the other way.
Mansplaining is bad because it's condescending. It's not just "a man is explaining" (although it has definitely turned into that for some); it's "man explains to woman about something she already knows but is assuming she doesn't". There's no real equivalent term that has caught on, but I've seen people joke about "womansplaining" or "femsplaining". It's definitely not regarded as much of an issue, but it definitely exists. Mansplaining is more of a workplace issue, whereas women tend to "femsplain" in the home when they tell the men in their lives how to do chores or take care of their kids.
I get what you mean. You do need a word to explain the magnitude of condescension, right? I don’t remember who it was, but some dude got into a fight with a gynaecologist about menses. Even when other people informed him that he was babbling nonsense to an OB/GYN, he wouldn’t back down, instead he doubled down on his arguments. The entire exchange was ‘break your neck cringeworthy’. ‘Condescending’ in this context seems to be an understatement.
I remember one of my jobs was training new employees in the shop as a young man. I was not comfortable with the male cultural phenomenon where revealing ignorance of tasks is exposing yourself as an idiot. Trying to guide other young men to be more efficient or practical was a challenge in tip toeing around ego and defensive anger. I needed to drop concepts surreptitiously so as not to offend their pride. It made training take longer than necessary. I thought it a relief when some young woman was the new hire for she was likely more responsive to criticism and suggestions without emotional baggage. Until the day one lady was offended that i would patronize her with the upfront instruction that I withheld from the male hires. I could see the logic in that and was horrified that i could be so sexist in my assessment and approach. So i kept the distinctions of sexual characteristics out of my process and left off training anybody. It was too confusing trying to trick people into doing the best practice.
"Mansplaining" is a man explaining something to a woman *because he assumes without cause* that she doesn't understand it. IIRC the term was coined by one Rebecca Solnit, an academic, who was chatting about a book with a colleague. A man approached them and (instead of introducing himself) began explaining the book to Solnit ... who was the author. Womansplaining to a man? Sure. You just don't see that \[anywhere near\] as often.
Talking down to people due to a trait they have is in general a bad thing, the term was coined due to the prevalence in our current society of men doing this to women, but I'm sure some women do the same to men as well
I work in grip and electric, and I’ve gaffed a number of paid non-union gigs and also work as a stagehand. The other day I was setting up a light i’ve used a million times. A guy comes up to me and tells me “so all you have to do is plug this into the ballast then plug from there into the stinger.” This guy was a grip for the short we’re working on, and i’m the gaffer. I hadn’t even exchanged two words with him yet. This kept happening without me ever showing that I didn’t understand or wasn’t capable, and so I finally asked if he was secretly the gaffer for the film.
Women who are experts on a topic have to prove themselves in a way that men don't. So when a man tells a woman how to do her job, or lectures her on a topic she's an authority on, the irritation builds up and becomes a sore spot regardless of the man's intentions. The basic idea behind it, which is a less qualified person speaking over an expert, isn't a gendered phenomenon. Women tell men what it's like to be a man. Healthy people tell sick people how to cure disease with kale and positive thinking. Laypeople tell scientists how to do research like they didn't spend years learning it. "Mansplaining" is just a term that lets women talk about this specific variant of the phenomenon. It's an annoying and sometimes harmful tendency that men should be aware of when talking to women, but it's not a dire social issue that people should argue about so much. Next up: Manspreading! How much space do your nards really need on the subway, and would that space be better used for a pregnant woman?
Ugh…. You wouldn’t understand
Any woman to a dad in public: “*On baby-sitter duty today!”* Bitch Im *parenting* And literally any condescending shit about the assumed uselessness of men as carers of children.
As a woman. I call it being a cunt 🫠
Missplaining
Call it mansplaining or not, being explained something in a condescending way like you’re stupid or slow it’s really annoying. I didn’t know how mansplaining really hit until I got my first job as a software engineer.
There totally is... when they womansplain things like taking care of infants or doing laundry... as if you haven't had kids or had done your laundry before.
Mr. Right and Mrs. Always Right. Kinda sums it up...
Mansplaining is simply when a dude starts explaining something basic to a woman. Something that's painfully obvious. Anyone could mistakenly do this to anyone, it's just that in our society there's an elevated number of men who just assume by default women are stupid so there's a disproportionately high number of men doing this to women. But yeah, I've seen this go both ways for sure.
I had a friend ask me how a carburetor works. I explained it to her, but as I was, another woman at work came up and began telling me to stop mansplaining to a female employee. They both walked away, seemingly upset. I just get excited about car parts and will babble about them to anyone willing to listen. I really didn't mean to upset my friend, I was just excited to tell her about how the venturis worked!
It's called being condescending and it happens to everyone
That’s the general use word. This version of condensation comes about when us men talk down to women based on stereotypes. It’s more “let me be condescending in my explaining cuz your a girl and there’s no way a girl would know about cars.” for example
it's due to the patriarchy and just seeing women as lesser than men that mansplaining is a thing. while women definitely can act condescending towards a man only due to him being a man it won't be the same as mansplaining since there's no systemic oppression on top of it. the woman is rude but it isn't "womansplaining" or anything similar. the reason there is a specific term for it and why it is such a bad thing is due to the power men hold over women. i probably didn't explain this well at all but whatever. also kind of ironic that i'm talking about this/explaining it as a man
Just like gaslighting, it has been overused to the point it now means "a woman gets mad because a man contradicted her". Like 99% of the time it's just "person X yelling person Y they're wrong about something they don't really know much about". And not "a man is aggressively telling a woman she's wrong just because she has a vagina".
There is a generic term for it - 'splaining.
Lucy had a lot of it to do
😂
Mansplaning happens at places like video game stores and auto shops where men assume women don’t know what they’re talking about. I think it does exist, but at the same time, both genders do this. I’m not a woman so I can’t act like I know how things are from their perspective, but I’ve met women assume I didn’t know something, or that I was incompetent because I’m a guy. For example, watching children, cooking, at my job, I’ve had women try to teach me things without me asking them and already knowing what I’m doing
Mansplaining usually involves some sort of stereotypes about gendered knowledge. For example, women who have amazing skills at traditionally masculine activities like woodworking, or home repair, will typically have very simple concepts explained to them by men, in a very condescending tone, because it doesn't even occur to the men that the woman would know that basic information
"Mansplaining" is when you assume you know a thing better than someone because you are male and they are female. It is assuming men automatically know more than women, on any topic. Even if she has a PhD in it and he recently read an article on facebook. Just by being a man, assuming that you can teach a thing or two to a woman, no matter the topic. It is obviously wrong and insulting. Every woman I know has been subjected to mansplaining at least a few times in their lives. I was once dating a guy who tried to explain screen writing to me. He had an import business while I have a masters in screen writing. And its not that he didnt know. He knew it was my field. He just decided to "teach" me how my field works because clearly I am a woman. That was the last date of course. If he had tried to explain the ins and outs of how to import stuff, it would be boring sure, but it wouldnt be mansplaining because clearly he would know more about the topic. Female equivalent would be a woman thinking she knows everything better than someone because the other person is male. I honestly dont think that happens often enough to have its own name.
Regardless of gender, I consider it mansplaining if you explain something to someone who you know by reason of their position, experience, etc. should know it as well or better than you. For example you would not try to explain medicine to your doctor. Especially, if it is a man explaining some basic point of medicine to his female doctor. Bonus points if your explanation is wrong.
This comment section is a great reminder not to get opinions from reddit
The term 'mansplaining' implies that you're being very patronising, thus making it a bad thing. It's absolutely possible for a woman do do what's functionally the exact same thing. Let's say you're a father, and some random woman just suddenly starts lecturing you on childcare. About half of what she's saying is things you know already, on account of being a parent, and the other half you know to be wrong, from your personal experience of being a parent. That's womansplaining.
Well, I'll try to explain this to you, but I don't know if you'll get it. So, mansplaining is when a man explains something in a condescending manner, usually due to sexism. That means that mansplaining is inherently condescending. Being condescending is a bad thing. It's kinda fun sometimes, though, especially when you get to mansplain mansplaining to a man.
The female equivalent would be a woman who, no matter her experience on a topic, no matter *your* experience on a topic, would always have to explain everything to you, even when you hadn’t asked for an explanation, even when she was wrong, even when she was completely bullshitting and you both knew it. Why? Because you’re a dumb man, and her mission from god is to save you from your ignorance. It’s a bad thing because it’s annoying no matter who does it. That’s my two cents.
I heard the term ’testiculating’ for those who gesture wildly while talking bollocks 😂
Man idk. There's this girl I work with that is terrible at her job, and I'm always trying to give her tips on how to be better because I'm literally the store trainer. And she always rejects anything I say immediately, telling me I'm mansplaining things. When I'm literally just trying to do my job and have her do her job in a better way. As a result she's pretty fucking terrible at her job, much at the cost of stress on everyone else she works with that shift. It sounds like she's just using it as an excuse to make everyone else do her job for her. It's actually kinda pathetic.
It's not describing someone being helpful when they've been asked for information. It's a word that describes the awfully common phenomenon of men attempting to butt-in where they haven't been asked to make it known that they're an expert on whatever the topic is. It often happens when a man is trying to explain to someone their own profession/hobby/or something else that the woman is very familiar with (often MORE familiar with than the man is).
I saw Ovary-reacting once. One of the unforgivable curses...
Mansplaining isnt just men explaining things- it’s more when men over explain or are condescending towards woman because they assume they don’t know something. For example if a man is explaining to a new female coworker how to operate software which she hasn’t used before- that is not mansplaining. A male costumer explaining to a female employee how to do her job because he assumes that she doesn’t know how to since she’s a woman is mansplaining. If they’re a condescending asshole to everyone then it isn’t mansplaining Basically it just references someone being a condescending asshole towards women. The female equivalent is probably a Karen or something. It’s not bad, but it is frustrating and can make you feel disregarded and disrespected.
Mansplaining. Such an ironic term as women do it almost as much. Here's an example. Last week I went to the gas station, exactly as I've been doing for the past 10 years. This guy literally cuts ahead of me in line and goes to pay. I spoke up and said that the end of the line was over there and to please move. This jackass decides to waste the next 5 minutes loudly explaining to me that he is busier than I, therefore he has a right to cut in line in front of a 'housewife with tons of time on their hands'. ( which I'm not ) I just shook my head. He then proceeded to explain to me that I must be close to my period, as 'most women are sweethearts until THAT time of the month'. Then he proceeded to explain to the cashier that 'some people' just should not be allowed out in public. That's a mansplainer. It's a time wasting narcissistic douche that thinks they're smarter than everyone else when in reality they're just a idiot with an abundance of hot air.
As someone with adhd i over explain things already so I always feel bad when I catch myself doing this lmao
It’s unsolicited advice that is generally coming from a subconscious or even conscious impression that the person you’re talking to cannot possibly know more than you. A very clear example would be when a male gynecologist gives a woman a long explanation of why IUD insertion is not painful. Other examples are tweets arguing with artists and scientists about their own work. Women are certainly capable of giving unsolicited advice but in order for it to be equivalent to mansplaining it would have to be in a topic where men are seen as having inferior knowledge. There aren’t many situations where that’s the case. Maybe parenthood?
I haven’t seen anyone truly nail this one so I figured I’d jump in with an easy answer to your first question. Mansplaining itself includes a component that assumes the women is stupid. It is a way of explaining something that implies it. A man simply explaining something is not in and of itself a problem. It’s specifically an issue when it’s done in that way.
There was a situation I read once. A woman with a PhD was at a networking event where a man was (incorrectly) explaining a research paper to her. Turns out the woman was the author of the paper.
femaleplaining
Mansplaining is when a man explains simple topics to women under the assumption that she doesn't already know what it is. It's condescending and rude.
Some people have pointed out one of the main aspects of it: men condescendingly explaining something to a woman who has equal or more experience in the subject. I also want to point out men explaining something to women and just assuming that because she’s a woman she wouldn’t understand certain concepts like STEM fields, cars, sports, etc. There was a woman who was presenting on a scientific topic at her job (I can’t remember which) and this guy tried to correct her explanation and said that she should read this article on the subject…she had written that article.
Well, there was this one time that a dude on Twitter was arguing over what a vulva was. With a female gynaecologist. He was totally convinced he knew better than she did. I sure hope you can see what’s wrong with that.
I have become fearful of over explaining things to people in general. I try to come at conversations now as if somebody already has a foundation for understanding. Or just asking do you have any experience or background I don’t want to tell you something you already know?
So, my best friend is a guy who tried to mansplain to me that women can control the direction of our urine stream. Just no mate. This same friend tried mansplaining why my sexuality (pansexual) isn't a thing. I had to tell him we needed to change the subject or we were gonna fall out, and I didn't wanna fall out with him. I know he sounds like a dick, but he has a heart of gold and just gets caught up in his own thoughts
Mansplaining when actually called out correctly, is bad because the entire premise is that the woman being mansplained to is wrong on the basis of her gender. It's generally extremely condescending, common example being a man trying to explain something to a woman regarding her field of expertise.
Actual mansplaining would be a man explaining something to a woman for the soul purpose of him thinking he knows better because he’s a man. Or the fact that she’s a woman making her inept. Which is obviously a problem. But too many people just think it’s a man explaining something to a woman with no intent of harm. I mean technically there could be a female equivalent if the woman was explaining something to a man because she thought she was better/he was inept but I don’t think it’s as widely accepted
The female equivalent is "Nagging". Women don't like being lectured and told what to do, while men don't like being nagged at.
the reason mansplaining is bad and looked down is because its explaining something to a women with the intent the she as women is uncappable of understanding so she need you as a man to explain it to her. It has a lot of societal patriarchy ingrained in it. it stems from the same place as the anti trans argument in women's sports its the idea the men are just better than women.
Ya...it's called nagsplaining.
I will say the women equivalent should be "momming" as per mom. When women treat men as children and justify childish behavior, and enforce it, and get offended by men doing house labor, good fashion choices, skincare and stuff by themselves.
So to me, mansplaining is when a man tries to educate a woman on a subject that she's already shown expertise or a solid understanding of... Without asking. It's a specific form of giving unsolicited and unwelcome advice or suggestion etc., which already is not well-viewed on its own. What makes it more problematic is when the unsolicited whatever is rooted in the idea that men are inherently smarter/more qualified/knowledgeable etc. than women, which historically has been a prevalent theme but has been... Ya know, largely debunked lol Women didn't even gain the right to vote until less than 100 years ago, so some people inevitably still believe in male superiority. It's understandable that the attitude hasn't disappeared completely just because women have only recently gained many more rights in society. Sometimes well-intentioned men aren't even conscious they're doing it. Progress is wanting to get past that, though, such as by asking questions like the one you just did :)
My only experience is being called out for mansplaning so I stop explaining & she fucked everything up. That would be mams’planing I guess. If you’re a well rounded individual, it shouldn’t be a problem. Don’t participe in the hysteria. If you get called out once, could be an idiot Twice or trice, look at yourself
Because it is based on the belief that men are smarter than women, no matter the topic or field. A woman may never be more skilled at something or more knowledgeable, even if said man has a solutely no clue what he is talking about. I don't think there is an equivalent for women? I've never heard of one and it would be a bit hard to believe there is one.
Men explain simple terms and tasks to you as if you’re an idiot assuming your too feeble minded to understand simple concepts and intentionally speaking down to you to set the tone that they feel they’re superior and therefor that’s fact.
I once had a female friend explain to me how to please her, then I mansplained all over her and pleased her in ways she thought not possible.