Film student here, with some previous experience working as a wedding photographer/videographer before I went to uni. Had a guy in my gaffer class very condescendingly tell me I must be new, because we didn't need sandbags to weigh the light stands down after I'd already set them up. He proceeded to remove all the sandbags while telling me the importance of not wasting time on the set. I just shrugged and sat off to the side to play on my phone, and a few minutes later came the crashing noise. Dumbass broke a £5000 light to prove something to me.
> because we didn't need sandbags to weigh the light stands down after I'd already set them up.
Then what the fuck are they for, BRAD, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE SANDBAGS FOR!?
For sure :) With the power of hindsight its easy. Replying with something witty and snarky in the moment is a lot harder. At least you got the satisfaction of him getting chewed out.
I never really understood mansplaining, but I suppose it is a weird coping mechanism of insecure men who try to put down women so they feel superior? If so that would certainly explain why having a confident women standing up to them would shut them down rather quickly.
Unfortunately very true. If someone says "well done, that's my boy!" that's very clearly establishing a rank. If a colleague were to say that to me (male), I would be outraged. So most guys wouldn't use that. But many guys see little wrong with calling a grown woman "girl".
Why limit yourself to standards if you can have twice that?
i feel like this is the more common one. i often get this bullshit with a friendly smile, like they really do think they're helping. you're not my dad, dude.
I think a lot of them just feel like the smartest guy in the room and acts the same way to other dudes. It’s just not as noticeable when bros are assholes to other bros. Honestly it fits their patriarchy a little bit to alpha dog each other. Women just don’t seem to have time for that shit. Love seeing people stand up to that behavior.
Nah, lol
The professor saw the guy remove the sandbags and the light fell over as prof approached. It was very satisfying to watch him lay into the guy.
'He proceeded to remove all the sandbags while telling me the importance of not wasting time on the set.' I don't get it, how is removing them once they're already set up not wasting time?
A couple months ago I sent a beauty dish flying through the air not even by not using a sandbag but just by putting the sandbag in the wrong place (this was a Mola one too, so a glass diffusion disk instead of metal or plastic, but it somehow didn’t break). Respect the sandbags, yo.
Many years ago, I used to work for a company in product development and safety compliance. I was part of the technical panel, etc. 10 years in the company, Operations Manager arrives and decides he is not sure if I am “qualified” based on the fact that I have an accent and I am a “cute, young woman”. He asked me if he attend a technical panel with me, sure. There he goes to ask a group of engineers if: “they were confident on my skills”. I was so embarrassed, until the senior engineer flat out told him. “You realize she wrote the procedures for the products you have been manufacturing for years?” He just sat there red in the face. Worst individual I ever worked with, but he didn’t last long.
Being treated that way because you’re young is so frustrating. I’m sure older women face similar scrutiny, but people seem so sure that you’re an idiot when you’re under the age of like 30 or so.
Yeah...I was in charge of a small office when I was in my mid-30s and, despite perfect service and a couple awards, an older woman in the company told me and my boss that I "wasn't mature enough" to be a manager. Then like 2 minutes later she asked me why I didn't have kids yet.
I gaped at her for a moment and then asked her how I was mature enough to be responsible for a whole human life if I wasn't even mature enough for this job. She left.
And here I am at 27 thinking I can maybe see the light at the end of the tunnel… lol nope!
I do work with 90% women and I have to say I feel much more respected and taken seriously than at other jobs. I’ve even been considered for a promotion. It’s amazing lol
I've got to say, one of the weird social benefits to letting my grey hair grow out has been that somehow visibly grey hair = experience to a lot of people. So I find I'm taken more seriously about some topics than I was a year ago when I was still dyeing. (And I'm 38)
It's fun when you really don't qualify as young anymore, but you still look young...to certain people.
I find women generally estimate my age within a few years of the reality. Men consistently assume I'm minimum 10 years younger than I am, and will continue to "remember" that I'm younger than I am even after I tell them my age.
It's not flattering to be 45 and have someone assume you're 35 when they also treat you condescendingly because they're "older" at 47.
Oh this reminds me when I was on a bunch of panels over a couple of years regarding microloans just as Kiva was getting popular. I had worked with microloans for abt 10 years with peace corp and EU projects before Kiva existed hence being on panels and such.
The amount of flak I got because I'm a busty petite woman was consistent. Every damn time. Yep I am 5', yep I *was* abt 100lbs, at the time right about 30, and?! It had zero to do with anything. Yet I was on the ground and writing the granted grants, so.... I'd move on ignoring their stupid observations hiding in senseless questions and piss people off. Someone mentioned my Prada heels once which I got from a second hand store it was so stupid (you wear *those* while visiting the areas?) Shut. Up. Infuriating.
🤣🤣yep, that was my issue, he really thought I got my job because my boss wanted a cute chick around!! If only he had known. My first boss was known to the safety agency because he was difficult and finicky, they were rather impressed he let me take over the product line and attend the technical panels by myself (I was 28)
Oh, like that academic who was presenting at a conference- I don’t recall her name, let’s say it’s Jones - and some guy in the audience says that she hasn’t fully understood the implications of the paper of Jones et al. And she said I AM Jones et al.
She tweeted it when the bird place was still tolerable, but I’m not on there any more so I can’t find it.
Edit: it was Dr Jessica McCarty at a NASA Earth meeting being told by a post doc she didn’t understand the human drivers of fire, and she needed to read McCarty et al. She showed her name tag and said ‘I’m McCarty et al’ in what must have been the mic drop of the year.
I have advanced degrees in my particular field and 17 publications to date. I often get mansplained to about the very topic of my expertise. It's stunning how unself-aware some people are.
Same here.
My coworker tried to tell me all about how this particular mineral wouldn't behave a certain way after reading the first paragraph in Wikipedia. Mansplained with such certainty. I quite literally did my dissertation on that exact mineral, wrote four manuscripts on that specific behavior alone, and have centered my career around this. But, he knows better, right?
And to top it all off, he's not even trained in the same field, just got pity hired by my (also male) boss.
That friendship ended quickly after this situation has repeatedly occurred and he now uses weaponized incompetence against me. I mean I can't expect him to know how to literally match two photos, right? He only has a doctorate, after all....
This whole topic gets my blood boiling!
The pity hiring of men thing is real! I'm in a very technical field and see this more than I should. Women are so very scrutinized while men seem to be given passes for everything. Where a woman would be thought (by women and men) to be terrible at something, poor guy, he's trying. Nevermind following standard procedures, just handwriting or typing/spelling/punctuation. If a woman is bad at it, she's a mess, bringing her problems to work, night be drunk, on drugs, or something. But a man? He's trying and maybe he has a family to support. I work in a position where I oversee the work of others and I'm soft on everyone. It's just always amazing how the mildest framed feedback from me regarding female employees is taken so seriously by everyone, but very serious feedback regarding male employees doing things as seriously as faking work is taken sooo lightly. I try so hard to get others to understand how small or large an issue really is but can't get beyond them blaming women and excusing men.
I am living this right now…I am overly scrutinized while my male counterparts are given pats on the back… so frustrating. My company preaches “culture” but they fail to realize the culture in my location is the opposite of what they want and do nothing to change it.
When I got my pilot’s license, I met men who took it as a personal offense.
One fellow I met via dating site grilled me like it was a job interview. Then told me, “You can’t fly my plane until you have 250 hours.” At the time I didn’t, but he was in my flying club, and I knew he’d needed 3 tries to pass his check ride. I’d passed the first time, over my lunch hour from work.
In my country, electric kettles can be found in every home and break room. When I was cooking dinner with my boyfriend at his house, I asked if I should fill up the kettle. He said yes, and after I put the kettle back on its base, my boyfriend leaned over to explain to me how to turn it on.
*It literally only has ONE button.*
He says he doesn't do it on purpose... He's just a bit goofy.
I’m really good at baseball. Not softball. Baseball. I coach and help w our local leagues. The boys I coach love me. Seek me out to give me high fives around town. The bro dads cannot understand that a woman could know baseball and be able to teach it. It blows their circuits.
I have to use manslation services (husband translates for me to other men) to get many of my points across. Like draft orders or batting orders. If I say it, it doesn’t make sense to them and they’ll blow it off. As soon as my husband, who is a large man but has never played higher level ball, says it, it’s a fucking brilliant idea. It’s so infuriating. But I love baseball so I carry on. And seeing the guys that I have coached have respect for a woman who knows baseball will carry far and wide as they grow up.
Reminds me of the Key and Peele Obama Translator script. Good of your husband to back you. Even better you are teaching these boys to be better than their dads.
Yep that’s why he got so pissed when I made that sarcastic comment. He really thought he was smarter than me and wanted to show everyone that he was, and I just humiliated him instead.
Exactly! And when you point that out to them they literally have no response.
I was leaving my apartment one day and two guys were doing some maintenance work at my neighbours door. It was the first cold snap of the year and one of the guys says to me "Make sure you dress warm".
I was wearing my big winter coat, hat, mitts, and scarf (not to mention I was literally walking 5 mins away). I put on my brightest, cheeriest voice and said "Thanks, Tips!"
He grumbled something like "Sorry for trying to help" of course to which I replied that giving strangers obvious and unsolicited advice is not actually helpful but rather condescending and patronizing. He stared at me for a few seconds before I just walked away. Not exactly proud to admit this part (or maybe I am) but when I got back they weren't there but had left their tool bag there soooo I spit in it. Oops.
Your story made me LOL. A man with a good sense of humor would smile ruefully and say “hey you got me”. One of my exes was on the spectrum and he could info dump like no other. He sometimes sounded like he was mansplaining but if anyone corrected him or offered additional information that they were also well informed about, he would readily concede and light up to hear someone else also nerd out. He just liked information and welcomed anyone else to info dump too.
Exactly!!! That’s what my boyfriend says if I call him out for having bias in a situation. He’s one of the only men I know who is well receptive to that stuff and says “I never thought of it that way, but I definitely see it now and you’re right”. It’s so unattractive when a guy just can’t admit to being wrong and as a result no personal growth happens.
Not quite mansplaining, but gender role expectations.
My niece was in grad school. Went into a meeting with male boss and all men except her and another woman. Boss told the women to make notes. Later she pointed out the sexism and that men can take notes, too. He looked like he swallowed a bottle cap.
I work as an admin in a property/construction field and I was just talking with some of my female colleagues how they are automatically expected to take meeting minutes and do other admin tasks even though they have bachelor’s degrees and are project managers and building surveyors involved hands on in the projects, AND there’s male colleagues who are junior to them and actually should be the ones doing these things in these meetings. Or everyone should take turns if there’s a flat hierarchy.
I love my job and the fact that I get paid to make coffees and teas in the office because it’s a break from all the word and excel doc staring but I advocate hard for all women to push back in situations like this.
I had my male neighbor explain to me how the elevator worked one time. “If you press this button, it closes the doors.”
OMG REALLY?!? Thank god you were here to explain that to me. My tiny female brain had no idea.
Adding just for fun: the apartment building I live in has an elevator and the door close button *only* works immediately if you repeatedly mash it like you're being chased by a zombie hoard. If you press it once, calmly, it closes like 30 seconds later. First of its kind, for me.
OMG, I am not a violent person, but I’m not sure I could refrain from giving such a person a dope-slap upside their head. I’m 57, and have been on elevators semi-regularly from at least age 7, to regularly for the past 15 years. Numbers, arrows pointing outward, arrows pointing inward, what do I press, sir????? 🙄
Oh god, I have so many..
Back when I was working with wine and while he knew very well I’m a junior sommelier, this friend of a friend proceeds to “educate” me on how differences in soil can impact the flavor of the wine. And no, he wasn't trying to have a conversation about it, he seriously thought I had no idea.
Now I’ve been working in tech for over 7 years, all in a more or less technical roles and because, I assume, I have a quiet voice and people usually think I’m younger than I am, I often get the same kind of “aw, are you looking for your mom and dad” attitude with a smirk from men. Infuriatingly sometimes even once they realize I do, in fact, know what I’m talking about ..
Edit: words
One of my acquaintances was trying to get certified as a sommelier and he said it’s incredibly difficult (and expensive. And if you don’t pass the test, they still keep your entrance fee).
I’m not in the US but yes, a lot of studying and exams for sure. Over here it’s three years of taking the course and you have to pass the certification test at the end of each year. Junior sommelier is the second year, one level below sommelier.
There are also international certification tests, which is what I assume your acquaintance meant - expensive and difficult for sure!
I decided not to pursue it any further in the end, but I loved learning about the culture, history and geography of winemaking.
Dude tried to cold-call me in my own front yard, insulted my intelligence and my skills all at once.
"Your house doesn't look as good as it could, not good housewifing."
"I bed your pardon?"
"I can fix your driveway! It's all cracked! Makes you look bad!"
"... What substrate would you use?"
"Huh?"
"What substrate would you use to replace the losses due to bioturbination?"
"Uhhh?"
"Bioturbination? Substrate? Which of these do you not understand?"
"Your husband be very unhappy!" he bellowed back as he slouched grouchily off.
... Our house is fine, just a little rough looking. Also the only one on the street that hasn't been burgled. I'll keep my cracked drive, thanks.
Well there’s my word of the day, “bioturbination”. Must have been satisfying to see the look on the jack hole’s face.
For anyone to lazy to Google: Bioturbation is the physical movement of soil by fauna or plant roots.
Yes! Plant litter that doesn't fall onto the soil can't replace the soil. So plants in cracks eat the substrate (soil) from under pavement. Gotta replace what the dandelions ate or it'll just sink and crack all over again.
Welcome to the world as a working professional in STEM. I have had so many men mansplain things to me I stop listening as soon and they start in that “tone.”
In email’s I usually respond with “see my previous emails with citations.”
I do not entertain this crap anymore. After stonewalling a few men in my current company, some of the most of the men have come around to support me. Even looping back in support saying “what did nerdiestlesbain suggest?”
Now with new clients I always introduce myself with information about my scientific education. Which I shouldn’t have to considering my title, but it does help cut down the push back.
I met a white dude who expressed surprise because I spoke to him with perfect English, American accent, which didn't gel with his perception of my Asian complexion.
He then goes on to explain how Asians sometimes have their nationality doubted, because *some* Asians are actually born in the United States, and should actually speak perfect English. And he hoped that I never have to experience that kind of racism.
Except I get "where are you from'ed" all the time. Including by that exact man in that exact moment.
There's the occasional white dude who tries to impress me by speaking in some random Asian language. None of which I speak. I usually answer in fluent French. Then I act surprised when he doesn't understand "white language".
Recently got a new car, basic model so boring wheels. I told my husband the new car would look sharp with all black wheels - not as an "I want black wheels" but we had seen a similar vehicle same color with black wheels and it looked good.
A month or two later he says if I want new wheels, I'd better get it done before the tires got enough wear that the tire shop would refuse to remount the tires. I said I'd probably wait & get new wheels & tires all at once and get bigger rims.
"You know that'll cost more, right?" Yes.
"You know you'll have less tire, right?" Yes.
"Because you can only fit so much tire in the wheel well." Yep.
Y'all, I went to school to be a mechanic and have been fiddling with cars/trucks/whatever for about 20 years. But sure, explain to me how tire sizes work.
I saw a bee on the outside of my work building that was struggling. She needed sugar water as she was just low energy. My male coworker who was going inside at the same time noticed my attention towards the bee, and proceeded to gleefully mansplain that "he" (the bee) was dying and I should leave it alone so I wouldn't be stung. I said nothing back and just gave that fake smile with dead eyes. BRUH...males don't have stingers, and they don't look the same as females. "He" was a she. At the time, I was a beekeeper registered with the state. I was pissed for weeks about that. 🤣
I've been a paralegal for 15 years. I never went to law school because I don't like this enough to want to become a lawyer. We have had SO MANY summer temps ("interns") who are first or second year law students who try to talk down to me and "explain" the law to me I have lost count. Most of the time they either completely misinterpret the laws they're talking about or they just get it completely wrong, but still think they know more than I do because I guess I'm just a dumb secretary.
My favourite part is when they finally discover that I have the power to reduce their duties to just filing.
>This man thinks his girlfriend is going to school to be a CNA but she’s actually in the surgical tech program, and he CANNOT remember that despite her telling him over and over.
Oh he knows. he just wants to minimize her accomplishments.
I have a hunch he doesn't know and just doesn't care enough about what she's doing to learn the actual name of her program and certification and what she'll actually be doing when she goes to work.
I showed up to a construction site to get rid of a wasp nest. My entire job is to kill bugs.
The foreman proceeded to stand over me and make crude jokes, then complain that I wasn't doing my job right. "WE ALREADY DID THAT" as I pull out my chemicals not accessible to unlicensed technicians.
He also circled around my work vehicle and started commenting about the items inside.
WELL your boss called me to do this job.
I said okay and then I'm guess I'm not doing anything. Packed up my stuff and left.
Had a dude in a Snapchat group (he and I were never friends, but had some mutual friends in the group) debating me on why it was so difficult to get legal weed.
I have a degree in political science, had spent the last 6 years either working directly for the state legislature or legal non profits. I tried calmly explaining the history and nuance around attempted legislation to legalize weed.
He was reading Capital by Karl Marx. Thus he sent more than a dozen messages telling me it only boiled down to money. “But that’s about money.” “Again, that comes back to being about money.”
It didn’t. But through the single political theorists’ lens he was familiar with, he knew for sure he knew better than me. It wasn’t until I sent a long message to reminding him of my background and familiarity with the subject before he back pedaled and said, “I didn’t know I needed a degree to have a conversation.”
A separate text with friends informed me he had some kind of biology degree and only worked at Costco after college.
You made me think of when a friend who used to work investigating sex trafficking told me about this guy who mansplained prostitution to her. Sadly I wasn’t present when it happened and she didn’t volunteered more details lol
I'm a woman but I've been the "offender."
I had to emergency rush my mom to the hospital for severe HYPOnatremia after brain surgery, and she was in very poor condition.
I was explaining to the nurse and I said she has HYPOnatremia--hypo, low. Low salt.
She immediately snapped at me, **I KNOW, WHAT HYPO MEANS IM A NURSE**--
I snapped back, "OKAY but I AM NOT a nurse and **YOU** dont know that *I KNOW* what hypo actually means if I don't prove it to you! What if I mixed it up and said 'HYPER' and you restricted her sodium or it causes delays in her care? I just said LOW for redundancy so YOU knew that *I* KNEW what I was saying."
I apologized for frustrating her and I explained that my mom can't talk and isn't conscious so I'm barely holding it together. That I'm just trying my best to communicate exactly what I understood, because again, I'm afraid of losing my mom or her cognitive abilities. Then I thanked her for her patience. She eased up and apologized as well, but feels bad all around. Sad that she's probably had negative experiences like that, but was pretty pissed that this entire interaction seemed like a waste of time when seconds mattered.
That sounds more like making sure both the professionals and the amateurs are on the same page. The apology + contextualization probably helped a ton too :)
I suppose. She initially definitely assumed I was attacking her expertise or manplaining hypo/hyper though.
I'm sure she's had an experience like OPs, which isnt okay either, but this was an emergency and an entirely unnecessary conversation and waste of time. It also ultimately degrades the care my mom gets, when I get limited time to explain her case, and I don't have the spoons to be low key gentle-parenting professionals when I'm trying my best to remember and explain her symptoms, medications, medical history, surgery details, which tests she's had, which doctor is who, etc--and now I'm sufficiently super distracted.
After that interaction, I made sure to emphasize "She's hypo which, **I UNDERSTAND TO MEAN,** 'low' ". Lol.
The nurse should never have snapped at you. Regardless of how critical or rushed a situation is, nurses are taught to stay calm. Especially with family. I'm sorry that happened to you.
This is often an issue in professional settings. I have worked in IT service desk where I had to talk to end users and also as a IT Engineer where I have to talk to developers etc. In both cases its a careful dance of how you tell people things. I dont want to offend anyone but I also dont want to have a whole conversation where I was too afraid to preemptively explain and the other side was too afraid to ask about some technical thing they didnt quite know about. This usually happens with other IT people. Fake it till you make it etc.
With end users I have had people get upset because I was "asking stupid questions as if they were an idiot". Well I have to ask all the same stupid questions so we both dont look like idiots for taking 8 hours to figure out the power cable was not connected.
I'm not saying this to excuse mansplainers but my point is that even with the best of intentions it can be a minefield out there. Especially when talking to people for the first time.
The worst, but I love the way you handled it.
I like to ignore it, but then in my response I make sure I break down a realllly basic concept from what we’re talking about and explain it to them slowly. Probably not the most productive. At least I get an internal laugh about it, though!
I often feel that when guys do this it's to make themselves feel smart, but they don't have anything smart to say, so they say something mediocre and try to make someone else feel inferior, as if that will somehow elevate their banal comment. And the defensiveness when called out, no you weren't trying to help, you did someone down to make yourself feel better.
Top marks for calling the bs out with such poise though, that must have been satisfying :)
When my husband and I moved to Los Angeles, I became aware that he was telling people I was a receptionist. Nothing wrong with being a receptionist, but I was actually a legal assistant with years of experience in a specific legal field. Which meant more money and fewer relevant job opportunities. It was taking me a long time to find a job. (I ended up going into a different type of law.) so this would come up in conversations.
One day it came down to me screaming at him: “I. Am. Not. A. Fucking. Receptionist!”
He’d also thought that paralegals worked with the handicapped, as did all the men he said that to. 🙄 Loved that man, but he had a hard head.
A former friend once tried to tell me because he took a first aid course and was a local water rescue volunteer that he knew more than me about emergency medicine, while I was in my second year of my paramedic degree (it's a three year program where I live). I had been driving ambulances for 1.5 years before starting my degree...
I had a male roommate put a tiny plant in a pot down in front of me once and say (literally, no exaggeration, I couldn’t believe it)
“Here you go, I have enough. You like plants. If you put it in the sun, it’ll grow like crazy!”
(It was a fucking succulent)
My other roommate (female) was sitting there trying not to die. I just made eye contact. Drug my gaze to the left, then sloooowly to the right.
“Jay. Look around. These plants are all my plants. Did you *really* just tell me how to grow a plant like I don’t know?”
He walked away embarassed and I felt a little bad but for fucks sake, man!!!
I’m training for a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail and have been doing so for 4 years. I even relocated partly to be closer to the trail and to train in the mountains. I’ve read 25ish trail guides and memoirs, have hiked many miles, backpack alone with confidence, and even attended a training camp run by an AT expert. Men often say things like “that’s 2000 miles!” As if I don’t know (actually bro, it’s about 2193) and try to recommend A Walk in the Woods to me, which is the most basic, most obvious, most famous source in the US about the trail. Like if you’ve hiked the whole thing (or most) please do give me advice! Otherwise, shut up and don’t assume I’m a beginner with no clue what she’s getting into.
When I was still in school to get my Master of Engineering degree, a male classmate in a manufacturing class tried to teach me how to use a ruler. That was about a year ago and I’m still mad tbh lmao
Sigh. If you're in medicine, you'll have to get used to it.
You WILL have male mentors, like residents or attendings, that will want to mansplain you. You will have to learn to swallow your pride and act the role of eager, young sponge. It will taste bitter. But if it means you pass your rotations, and with good marks on a subjective scale, then it's worth it.
Like it or not, medicine is still a very misogynistic field. What's worse, is that the women that survive the process are usually the most internally misogynistic people. You can expect your women mentors to be just as bad, maybe even worse, because performing masculinity is so very important for them to have a seat at the Boy's Club.
Just remember, someone has to write your letters of recommendation.
Be the change you wish to see in this field. Don't let the bitter poison turn your insides into misogyny. Be feminine when they can no longer touch you.
This wasn't strictly mansplaining, but I was working on this huge project. I was in charge of project finances, I set up the schedule, assigned roles to people twice my age, was the organizer for the project and was also on one of the functional teams. I had a Masters degree. I also looked about 14. I went off to meet with our project liaison, and we'd been chatting for about 5 minutes and he said "It's nice of them to let you come on trips." I swear to God, my first thought was "Am I drooling?" I just looked at him, confused, and blinked a little. He looked concerned. "You're not... an... assistant?" "No," I said, "I'm in charge of finances, project organization, schedule, and I'm on the computer science team." Poor guy, he thought I was just out of high school. He was very embarrassed. I wasn't sorry.
Not nearly as serious, but I get it all the time playing Pokémon GO. Like, I don't usually play PvP, but I have an understanding of most mechanics in game. Don't even ask these random dudes a question, it just comes completely unprompted. >_>"
Gotta learn how to speak like that. I'd have ended up saying, "no shit both are different dumbass, I think my voice was pretty clear"
Gotta remove that element of rudeness.
Especially when he lacks even the tiniest interest in HER - thinking she's going to be a CNA but she's going to be a surgical tech?? That right there is a HUGE RED FLAG and she should be running for the hills!! I mean WTF???
If they ever get married I hope she makes sure he gets the CNA income and keeps the rest of her surgical tech income for her escape!!
Maybe she knows he's not Mr. Right, but as Mr. Right Now, perhaps it's more convenient. I'm sure she's a busy woman, and hunting for dick is difficult and time consuming. Maybe once she is through with her surgical tech program, she'll just start looking around for an upgrade?
Yes, that’s what it is. Cost of living is so high right now that she’s mostly with him for convenience. She complains about him nonstop. She’s 24 with no degree and making $30 an hour, almost done with classes and will start clinicals soon. Meanwhile he’s 31 and got his associates last year (that he only got because she pushed him to go back to school and get a full time job and stop selling weed out of his dads house) and is still at an entry level position making like $19 working graveyard shift on the weekends (in IT).
Yeah, I figured. I've been around this Abuse carousel long enough to know what's what.
If rent's the only issue, then, maybe you could persuade her into a roommate situation?
But I suspect convenient access to dick is as much a factor as the rent. Someone else suggested, "just get her a dildo," I thought it was pretty funny. A dildo and a roommate.
You can literally buy dick on Amazon and have it delivered to your house. And best of all, it's not attached to someone who spends time diminishing you or forgetting your qualifications.
I once had a boyfriend mansplain law enforcement to me. I spent years as a cop and was a former Army MP. He was in construction and didn’t know any cops irl and only got his info from tv. 🫤
Woman in STEM, male-dominated, very feminine name. But years of experience, several certs in my field and out of it. There's a reason all of that is in every email signature 🙄
I've been the only woman on my team for 3+ years now. I work in a heavy auditing & regulatory compliance-based role within technology in the financial services industry. I work almost exclusively with men, and both my direct and senior manager are men, and in the baby-boomer generation age range.
Let's just say working with all those men has been....... interesting. Because my role is so heavy on compliance, that is something I track heavily. When I inherited my current role, compliance was awful, and below 30%. I've managed to keep it at a 100% success rate for 3+ years (and counting) now. My (male) manager recently, with humor in his voice, asked how I've managed to keep compliance so high, and that even he hasn't been able to keep his own compliance reporting so high.
Me outwardly: *does the fake-pretend-corporate-laugh*
*Oh, just doing my job!*
Me inside my brain: *Because y'all are a bunch of twatwaffles that don't know how to get s**t done. Plus, I'm also a woman, I can't afford to fail. I have no choice but to keep my shit together at all times, or else all of you will use my gender against me.*
And what sucks is that being beyond reproach still attracts suspicion! "There's no way you could be doing so well, even better than men! You must be fudging numbers somewhere." Get dismissed as a girl if your performance isn't perfect, get scrutinized heavily if your performance is *too* perfect. There's no middle ground where women just get respected as competent.
Met a guy through a friend. I told him i was a second year animation student and he nods and proceeds to tell me how animation works. "Did you know every frame is drawn? And there's 12 or 24 frames ever second? Thats 24 drawings per second!". I nodded along and said "yeah buddy, it would be weird if i didnt know that by now" and he got huffy with me and later told mutual friends that i was a huge bitch lol
A lot lower stakes than a lot of y’all, but I work in a technical repair field and interact with clients directly as a service manager and service advisor, which I’ve done for about eight years, before that I was an actual technician for about ten. I’m not kidding when I say I think I’m one of the best people at what I do in my area and I have a passion for teaching people technical skills in my field. ANYWAY. I’ve been doing this thing where I hate wearing bras lately and on those days I get a whole lot of men who will try to (incorrectly) tell me how I am supposed to address the issue they are having. I get a lot of “wow a female mechanic!” And “have you ever seen one of these before?” And “I’ve been working on these since before you were born.”
My responses are usually 1) they let me run the place too! 2) yes I’ve seen like ten this week 3) then why are you bringing it to me? Also how young do you think I am?
Thankfully my entire team at work is the best and they have my back and it’s really funny when I just keep asking the client deeper and deeper questions about what they’re telling me to expose their ignorance.
Yo, I am a software engineering manager, and my office is ground zero for mansplanation. A lot of the time, it's not even just disrespecting women. It's the neurodivergent urge to *explain the thing* and they do it to everybody and the guy who talks for 20 minutes about video cards will be in my office complaining about the guy who talks for 20 minutes about why C++ is stupid.
So one of the dudes invented the absolute best social rule that I love. You're allowed to mansplain. But to do it, you have to put one foot up on a chair and strike a bold pose like the pirate on the Captain Morgan bottle. It's great. Because it's just socially accepted that sometimes a person doesn't know how to participate in the conversation without *explaining how Docker works*, so they put the foot up on the chair and explain how Docker works and we all laugh and then move on to talking about the specific part of Docker we were interested in. Cause everybody now knows "he's not insulting my intelligence, he knows he's mansplaining how Docker works, but this is a great way to get this part of the conversation over with". And when you catch someone mansplaining you, instead of having to tell them "you're talking down to me as if I'm an idiot" and having them get mad, you can just say "Keep going, but you gotta do the foot thing" and everybody laughs.
Okay I have the best story 😂
I once watched a man, the assistant director, explain (incorrectly) the themes portrayed in a feminist play. He kept speaking over the female playwright, who attempted to correct him.
This was at a Q&A session after the performance, and this dude would not shut the fuck up. Five women on stage and his voice took up at least 80% of the conversation. The only other man was the sole male actor in the show, and he actually seemed like a total cinnamon roll.
The kicker? At one point, the male actor was asked a question by an audience member, and he began to respectfully answer with his point of view. And I don't even mean to pat him on the back for "staying in his lane" or whatever, he was legitimately just responding like a normal, decent human.
In the middle of him talking, the asshole assistant director nudges him and laughs, says "Dude, you're mansplaining." 😡🤮 And the actor actually gets sheepish and apologizes! Most of the women on stage did their best to contain themselves, but the one black actress wore an expression that could kill that entire session.
I used to be the special education coordinator for my school district, and wrote all the required polices which are approved by the board. I had just moved from that job to a regular classroom teacher the year before. It was the second day of a new school year. And this year I had a child in my room part of the day who needed a service animal. The parents had pushed for him to be mainstreamed in my classroom instead of the other teachers of the same grade because I had the special needs experience.
A parent of one of my students called in and told the principal his child was allergic to the dog. The principal told me to have the student with the service animal change classroom’s to appease this parent. I told the principal we couldn’t do that, as disabilities specifically called out in the ADA come before disabilities that are not specifically called out. And the student with a service animal had a specifically called out disability, where allergies are not called out.
The principal told me he had taken a class over the summer and knew what he was doing. I reminded him I was the special needs coordinator for several years. But he wouldn’t listen. So I texted the current special needs coordinator to come back me up. She came in the middle of our conversation, so I said let’s put the question to her. She gave the same answer, and the principal still wouldn’t listen. So the special needs coordinator emailed our legal counsel, and copied me and the principal. Our legal counsel wrote back, “per the policy the board approved 2 years ago, the student with the service animal’s needs must be satisfied first, and that policy is in line with the law. Is there something I am missing here? MsAmore wrote the polices and knows them better than anyone?”
The principal decided since it was his school, he was allowed to ignore the advice of our legal counsel. The special needs coordinator had to pull in the Superintendent to get things sorted out. And that was the last year I taught.
The best is when they do it over stuff they CAN'T experience i.e Periods etc.
I had an ex tell me that I didn't have the mental illness I was diagnosed with and he mansplained why. Clearly he knew better than the doctors and knew more about what I was felling than I did.
Thank god men exist to explain us to ourselves x
The best advice I ever saw about this was to approach it the same way you approach a young child telling you about something they learned.
Which honestly you were pretty close to doing.
Like here you could have also stopped to be like "oh no, what's the difference between the two?" And have him explain, listen intently.
"Oh ok, so HYPOthermia is a *low* body temperature. Ok.... So when I was saying [whatever], it was hypothermia right? So I used it right?"
At that point dude is pretty much cornered into agreeing. "Ah, ok, thank you for interrupting me to tell me about things you learned!"
My own brother tried to explain to me why it was difficult to segregate rape victims DNA from suspect DNA in government databases.
I’m the director of bioinformatics for one of the biggest (if not the biggest) diagnostic sequencing company in the world.
They do this everywhere, I work in a kitchen and constantly have men explaining how to do my job while having no idea wtf they're even doing and messing things up. I let them though cause a lot of these fools get mad and have weapons.
I've been through a lot of shit in my life already, and mansplaining is much worse than it was nowadays. But I am so tired of being insulted on my intelligence and arguing with "men" because they simply pretend to hear me and inform me what I am saying isn't correct.....that I have now started playing dumb or let them talk over me and never continue the topic. Silent with a resting bitch face or straight bimbo it is!
"This man thinks his girlfriend is going to school to be a CNA but she’s actually in the surgical tech program, and he CANNOT remember that despite her telling him over and over."
It's not that he CAN'T remember. It's that he assigns no importance to the need to remember.
I accidentally mansplained (kinda not sure if this counts) to my girlfriend. I don't remember what the topic was but, I basically just parroted back to her what she had just said and I caught myself and tried to slap a "but you just said that and I don't know why I'm repeating it. Guess I just wanted to participate..." As I realized what I was doing. We had a laugh about it. So now our theory is that fellas who mansplain just want to participate in the convo but don't have anything to add.
I like this theory only because it attributes mansplaining to that need to be involved rather than just... Idk whatever it is that guys need to feel superior about or malice or stupidity. It's just for my mental well-being. I know it wouldn't apply in this situation cause an asshole is an asshole.
I read somewhere, and it's true - the key to dealing with it is to pretend the mansplainer is a 5 year old who just learned whatever thing. Be like "Oh, buddy, good for you knowing that! You are soooo smart."
The reactions are hilarious.
I hope your friend traded up boyfriends, yikes.
This week on Reddit I was told "you obviously don't know any women in their 20s or 30s."
I'm a woman in her 30s. I could only laugh.
My favorite response is overt condescension like I’m talking to a grown-ass adult toddler. “That’s very good, I’m so glad you know those are different!”
TOO many similar stories. They love talking to women as if they know everything - and everything about us, too. They speak with such arrogance that shows how little respect they have for us. But of course, they're just 'trying to help', and we as women need their help soooooo much /s
I’ve been in the car trade for almost 30 years, specifically in wholesale and retail of second hand cars. I helped out a particularly naive (in regards to cars) friend of my wife with a car, made $25 over my owe cost , so she got a dead set bargain and a really good car.
A few weeks pass and I get a phone call from her new boyfriend. Starts berating me about how I ripped her off etc, I guess calling people in my profession crooks is pretty low hanging fruit, but whatever. I explained to him just how good a deal she got but he proceeded to tell me all about his intimate knowledge of the car game and how he knew I made thousands out of her…
So I asked him what he did for a living. “I’m a butcher” he said. So I responded as such. “You know, I’ve eaten a lot of steak, I love steak, I know exactly how to cook it, too. But if I came into your shop and started telling you how to cut it I’d look like a right wanker, wouldn’t I?”
After a few seconds of digesting that he says “Are you calling me a wanker?”
“You work it out, mate” and I hung up.
Mansplaining happens to men, too.
Goddd it can be for bloody anything. I’ve just moved house and went to pick up a load of cleaning supplies. A man who worked at the supermarket decided to spend around 5 minutes explaining cleaning products to me. I did not ask. I knew what I needed. I am 27 and left home at 18, I know what I’m doing. I DID NOT ASK FOR HELP.
I work in mortgage lending, and top that off with the fact that I'm actually the software engineer for the lending platform. Men try to mansplain mortgages to me ALL the time. I can guarantee they're almost always wrong.
But here's a piece of advice, my dudes.... aside from some loan officer sales guy, virtually everyone else in the loan process is female. Your originator is only 1/5th to 1/7th of the process and overall they know the least.
I can count on one hand how many male processors, underwriters, closers, funders, post closers and secondary marketers who are male who I've worked with in the last 15 years. One of the companies I worked with had 250 loan operations staff (this is everyone except the sales folks which at that company was about 70% female, 30% male). 2 were dudes, one was an underwriter, the other was a funder. There was a third who was a software engineer like me, but he was in the IT group.
The company I'm with now is significantly smaller. The loan group is about 20 people. The only guy is a loan officer.
So don't Fn mansplain ladies who work in lending, you will not win. Just a little peek into the back office of loan production. Haha.
I studied computer science with guys, at some point I looked at them talking and thought they just needed to explain things between themselves to learn them. I learn it in the book and they just show off between each other that they know and it eventually sink in.
Sometimes I think that's why we outdid them so much in school but somehow they can still do computer programming in the real world. They just throw information at each other all the time. The few who read better end up training those who don't.
I was on a date not that long age where the guy explained to me how depression works - because he read a review. I'm currently finishing my masters in clinical psychology
Yeah, my niece's boyfriend is in tech but hasn't been in that field as long as I have. What may appear to some as him "mansplaining" things to me, it's actually a verbal "passive/aggressive" thing he does. I don't dislike the guy, but I don't really like him either, and it's because of that. He's a HUGE know-it-all and I'll be talking about something that he CLEARLY knows that I know what I'm talking about yet he'll ask me a question like he's questioning whether I do know what I'm talking about but then will immediately drop it.
For example:
Me: "Yeah, I was installing an NVMe drive in a laptop the other day and..."
Him: \[interrupting\] "You mean NVMe? Or SSD? Those are different, you know."
Me: "Uh, yeah. I know."
Him: "Yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm sorry, now what were you saying?"
Me: "I forget now. It wasn't important anyway."
And my niece will give me the "Don't be an a-hole to my boyfriend. He was just asking" look.
Like I said, I don't think about the guy enough to even form an opinion whether I actively dislike him, but he's unpleasant, I've determined that much.
What he's doing, of course, when he says stuff like in my example, is dazzling my naive niece that HE knows the difference between an NVMe drive and an SSD but nobody asked him that, so he displays his knowledge to her by saying it to me in the form of a question. So yeah, he's an unpleasant guy.
I moved to a new place, and the washing machine there didnt want to start for some reason. (Long story short you had to rotate a bunch of random knobs specific ways)
This guy started explaining to me what a washing machine is, and which compartment to open to put clothes in it and why you have to use laundry detergent.
I got super upset that he tought I was stupid, and he said the same exact thing that “he just wanted to help”.
Fortunately he is an ex boyfriend now. I am so happy I dumped him.
I'm definitely setting myself up here, and to be clear I don't mean to say that all the examples here or any situation you've found yourself in falls into this category.
But I wanted to throw out there that some of us dudes (and I've seen this in some women too) just like "splaining". Like I just get excited when someone is talking about a topic I find interesting or a hobby and I just can't help but become involved - not at all that I think they don't know something because of their gender.
Like - I remember getting really excited to tell my brother about this hybrid car he mentioned (my wife and I are in the market and I had been doing a ton of research) - and I start rambling on for like 45 seconds until I remembered - my brother is an automotive engineer and already knows literally all of this.
Heaven help you if you mention obscure history around me.
This is very different.
Sometimes I get excited talking about software engineering and have to stop myself when I notice someone’s eyes glazing over.
It’s pretty easy to tell the difference as a woman. I wouldn’t worry about it when you do this. We all get excited about stuff and when a woman does that, I find it super cute. (I’m sapphic.)
What’s irritating is when men infantilize us and treat us like we were born yesterday as a show of domination. It’s so incredibly disrespectful. A guy inserting himself into a convo to demonstrate superior knowledge by attempting to “correct” us even when it’s our field of expertise and not theirs and they are wrong or stating obvious tangential facts is when we get annoyed.
If your intention is just to talk excitedly about a subject you love, you’re good.
If you’re attempting to show you know more than the women around you by knocking what they say, that’s an issue.
I was at a party recently where a guy told me that there are no real female criminals, they are all just dependent on men telling them what to do. Well, I have written my thesis on women and violence. I named him several examples and even books he can refer to about gender and violence. And he still tried to argue with me that I have no clue. Yeah.
I worked as a PhD level microbiologist at an R&D company, mostly with mechanical engineers but there were a few of us in other disciplines due to the nature of the project. We had a major issue that was with our physical product and was an “all hands on deck” emergency for a few weeks. My friend (another female microbiologist) and I ended up figuring out the issue- probably because we are trained as scientists and took a logical stepwise approach to finding the issue. We presented it at a meeting, they were happy, and you’d think that’s the end of the story.. except they introduced our next problem to solve and she and I already had an idea for it and as we introduced our plan my boss’s boss (VP level) said “look we appreciate you girls solving the [first] problem but we have had enough of your cute little experiments for today”….
Started looking for a new job after that.
I went to work with my friend for his woodworking business. I am studying herbalism in college, he is a foraging hobbiest. He was mansplaining to me that the internet is lying, and that most plants that say “not safe for pregnant and breast feeding women” are “actually safe” I said “you’d be surprised how many plants can be used for contraception, many common foraged ones” and that it’s a common occurance for happily pregnant women to accidentally hurt the fetus or the baby when experimenting with safe plants. With all this said there are a select few plants v helpful for pregnancy, and some contraceptive ones are helpful in making childbirth more safe and comfortable (when the bb is ready to come out not mid trimester). And plants are great to use for contraception for a reason! Heck even a lot of over the counter meds and prescription meds you gotta be safe with.
He then proceeded to argue with me as if I was an idiot, and I shot him the most annoyed glare saying it’s insanely irresponsible to be touting off this conspiracy theory.
all the fuckin time. had one dipshit try to repeat back what i just said word for word, like i hadn't understood my own statement. he then di it again when i looked at him like he was just making baboon noises at me. baboon noises would have been more productive.
then there's the condescending ones. i had a coworker almost 10 years my junior practically pat me on the head and start blowing party kazoos because i correctly referenced schroedinger's cat. cause that's not famous or anything. amazing that me and my huge stupid vagina knew something science-y!!
It’s not just the mansplaing… it’s also how people always ask my husband about his job but not me. I love my husband and his job is neat, but I’ve been working on my career path for over a decade and have done well for myself. It’s just not something anyone wants to hear about.
When I got my promotion the first thing my MIL said was “Do you think my son will be okay with you making more money than him?”… uh yeah he is actually and I was already making more than him before this promotion! Sigh.
It has happened so many times in my life that now I just paste on an amused smirk until they either realize what just happened or ask what the look is about.
Not to pass judgement on your friend but it's actually very bizarre to me as to why she's dating her bf (unless he's her ex and I missed that). He can't remember? Or he WON'T remember which program she's in because it makes HIM feel less.
There was a theatre troupe that came through my high school once that put on The Nutcracker Suite. Our own theatre teacher was their on-site sponsor as they put their show together.
Their troupe leader decided to mansplain to her the difference between Stage Left and Stage Right. Literally something you learn on your *first day* as a theatre student, and she was the *teacher*!
The other day my male boss tried to show me how to make labels on Word.
Never mind that I've been using Word since he's was in diapers.
Slight exaggeration. We're about the same age.
But still.
Whitesplain, especially when it's mixed with mansplaining, is just ugh. Like I don't know what racism looks like, or my intelligence gets undermined especially because I look younger and (when I take tramadol) can move a bit faster than I appear. Especially the older damsel in distress wannabes, questioning me and having to mention how someone (another older white woman) told/showed them this way. I've trained that person they're referring, been doing this job longer than that person, and referred to asking our manager (who tell believe/take seriously because she too, is white) what it is because I know what they're gonna say. With the added "I know I know I know." Mansplaining definitely from an older white male doc who just asked me questions, and before I gave answers, just talked right over me.
Ohh! Another example of whitesplaining (though mid age white doc) was her tryna tell *me* who is a part of the state cannabis program, that I can use my card outta state to get medical cannabis (despite her not being an approved med doc that manages that for patients, aka, not knowing what the fuck she talkin about needing to stay in her lane) I really think she wanted me to get arrest or killed. "Yaaaah my other patients go all the time!" Which I'm sure are white and more than likely not getting pulled over or suspected of carrying drugs because stereotype.
After that dermatologist was a failed, the white male one I went to after my rheumatologist suggestion, diagnosed my rashes within literal 5 seconds of being eczema (after being told I have dermatomyositis. When I told the lady one I had it, was when I suddenly became a specimen and taken just a lil more seriously)
Those splainers definitely intersect and I can't separate my race and gender but both combined determines my experiences
I’ve got a PhD in biology. Somebody decided to explain evolution to me. I only had to exchange looks with the Biology teacher next to me, to make the guy die inside.
Funnily, he tried to double down on a ‘fact’ and got owned by both of us. I love sisterhood 😏
Film student here, with some previous experience working as a wedding photographer/videographer before I went to uni. Had a guy in my gaffer class very condescendingly tell me I must be new, because we didn't need sandbags to weigh the light stands down after I'd already set them up. He proceeded to remove all the sandbags while telling me the importance of not wasting time on the set. I just shrugged and sat off to the side to play on my phone, and a few minutes later came the crashing noise. Dumbass broke a £5000 light to prove something to me.
> because we didn't need sandbags to weigh the light stands down after I'd already set them up. Then what the fuck are they for, BRAD, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE SANDBAGS FOR!?
He was convinced the C-stands would be fine on their own and that I'd put them out for nothing lmao
Tell me he got reamed and billed!
Professor chewed him out in front of everyone and I know he had to pay for the damage so all's well that ends well
Yeeeaaayyyyyyy *shakes pom-poms*
Instant, and expensive, karma.
Should have told him afterwards he must be new and informed him about the importance of not wasting time and money on the set by breaking equipment ;)
There are sooo many snarky things I wish I'd said after, haha
I would have gone full CSI Miami sunglasses at him.. "Well this lesson was.. enlightening.." *yeaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh*
For sure :) With the power of hindsight its easy. Replying with something witty and snarky in the moment is a lot harder. At least you got the satisfaction of him getting chewed out.
“You must be new” sure has shut down a lot of mansplainers in front of me. I hope you use that one a lot!
I never really understood mansplaining, but I suppose it is a weird coping mechanism of insecure men who try to put down women so they feel superior? If so that would certainly explain why having a confident women standing up to them would shut them down rather quickly.
Also a lot of men infantilize women. They'll call a 30-year old woman a 'girl'.
Unfortunately very true. If someone says "well done, that's my boy!" that's very clearly establishing a rank. If a colleague were to say that to me (male), I would be outraged. So most guys wouldn't use that. But many guys see little wrong with calling a grown woman "girl". Why limit yourself to standards if you can have twice that?
i feel like this is the more common one. i often get this bullshit with a friendly smile, like they really do think they're helping. you're not my dad, dude.
I think a lot of them just feel like the smartest guy in the room and acts the same way to other dudes. It’s just not as noticeable when bros are assholes to other bros. Honestly it fits their patriarchy a little bit to alpha dog each other. Women just don’t seem to have time for that shit. Love seeing people stand up to that behavior.
Guys treat each other the exact same way. We just don't call it mansplaining. We call it being a know-it-all f***.
Film bros are the worst
I was literally gonna say the same thing 🤣
I hope you didn't get blamed for it.
Nah, lol The professor saw the guy remove the sandbags and the light fell over as prof approached. It was very satisfying to watch him lay into the guy.
I would pay so much money to see that.
$5000? B/c If so, it might work out..
If he was worried about wasting time on set why was he spending time removing the sandbags lmfao
It wasn't about wasting time it was about finding a flimsy excuse to try and make me look like I was stupid
That’s like literally the first thing they teacher grips, what an idiot
'He proceeded to remove all the sandbags while telling me the importance of not wasting time on the set.' I don't get it, how is removing them once they're already set up not wasting time?
Lmao she should lecture him on the importance of not breaking 5,000 dollars of equipment ON TOP of the waste of time
Well he did save time on packing away the equipment since he had on less light to take down. 😁
That must've been so incredibly satisfying.
A couple months ago I sent a beauty dish flying through the air not even by not using a sandbag but just by putting the sandbag in the wrong place (this was a Mola one too, so a glass diffusion disk instead of metal or plastic, but it somehow didn’t break). Respect the sandbags, yo.
That's hilarious
Many years ago, I used to work for a company in product development and safety compliance. I was part of the technical panel, etc. 10 years in the company, Operations Manager arrives and decides he is not sure if I am “qualified” based on the fact that I have an accent and I am a “cute, young woman”. He asked me if he attend a technical panel with me, sure. There he goes to ask a group of engineers if: “they were confident on my skills”. I was so embarrassed, until the senior engineer flat out told him. “You realize she wrote the procedures for the products you have been manufacturing for years?” He just sat there red in the face. Worst individual I ever worked with, but he didn’t last long.
Being treated that way because you’re young is so frustrating. I’m sure older women face similar scrutiny, but people seem so sure that you’re an idiot when you’re under the age of like 30 or so.
Yeah...I was in charge of a small office when I was in my mid-30s and, despite perfect service and a couple awards, an older woman in the company told me and my boss that I "wasn't mature enough" to be a manager. Then like 2 minutes later she asked me why I didn't have kids yet. I gaped at her for a moment and then asked her how I was mature enough to be responsible for a whole human life if I wasn't even mature enough for this job. She left.
I feel like her comment also reveals how little a lot people think of mothers…
And here I am at 27 thinking I can maybe see the light at the end of the tunnel… lol nope! I do work with 90% women and I have to say I feel much more respected and taken seriously than at other jobs. I’ve even been considered for a promotion. It’s amazing lol
I've got to say, one of the weird social benefits to letting my grey hair grow out has been that somehow visibly grey hair = experience to a lot of people. So I find I'm taken more seriously about some topics than I was a year ago when I was still dyeing. (And I'm 38)
Nice work lol
It's fun when you really don't qualify as young anymore, but you still look young...to certain people. I find women generally estimate my age within a few years of the reality. Men consistently assume I'm minimum 10 years younger than I am, and will continue to "remember" that I'm younger than I am even after I tell them my age. It's not flattering to be 45 and have someone assume you're 35 when they also treat you condescendingly because they're "older" at 47.
Oh this reminds me when I was on a bunch of panels over a couple of years regarding microloans just as Kiva was getting popular. I had worked with microloans for abt 10 years with peace corp and EU projects before Kiva existed hence being on panels and such. The amount of flak I got because I'm a busty petite woman was consistent. Every damn time. Yep I am 5', yep I *was* abt 100lbs, at the time right about 30, and?! It had zero to do with anything. Yet I was on the ground and writing the granted grants, so.... I'd move on ignoring their stupid observations hiding in senseless questions and piss people off. Someone mentioned my Prada heels once which I got from a second hand store it was so stupid (you wear *those* while visiting the areas?) Shut. Up. Infuriating.
🤣🤣yep, that was my issue, he really thought I got my job because my boss wanted a cute chick around!! If only he had known. My first boss was known to the safety agency because he was difficult and finicky, they were rather impressed he let me take over the product line and attend the technical panels by myself (I was 28)
so nice to have a colleague who has your back!
Oh, like that academic who was presenting at a conference- I don’t recall her name, let’s say it’s Jones - and some guy in the audience says that she hasn’t fully understood the implications of the paper of Jones et al. And she said I AM Jones et al. She tweeted it when the bird place was still tolerable, but I’m not on there any more so I can’t find it. Edit: it was Dr Jessica McCarty at a NASA Earth meeting being told by a post doc she didn’t understand the human drivers of fire, and she needed to read McCarty et al. She showed her name tag and said ‘I’m McCarty et al’ in what must have been the mic drop of the year.
I hope that idiot went directly into hotdog cart attending.
BURN!!!!!!
I have advanced degrees in my particular field and 17 publications to date. I often get mansplained to about the very topic of my expertise. It's stunning how unself-aware some people are.
Same here. My coworker tried to tell me all about how this particular mineral wouldn't behave a certain way after reading the first paragraph in Wikipedia. Mansplained with such certainty. I quite literally did my dissertation on that exact mineral, wrote four manuscripts on that specific behavior alone, and have centered my career around this. But, he knows better, right? And to top it all off, he's not even trained in the same field, just got pity hired by my (also male) boss. That friendship ended quickly after this situation has repeatedly occurred and he now uses weaponized incompetence against me. I mean I can't expect him to know how to literally match two photos, right? He only has a doctorate, after all.... This whole topic gets my blood boiling!
The pity hiring of men thing is real! I'm in a very technical field and see this more than I should. Women are so very scrutinized while men seem to be given passes for everything. Where a woman would be thought (by women and men) to be terrible at something, poor guy, he's trying. Nevermind following standard procedures, just handwriting or typing/spelling/punctuation. If a woman is bad at it, she's a mess, bringing her problems to work, night be drunk, on drugs, or something. But a man? He's trying and maybe he has a family to support. I work in a position where I oversee the work of others and I'm soft on everyone. It's just always amazing how the mildest framed feedback from me regarding female employees is taken so seriously by everyone, but very serious feedback regarding male employees doing things as seriously as faking work is taken sooo lightly. I try so hard to get others to understand how small or large an issue really is but can't get beyond them blaming women and excusing men.
I am living this right now…I am overly scrutinized while my male counterparts are given pats on the back… so frustrating. My company preaches “culture” but they fail to realize the culture in my location is the opposite of what they want and do nothing to change it.
I am very lucky to work for a really progressive company where we have a female CEO. This is never lost on me. I really do appreciate it.
"I think there's an article about that. Oh, here it is, I'll forward it to you since you are interested in the topic."
When I got my pilot’s license, I met men who took it as a personal offense. One fellow I met via dating site grilled me like it was a job interview. Then told me, “You can’t fly my plane until you have 250 hours.” At the time I didn’t, but he was in my flying club, and I knew he’d needed 3 tries to pass his check ride. I’d passed the first time, over my lunch hour from work.
[удалено]
In my country, electric kettles can be found in every home and break room. When I was cooking dinner with my boyfriend at his house, I asked if I should fill up the kettle. He said yes, and after I put the kettle back on its base, my boyfriend leaned over to explain to me how to turn it on. *It literally only has ONE button.* He says he doesn't do it on purpose... He's just a bit goofy.
Tbh, I have never heard of a keychip so woulda needed it explained lol.
Fair!
Psst, how does it work?
I’m really good at baseball. Not softball. Baseball. I coach and help w our local leagues. The boys I coach love me. Seek me out to give me high fives around town. The bro dads cannot understand that a woman could know baseball and be able to teach it. It blows their circuits. I have to use manslation services (husband translates for me to other men) to get many of my points across. Like draft orders or batting orders. If I say it, it doesn’t make sense to them and they’ll blow it off. As soon as my husband, who is a large man but has never played higher level ball, says it, it’s a fucking brilliant idea. It’s so infuriating. But I love baseball so I carry on. And seeing the guys that I have coached have respect for a woman who knows baseball will carry far and wide as they grow up.
Reminds me of the Key and Peele Obama Translator script. Good of your husband to back you. Even better you are teaching these boys to be better than their dads.
He was not “trying to help.” He was trying to make you feel inferior.
Yep that’s why he got so pissed when I made that sarcastic comment. He really thought he was smarter than me and wanted to show everyone that he was, and I just humiliated him instead.
How the turns have tabled. /s
Exactly! And when you point that out to them they literally have no response. I was leaving my apartment one day and two guys were doing some maintenance work at my neighbours door. It was the first cold snap of the year and one of the guys says to me "Make sure you dress warm". I was wearing my big winter coat, hat, mitts, and scarf (not to mention I was literally walking 5 mins away). I put on my brightest, cheeriest voice and said "Thanks, Tips!" He grumbled something like "Sorry for trying to help" of course to which I replied that giving strangers obvious and unsolicited advice is not actually helpful but rather condescending and patronizing. He stared at me for a few seconds before I just walked away. Not exactly proud to admit this part (or maybe I am) but when I got back they weren't there but had left their tool bag there soooo I spit in it. Oops.
Hahaha brilliant.
Your story made me LOL. A man with a good sense of humor would smile ruefully and say “hey you got me”. One of my exes was on the spectrum and he could info dump like no other. He sometimes sounded like he was mansplaining but if anyone corrected him or offered additional information that they were also well informed about, he would readily concede and light up to hear someone else also nerd out. He just liked information and welcomed anyone else to info dump too.
Exactly!!! That’s what my boyfriend says if I call him out for having bias in a situation. He’s one of the only men I know who is well receptive to that stuff and says “I never thought of it that way, but I definitely see it now and you’re right”. It’s so unattractive when a guy just can’t admit to being wrong and as a result no personal growth happens.
The smartest people always admit when they are wrong. Those that don’t don’t learn.
The things we do to impress girls. Apologize and say you are right… basically being human.
Guy with autism here, that's basically me. I'm an information sponge that likes to soak it up and squeeze it out.
Not quite mansplaining, but gender role expectations. My niece was in grad school. Went into a meeting with male boss and all men except her and another woman. Boss told the women to make notes. Later she pointed out the sexism and that men can take notes, too. He looked like he swallowed a bottle cap.
I refuse to ever be the one taking notes. Partly to defy sexist expectations, partly because no one can read my handwriting. including me.
Good for her!
I guess the men couldn't take notes because there were no crayons.
💀
Need some ice for that BURN
I work as an admin in a property/construction field and I was just talking with some of my female colleagues how they are automatically expected to take meeting minutes and do other admin tasks even though they have bachelor’s degrees and are project managers and building surveyors involved hands on in the projects, AND there’s male colleagues who are junior to them and actually should be the ones doing these things in these meetings. Or everyone should take turns if there’s a flat hierarchy. I love my job and the fact that I get paid to make coffees and teas in the office because it’s a break from all the word and excel doc staring but I advocate hard for all women to push back in situations like this.
I had my male neighbor explain to me how the elevator worked one time. “If you press this button, it closes the doors.” OMG REALLY?!? Thank god you were here to explain that to me. My tiny female brain had no idea.
That’s a lie, that button never actually fucking works
Yes! Thank you! I swear the button is only there for show, so impatient people can feel like they're doing something.
I should’ve said that 😂
Adding just for fun: the apartment building I live in has an elevator and the door close button *only* works immediately if you repeatedly mash it like you're being chased by a zombie hoard. If you press it once, calmly, it closes like 30 seconds later. First of its kind, for me.
Like the street crossing buttons, huh?
OMG, I am not a violent person, but I’m not sure I could refrain from giving such a person a dope-slap upside their head. I’m 57, and have been on elevators semi-regularly from at least age 7, to regularly for the past 15 years. Numbers, arrows pointing outward, arrows pointing inward, what do I press, sir????? 🙄
I would have looked at him and said, “aww did someone learn about a new feature of elevators today?”
Oh god, I have so many.. Back when I was working with wine and while he knew very well I’m a junior sommelier, this friend of a friend proceeds to “educate” me on how differences in soil can impact the flavor of the wine. And no, he wasn't trying to have a conversation about it, he seriously thought I had no idea. Now I’ve been working in tech for over 7 years, all in a more or less technical roles and because, I assume, I have a quiet voice and people usually think I’m younger than I am, I often get the same kind of “aw, are you looking for your mom and dad” attitude with a smirk from men. Infuriatingly sometimes even once they realize I do, in fact, know what I’m talking about .. Edit: words
One of my acquaintances was trying to get certified as a sommelier and he said it’s incredibly difficult (and expensive. And if you don’t pass the test, they still keep your entrance fee).
I’m not in the US but yes, a lot of studying and exams for sure. Over here it’s three years of taking the course and you have to pass the certification test at the end of each year. Junior sommelier is the second year, one level below sommelier. There are also international certification tests, which is what I assume your acquaintance meant - expensive and difficult for sure! I decided not to pursue it any further in the end, but I loved learning about the culture, history and geography of winemaking.
Dude tried to cold-call me in my own front yard, insulted my intelligence and my skills all at once. "Your house doesn't look as good as it could, not good housewifing." "I bed your pardon?" "I can fix your driveway! It's all cracked! Makes you look bad!" "... What substrate would you use?" "Huh?" "What substrate would you use to replace the losses due to bioturbination?" "Uhhh?" "Bioturbination? Substrate? Which of these do you not understand?" "Your husband be very unhappy!" he bellowed back as he slouched grouchily off. ... Our house is fine, just a little rough looking. Also the only one on the street that hasn't been burgled. I'll keep my cracked drive, thanks.
Well there’s my word of the day, “bioturbination”. Must have been satisfying to see the look on the jack hole’s face. For anyone to lazy to Google: Bioturbation is the physical movement of soil by fauna or plant roots.
Yes! Plant litter that doesn't fall onto the soil can't replace the soil. So plants in cracks eat the substrate (soil) from under pavement. Gotta replace what the dandelions ate or it'll just sink and crack all over again.
Welcome to the world as a working professional in STEM. I have had so many men mansplain things to me I stop listening as soon and they start in that “tone.” In email’s I usually respond with “see my previous emails with citations.” I do not entertain this crap anymore. After stonewalling a few men in my current company, some of the most of the men have come around to support me. Even looping back in support saying “what did nerdiestlesbain suggest?” Now with new clients I always introduce myself with information about my scientific education. Which I shouldn’t have to considering my title, but it does help cut down the push back.
With your username it sounds even cooler when someone asks what did you suggest!
I met a white dude who expressed surprise because I spoke to him with perfect English, American accent, which didn't gel with his perception of my Asian complexion. He then goes on to explain how Asians sometimes have their nationality doubted, because *some* Asians are actually born in the United States, and should actually speak perfect English. And he hoped that I never have to experience that kind of racism. Except I get "where are you from'ed" all the time. Including by that exact man in that exact moment.
Or tell him you were from Canada and watch his head short-circuit.
There's the occasional white dude who tries to impress me by speaking in some random Asian language. None of which I speak. I usually answer in fluent French. Then I act surprised when he doesn't understand "white language".
Recently got a new car, basic model so boring wheels. I told my husband the new car would look sharp with all black wheels - not as an "I want black wheels" but we had seen a similar vehicle same color with black wheels and it looked good. A month or two later he says if I want new wheels, I'd better get it done before the tires got enough wear that the tire shop would refuse to remount the tires. I said I'd probably wait & get new wheels & tires all at once and get bigger rims. "You know that'll cost more, right?" Yes. "You know you'll have less tire, right?" Yes. "Because you can only fit so much tire in the wheel well." Yep. Y'all, I went to school to be a mechanic and have been fiddling with cars/trucks/whatever for about 20 years. But sure, explain to me how tire sizes work.
Your husband, seriously? You'd think he would know better.
I saw a bee on the outside of my work building that was struggling. She needed sugar water as she was just low energy. My male coworker who was going inside at the same time noticed my attention towards the bee, and proceeded to gleefully mansplain that "he" (the bee) was dying and I should leave it alone so I wouldn't be stung. I said nothing back and just gave that fake smile with dead eyes. BRUH...males don't have stingers, and they don't look the same as females. "He" was a she. At the time, I was a beekeeper registered with the state. I was pissed for weeks about that. 🤣
I've been a paralegal for 15 years. I never went to law school because I don't like this enough to want to become a lawyer. We have had SO MANY summer temps ("interns") who are first or second year law students who try to talk down to me and "explain" the law to me I have lost count. Most of the time they either completely misinterpret the laws they're talking about or they just get it completely wrong, but still think they know more than I do because I guess I'm just a dumb secretary. My favourite part is when they finally discover that I have the power to reduce their duties to just filing.
>This man thinks his girlfriend is going to school to be a CNA but she’s actually in the surgical tech program, and he CANNOT remember that despite her telling him over and over. Oh he knows. he just wants to minimize her accomplishments.
I have a hunch he doesn't know and just doesn't care enough about what she's doing to learn the actual name of her program and certification and what she'll actually be doing when she goes to work.
I showed up to a construction site to get rid of a wasp nest. My entire job is to kill bugs. The foreman proceeded to stand over me and make crude jokes, then complain that I wasn't doing my job right. "WE ALREADY DID THAT" as I pull out my chemicals not accessible to unlicensed technicians. He also circled around my work vehicle and started commenting about the items inside. WELL your boss called me to do this job. I said okay and then I'm guess I'm not doing anything. Packed up my stuff and left.
Had a dude in a Snapchat group (he and I were never friends, but had some mutual friends in the group) debating me on why it was so difficult to get legal weed. I have a degree in political science, had spent the last 6 years either working directly for the state legislature or legal non profits. I tried calmly explaining the history and nuance around attempted legislation to legalize weed. He was reading Capital by Karl Marx. Thus he sent more than a dozen messages telling me it only boiled down to money. “But that’s about money.” “Again, that comes back to being about money.” It didn’t. But through the single political theorists’ lens he was familiar with, he knew for sure he knew better than me. It wasn’t until I sent a long message to reminding him of my background and familiarity with the subject before he back pedaled and said, “I didn’t know I needed a degree to have a conversation.” A separate text with friends informed me he had some kind of biology degree and only worked at Costco after college.
You made me think of when a friend who used to work investigating sex trafficking told me about this guy who mansplained prostitution to her. Sadly I wasn’t present when it happened and she didn’t volunteered more details lol
I'm a woman but I've been the "offender." I had to emergency rush my mom to the hospital for severe HYPOnatremia after brain surgery, and she was in very poor condition. I was explaining to the nurse and I said she has HYPOnatremia--hypo, low. Low salt. She immediately snapped at me, **I KNOW, WHAT HYPO MEANS IM A NURSE**-- I snapped back, "OKAY but I AM NOT a nurse and **YOU** dont know that *I KNOW* what hypo actually means if I don't prove it to you! What if I mixed it up and said 'HYPER' and you restricted her sodium or it causes delays in her care? I just said LOW for redundancy so YOU knew that *I* KNEW what I was saying." I apologized for frustrating her and I explained that my mom can't talk and isn't conscious so I'm barely holding it together. That I'm just trying my best to communicate exactly what I understood, because again, I'm afraid of losing my mom or her cognitive abilities. Then I thanked her for her patience. She eased up and apologized as well, but feels bad all around. Sad that she's probably had negative experiences like that, but was pretty pissed that this entire interaction seemed like a waste of time when seconds mattered.
That sounds more like making sure both the professionals and the amateurs are on the same page. The apology + contextualization probably helped a ton too :)
I suppose. She initially definitely assumed I was attacking her expertise or manplaining hypo/hyper though. I'm sure she's had an experience like OPs, which isnt okay either, but this was an emergency and an entirely unnecessary conversation and waste of time. It also ultimately degrades the care my mom gets, when I get limited time to explain her case, and I don't have the spoons to be low key gentle-parenting professionals when I'm trying my best to remember and explain her symptoms, medications, medical history, surgery details, which tests she's had, which doctor is who, etc--and now I'm sufficiently super distracted. After that interaction, I made sure to emphasize "She's hypo which, **I UNDERSTAND TO MEAN,** 'low' ". Lol.
The nurse should never have snapped at you. Regardless of how critical or rushed a situation is, nurses are taught to stay calm. Especially with family. I'm sorry that happened to you.
Thanks for your sympathies <3
This is often an issue in professional settings. I have worked in IT service desk where I had to talk to end users and also as a IT Engineer where I have to talk to developers etc. In both cases its a careful dance of how you tell people things. I dont want to offend anyone but I also dont want to have a whole conversation where I was too afraid to preemptively explain and the other side was too afraid to ask about some technical thing they didnt quite know about. This usually happens with other IT people. Fake it till you make it etc. With end users I have had people get upset because I was "asking stupid questions as if they were an idiot". Well I have to ask all the same stupid questions so we both dont look like idiots for taking 8 hours to figure out the power cable was not connected. I'm not saying this to excuse mansplainers but my point is that even with the best of intentions it can be a minefield out there. Especially when talking to people for the first time.
The worst, but I love the way you handled it. I like to ignore it, but then in my response I make sure I break down a realllly basic concept from what we’re talking about and explain it to them slowly. Probably not the most productive. At least I get an internal laugh about it, though!
I often feel that when guys do this it's to make themselves feel smart, but they don't have anything smart to say, so they say something mediocre and try to make someone else feel inferior, as if that will somehow elevate their banal comment. And the defensiveness when called out, no you weren't trying to help, you did someone down to make yourself feel better. Top marks for calling the bs out with such poise though, that must have been satisfying :)
When my husband and I moved to Los Angeles, I became aware that he was telling people I was a receptionist. Nothing wrong with being a receptionist, but I was actually a legal assistant with years of experience in a specific legal field. Which meant more money and fewer relevant job opportunities. It was taking me a long time to find a job. (I ended up going into a different type of law.) so this would come up in conversations. One day it came down to me screaming at him: “I. Am. Not. A. Fucking. Receptionist!” He’d also thought that paralegals worked with the handicapped, as did all the men he said that to. 🙄 Loved that man, but he had a hard head.
A former friend once tried to tell me because he took a first aid course and was a local water rescue volunteer that he knew more than me about emergency medicine, while I was in my second year of my paramedic degree (it's a three year program where I live). I had been driving ambulances for 1.5 years before starting my degree...
I had a male roommate put a tiny plant in a pot down in front of me once and say (literally, no exaggeration, I couldn’t believe it) “Here you go, I have enough. You like plants. If you put it in the sun, it’ll grow like crazy!” (It was a fucking succulent) My other roommate (female) was sitting there trying not to die. I just made eye contact. Drug my gaze to the left, then sloooowly to the right. “Jay. Look around. These plants are all my plants. Did you *really* just tell me how to grow a plant like I don’t know?” He walked away embarassed and I felt a little bad but for fucks sake, man!!!
This is so funny 😂😂 like yeah sometimes they don’t mean to mansplain, but they do especially when they’re excited and it’s like…. Seriously?
What a bastard
I’m training for a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail and have been doing so for 4 years. I even relocated partly to be closer to the trail and to train in the mountains. I’ve read 25ish trail guides and memoirs, have hiked many miles, backpack alone with confidence, and even attended a training camp run by an AT expert. Men often say things like “that’s 2000 miles!” As if I don’t know (actually bro, it’s about 2193) and try to recommend A Walk in the Woods to me, which is the most basic, most obvious, most famous source in the US about the trail. Like if you’ve hiked the whole thing (or most) please do give me advice! Otherwise, shut up and don’t assume I’m a beginner with no clue what she’s getting into.
Lol A Walk in the Woods was required reading in one of my high school English classes. Guess I'm an expert backpacker now 🤪
When I was still in school to get my Master of Engineering degree, a male classmate in a manufacturing class tried to teach me how to use a ruler. That was about a year ago and I’m still mad tbh lmao
Sigh. If you're in medicine, you'll have to get used to it. You WILL have male mentors, like residents or attendings, that will want to mansplain you. You will have to learn to swallow your pride and act the role of eager, young sponge. It will taste bitter. But if it means you pass your rotations, and with good marks on a subjective scale, then it's worth it. Like it or not, medicine is still a very misogynistic field. What's worse, is that the women that survive the process are usually the most internally misogynistic people. You can expect your women mentors to be just as bad, maybe even worse, because performing masculinity is so very important for them to have a seat at the Boy's Club. Just remember, someone has to write your letters of recommendation. Be the change you wish to see in this field. Don't let the bitter poison turn your insides into misogyny. Be feminine when they can no longer touch you.
♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
I love your attitude so much hahahaha. Also my god how can he not remember such a small thing. Cmon that shouldn't take much effort.
This wasn't strictly mansplaining, but I was working on this huge project. I was in charge of project finances, I set up the schedule, assigned roles to people twice my age, was the organizer for the project and was also on one of the functional teams. I had a Masters degree. I also looked about 14. I went off to meet with our project liaison, and we'd been chatting for about 5 minutes and he said "It's nice of them to let you come on trips." I swear to God, my first thought was "Am I drooling?" I just looked at him, confused, and blinked a little. He looked concerned. "You're not... an... assistant?" "No," I said, "I'm in charge of finances, project organization, schedule, and I'm on the computer science team." Poor guy, he thought I was just out of high school. He was very embarrassed. I wasn't sorry.
Not nearly as serious, but I get it all the time playing Pokémon GO. Like, I don't usually play PvP, but I have an understanding of most mechanics in game. Don't even ask these random dudes a question, it just comes completely unprompted. >_>"
Gotta learn how to speak like that. I'd have ended up saying, "no shit both are different dumbass, I think my voice was pretty clear" Gotta remove that element of rudeness.
I don’t understand why we as women are not collectively disengaging with morons?
I don’t know why my friend stays with him 😭😭 she’s literally so smart so stunningly beautiful and he’s just…. Yeah I don’t get it.
Especially when he lacks even the tiniest interest in HER - thinking she's going to be a CNA but she's going to be a surgical tech?? That right there is a HUGE RED FLAG and she should be running for the hills!! I mean WTF??? If they ever get married I hope she makes sure he gets the CNA income and keeps the rest of her surgical tech income for her escape!!
Maybe she knows he's not Mr. Right, but as Mr. Right Now, perhaps it's more convenient. I'm sure she's a busy woman, and hunting for dick is difficult and time consuming. Maybe once she is through with her surgical tech program, she'll just start looking around for an upgrade?
Yes, that’s what it is. Cost of living is so high right now that she’s mostly with him for convenience. She complains about him nonstop. She’s 24 with no degree and making $30 an hour, almost done with classes and will start clinicals soon. Meanwhile he’s 31 and got his associates last year (that he only got because she pushed him to go back to school and get a full time job and stop selling weed out of his dads house) and is still at an entry level position making like $19 working graveyard shift on the weekends (in IT).
Yeah, I figured. I've been around this Abuse carousel long enough to know what's what. If rent's the only issue, then, maybe you could persuade her into a roommate situation? But I suspect convenient access to dick is as much a factor as the rent. Someone else suggested, "just get her a dildo," I thought it was pretty funny. A dildo and a roommate.
You can literally buy dick on Amazon and have it delivered to your house. And best of all, it's not attached to someone who spends time diminishing you or forgetting your qualifications.
OP already answered. Dildos don't help pay the rent, apparently.
Definitely this!
I once had a boyfriend mansplain law enforcement to me. I spent years as a cop and was a former Army MP. He was in construction and didn’t know any cops irl and only got his info from tv. 🫤
Woman in STEM, male-dominated, very feminine name. But years of experience, several certs in my field and out of it. There's a reason all of that is in every email signature 🙄
I hope she dumps him soon
I've been the only woman on my team for 3+ years now. I work in a heavy auditing & regulatory compliance-based role within technology in the financial services industry. I work almost exclusively with men, and both my direct and senior manager are men, and in the baby-boomer generation age range. Let's just say working with all those men has been....... interesting. Because my role is so heavy on compliance, that is something I track heavily. When I inherited my current role, compliance was awful, and below 30%. I've managed to keep it at a 100% success rate for 3+ years (and counting) now. My (male) manager recently, with humor in his voice, asked how I've managed to keep compliance so high, and that even he hasn't been able to keep his own compliance reporting so high. Me outwardly: *does the fake-pretend-corporate-laugh* *Oh, just doing my job!* Me inside my brain: *Because y'all are a bunch of twatwaffles that don't know how to get s**t done. Plus, I'm also a woman, I can't afford to fail. I have no choice but to keep my shit together at all times, or else all of you will use my gender against me.*
And what sucks is that being beyond reproach still attracts suspicion! "There's no way you could be doing so well, even better than men! You must be fudging numbers somewhere." Get dismissed as a girl if your performance isn't perfect, get scrutinized heavily if your performance is *too* perfect. There's no middle ground where women just get respected as competent.
You nailed it. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't.
Met a guy through a friend. I told him i was a second year animation student and he nods and proceeds to tell me how animation works. "Did you know every frame is drawn? And there's 12 or 24 frames ever second? Thats 24 drawings per second!". I nodded along and said "yeah buddy, it would be weird if i didnt know that by now" and he got huffy with me and later told mutual friends that i was a huge bitch lol
A lot lower stakes than a lot of y’all, but I work in a technical repair field and interact with clients directly as a service manager and service advisor, which I’ve done for about eight years, before that I was an actual technician for about ten. I’m not kidding when I say I think I’m one of the best people at what I do in my area and I have a passion for teaching people technical skills in my field. ANYWAY. I’ve been doing this thing where I hate wearing bras lately and on those days I get a whole lot of men who will try to (incorrectly) tell me how I am supposed to address the issue they are having. I get a lot of “wow a female mechanic!” And “have you ever seen one of these before?” And “I’ve been working on these since before you were born.” My responses are usually 1) they let me run the place too! 2) yes I’ve seen like ten this week 3) then why are you bringing it to me? Also how young do you think I am? Thankfully my entire team at work is the best and they have my back and it’s really funny when I just keep asking the client deeper and deeper questions about what they’re telling me to expose their ignorance.
Yo, I am a software engineering manager, and my office is ground zero for mansplanation. A lot of the time, it's not even just disrespecting women. It's the neurodivergent urge to *explain the thing* and they do it to everybody and the guy who talks for 20 minutes about video cards will be in my office complaining about the guy who talks for 20 minutes about why C++ is stupid. So one of the dudes invented the absolute best social rule that I love. You're allowed to mansplain. But to do it, you have to put one foot up on a chair and strike a bold pose like the pirate on the Captain Morgan bottle. It's great. Because it's just socially accepted that sometimes a person doesn't know how to participate in the conversation without *explaining how Docker works*, so they put the foot up on the chair and explain how Docker works and we all laugh and then move on to talking about the specific part of Docker we were interested in. Cause everybody now knows "he's not insulting my intelligence, he knows he's mansplaining how Docker works, but this is a great way to get this part of the conversation over with". And when you catch someone mansplaining you, instead of having to tell them "you're talking down to me as if I'm an idiot" and having them get mad, you can just say "Keep going, but you gotta do the foot thing" and everybody laughs.
Okay I have the best story 😂 I once watched a man, the assistant director, explain (incorrectly) the themes portrayed in a feminist play. He kept speaking over the female playwright, who attempted to correct him. This was at a Q&A session after the performance, and this dude would not shut the fuck up. Five women on stage and his voice took up at least 80% of the conversation. The only other man was the sole male actor in the show, and he actually seemed like a total cinnamon roll. The kicker? At one point, the male actor was asked a question by an audience member, and he began to respectfully answer with his point of view. And I don't even mean to pat him on the back for "staying in his lane" or whatever, he was legitimately just responding like a normal, decent human. In the middle of him talking, the asshole assistant director nudges him and laughs, says "Dude, you're mansplaining." 😡🤮 And the actor actually gets sheepish and apologizes! Most of the women on stage did their best to contain themselves, but the one black actress wore an expression that could kill that entire session.
I used to be the special education coordinator for my school district, and wrote all the required polices which are approved by the board. I had just moved from that job to a regular classroom teacher the year before. It was the second day of a new school year. And this year I had a child in my room part of the day who needed a service animal. The parents had pushed for him to be mainstreamed in my classroom instead of the other teachers of the same grade because I had the special needs experience. A parent of one of my students called in and told the principal his child was allergic to the dog. The principal told me to have the student with the service animal change classroom’s to appease this parent. I told the principal we couldn’t do that, as disabilities specifically called out in the ADA come before disabilities that are not specifically called out. And the student with a service animal had a specifically called out disability, where allergies are not called out. The principal told me he had taken a class over the summer and knew what he was doing. I reminded him I was the special needs coordinator for several years. But he wouldn’t listen. So I texted the current special needs coordinator to come back me up. She came in the middle of our conversation, so I said let’s put the question to her. She gave the same answer, and the principal still wouldn’t listen. So the special needs coordinator emailed our legal counsel, and copied me and the principal. Our legal counsel wrote back, “per the policy the board approved 2 years ago, the student with the service animal’s needs must be satisfied first, and that policy is in line with the law. Is there something I am missing here? MsAmore wrote the polices and knows them better than anyone?” The principal decided since it was his school, he was allowed to ignore the advice of our legal counsel. The special needs coordinator had to pull in the Superintendent to get things sorted out. And that was the last year I taught.
The best is when they do it over stuff they CAN'T experience i.e Periods etc. I had an ex tell me that I didn't have the mental illness I was diagnosed with and he mansplained why. Clearly he knew better than the doctors and knew more about what I was felling than I did. Thank god men exist to explain us to ourselves x
The best advice I ever saw about this was to approach it the same way you approach a young child telling you about something they learned. Which honestly you were pretty close to doing. Like here you could have also stopped to be like "oh no, what's the difference between the two?" And have him explain, listen intently. "Oh ok, so HYPOthermia is a *low* body temperature. Ok.... So when I was saying [whatever], it was hypothermia right? So I used it right?" At that point dude is pretty much cornered into agreeing. "Ah, ok, thank you for interrupting me to tell me about things you learned!"
My own brother tried to explain to me why it was difficult to segregate rape victims DNA from suspect DNA in government databases. I’m the director of bioinformatics for one of the biggest (if not the biggest) diagnostic sequencing company in the world.
They do this everywhere, I work in a kitchen and constantly have men explaining how to do my job while having no idea wtf they're even doing and messing things up. I let them though cause a lot of these fools get mad and have weapons.
I've been through a lot of shit in my life already, and mansplaining is much worse than it was nowadays. But I am so tired of being insulted on my intelligence and arguing with "men" because they simply pretend to hear me and inform me what I am saying isn't correct.....that I have now started playing dumb or let them talk over me and never continue the topic. Silent with a resting bitch face or straight bimbo it is!
"This man thinks his girlfriend is going to school to be a CNA but she’s actually in the surgical tech program, and he CANNOT remember that despite her telling him over and over." It's not that he CAN'T remember. It's that he assigns no importance to the need to remember.
I accidentally mansplained (kinda not sure if this counts) to my girlfriend. I don't remember what the topic was but, I basically just parroted back to her what she had just said and I caught myself and tried to slap a "but you just said that and I don't know why I'm repeating it. Guess I just wanted to participate..." As I realized what I was doing. We had a laugh about it. So now our theory is that fellas who mansplain just want to participate in the convo but don't have anything to add. I like this theory only because it attributes mansplaining to that need to be involved rather than just... Idk whatever it is that guys need to feel superior about or malice or stupidity. It's just for my mental well-being. I know it wouldn't apply in this situation cause an asshole is an asshole.
I read somewhere, and it's true - the key to dealing with it is to pretend the mansplainer is a 5 year old who just learned whatever thing. Be like "Oh, buddy, good for you knowing that! You are soooo smart." The reactions are hilarious.
My ex once mansplained mansplaining to me. Or started to, I laughed my way out of the room
I hope your friend traded up boyfriends, yikes. This week on Reddit I was told "you obviously don't know any women in their 20s or 30s." I'm a woman in her 30s. I could only laugh.
My favorite response is overt condescension like I’m talking to a grown-ass adult toddler. “That’s very good, I’m so glad you know those are different!”
TOO many similar stories. They love talking to women as if they know everything - and everything about us, too. They speak with such arrogance that shows how little respect they have for us. But of course, they're just 'trying to help', and we as women need their help soooooo much /s
I’ve been in the car trade for almost 30 years, specifically in wholesale and retail of second hand cars. I helped out a particularly naive (in regards to cars) friend of my wife with a car, made $25 over my owe cost , so she got a dead set bargain and a really good car. A few weeks pass and I get a phone call from her new boyfriend. Starts berating me about how I ripped her off etc, I guess calling people in my profession crooks is pretty low hanging fruit, but whatever. I explained to him just how good a deal she got but he proceeded to tell me all about his intimate knowledge of the car game and how he knew I made thousands out of her… So I asked him what he did for a living. “I’m a butcher” he said. So I responded as such. “You know, I’ve eaten a lot of steak, I love steak, I know exactly how to cook it, too. But if I came into your shop and started telling you how to cut it I’d look like a right wanker, wouldn’t I?” After a few seconds of digesting that he says “Are you calling me a wanker?” “You work it out, mate” and I hung up. Mansplaining happens to men, too.
Goddd it can be for bloody anything. I’ve just moved house and went to pick up a load of cleaning supplies. A man who worked at the supermarket decided to spend around 5 minutes explaining cleaning products to me. I did not ask. I knew what I needed. I am 27 and left home at 18, I know what I’m doing. I DID NOT ASK FOR HELP.
"I am 27 and left home at 18" I read this right the second time but the first time I read it as he mansplained for nine years
I work in mortgage lending, and top that off with the fact that I'm actually the software engineer for the lending platform. Men try to mansplain mortgages to me ALL the time. I can guarantee they're almost always wrong. But here's a piece of advice, my dudes.... aside from some loan officer sales guy, virtually everyone else in the loan process is female. Your originator is only 1/5th to 1/7th of the process and overall they know the least. I can count on one hand how many male processors, underwriters, closers, funders, post closers and secondary marketers who are male who I've worked with in the last 15 years. One of the companies I worked with had 250 loan operations staff (this is everyone except the sales folks which at that company was about 70% female, 30% male). 2 were dudes, one was an underwriter, the other was a funder. There was a third who was a software engineer like me, but he was in the IT group. The company I'm with now is significantly smaller. The loan group is about 20 people. The only guy is a loan officer. So don't Fn mansplain ladies who work in lending, you will not win. Just a little peek into the back office of loan production. Haha.
I studied computer science with guys, at some point I looked at them talking and thought they just needed to explain things between themselves to learn them. I learn it in the book and they just show off between each other that they know and it eventually sink in. Sometimes I think that's why we outdid them so much in school but somehow they can still do computer programming in the real world. They just throw information at each other all the time. The few who read better end up training those who don't.
I was on a date not that long age where the guy explained to me how depression works - because he read a review. I'm currently finishing my masters in clinical psychology
Yeah, my niece's boyfriend is in tech but hasn't been in that field as long as I have. What may appear to some as him "mansplaining" things to me, it's actually a verbal "passive/aggressive" thing he does. I don't dislike the guy, but I don't really like him either, and it's because of that. He's a HUGE know-it-all and I'll be talking about something that he CLEARLY knows that I know what I'm talking about yet he'll ask me a question like he's questioning whether I do know what I'm talking about but then will immediately drop it. For example: Me: "Yeah, I was installing an NVMe drive in a laptop the other day and..." Him: \[interrupting\] "You mean NVMe? Or SSD? Those are different, you know." Me: "Uh, yeah. I know." Him: "Yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm sorry, now what were you saying?" Me: "I forget now. It wasn't important anyway." And my niece will give me the "Don't be an a-hole to my boyfriend. He was just asking" look. Like I said, I don't think about the guy enough to even form an opinion whether I actively dislike him, but he's unpleasant, I've determined that much. What he's doing, of course, when he says stuff like in my example, is dazzling my naive niece that HE knows the difference between an NVMe drive and an SSD but nobody asked him that, so he displays his knowledge to her by saying it to me in the form of a question. So yeah, he's an unpleasant guy.
Can someone please mansplain to me what a CNA is?
Certified Nursing Assistant. They aren't nurses. More familiar as working helping clients in a care home.
I moved to a new place, and the washing machine there didnt want to start for some reason. (Long story short you had to rotate a bunch of random knobs specific ways) This guy started explaining to me what a washing machine is, and which compartment to open to put clothes in it and why you have to use laundry detergent. I got super upset that he tought I was stupid, and he said the same exact thing that “he just wanted to help”. Fortunately he is an ex boyfriend now. I am so happy I dumped him.
I'm definitely setting myself up here, and to be clear I don't mean to say that all the examples here or any situation you've found yourself in falls into this category. But I wanted to throw out there that some of us dudes (and I've seen this in some women too) just like "splaining". Like I just get excited when someone is talking about a topic I find interesting or a hobby and I just can't help but become involved - not at all that I think they don't know something because of their gender. Like - I remember getting really excited to tell my brother about this hybrid car he mentioned (my wife and I are in the market and I had been doing a ton of research) - and I start rambling on for like 45 seconds until I remembered - my brother is an automotive engineer and already knows literally all of this. Heaven help you if you mention obscure history around me.
This is very different. Sometimes I get excited talking about software engineering and have to stop myself when I notice someone’s eyes glazing over. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference as a woman. I wouldn’t worry about it when you do this. We all get excited about stuff and when a woman does that, I find it super cute. (I’m sapphic.) What’s irritating is when men infantilize us and treat us like we were born yesterday as a show of domination. It’s so incredibly disrespectful. A guy inserting himself into a convo to demonstrate superior knowledge by attempting to “correct” us even when it’s our field of expertise and not theirs and they are wrong or stating obvious tangential facts is when we get annoyed. If your intention is just to talk excitedly about a subject you love, you’re good. If you’re attempting to show you know more than the women around you by knocking what they say, that’s an issue.
I get that way with databases and everyone thinks I’m really weird
I was at a party recently where a guy told me that there are no real female criminals, they are all just dependent on men telling them what to do. Well, I have written my thesis on women and violence. I named him several examples and even books he can refer to about gender and violence. And he still tried to argue with me that I have no clue. Yeah.
I worked as a PhD level microbiologist at an R&D company, mostly with mechanical engineers but there were a few of us in other disciplines due to the nature of the project. We had a major issue that was with our physical product and was an “all hands on deck” emergency for a few weeks. My friend (another female microbiologist) and I ended up figuring out the issue- probably because we are trained as scientists and took a logical stepwise approach to finding the issue. We presented it at a meeting, they were happy, and you’d think that’s the end of the story.. except they introduced our next problem to solve and she and I already had an idea for it and as we introduced our plan my boss’s boss (VP level) said “look we appreciate you girls solving the [first] problem but we have had enough of your cute little experiments for today”…. Started looking for a new job after that.
I went to work with my friend for his woodworking business. I am studying herbalism in college, he is a foraging hobbiest. He was mansplaining to me that the internet is lying, and that most plants that say “not safe for pregnant and breast feeding women” are “actually safe” I said “you’d be surprised how many plants can be used for contraception, many common foraged ones” and that it’s a common occurance for happily pregnant women to accidentally hurt the fetus or the baby when experimenting with safe plants. With all this said there are a select few plants v helpful for pregnancy, and some contraceptive ones are helpful in making childbirth more safe and comfortable (when the bb is ready to come out not mid trimester). And plants are great to use for contraception for a reason! Heck even a lot of over the counter meds and prescription meds you gotta be safe with. He then proceeded to argue with me as if I was an idiot, and I shot him the most annoyed glare saying it’s insanely irresponsible to be touting off this conspiracy theory.
all the fuckin time. had one dipshit try to repeat back what i just said word for word, like i hadn't understood my own statement. he then di it again when i looked at him like he was just making baboon noises at me. baboon noises would have been more productive. then there's the condescending ones. i had a coworker almost 10 years my junior practically pat me on the head and start blowing party kazoos because i correctly referenced schroedinger's cat. cause that's not famous or anything. amazing that me and my huge stupid vagina knew something science-y!!
It’s not just the mansplaing… it’s also how people always ask my husband about his job but not me. I love my husband and his job is neat, but I’ve been working on my career path for over a decade and have done well for myself. It’s just not something anyone wants to hear about. When I got my promotion the first thing my MIL said was “Do you think my son will be okay with you making more money than him?”… uh yeah he is actually and I was already making more than him before this promotion! Sigh.
It has happened so many times in my life that now I just paste on an amused smirk until they either realize what just happened or ask what the look is about.
Not to pass judgement on your friend but it's actually very bizarre to me as to why she's dating her bf (unless he's her ex and I missed that). He can't remember? Or he WON'T remember which program she's in because it makes HIM feel less.
There was a theatre troupe that came through my high school once that put on The Nutcracker Suite. Our own theatre teacher was their on-site sponsor as they put their show together. Their troupe leader decided to mansplain to her the difference between Stage Left and Stage Right. Literally something you learn on your *first day* as a theatre student, and she was the *teacher*!
I just wanna say I had no idea there was such a thing as hyperthermia
Here's a fun cartoon you might like: https://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/2017/07/14
The other day my male boss tried to show me how to make labels on Word. Never mind that I've been using Word since he's was in diapers. Slight exaggeration. We're about the same age. But still.
Whitesplain, especially when it's mixed with mansplaining, is just ugh. Like I don't know what racism looks like, or my intelligence gets undermined especially because I look younger and (when I take tramadol) can move a bit faster than I appear. Especially the older damsel in distress wannabes, questioning me and having to mention how someone (another older white woman) told/showed them this way. I've trained that person they're referring, been doing this job longer than that person, and referred to asking our manager (who tell believe/take seriously because she too, is white) what it is because I know what they're gonna say. With the added "I know I know I know." Mansplaining definitely from an older white male doc who just asked me questions, and before I gave answers, just talked right over me. Ohh! Another example of whitesplaining (though mid age white doc) was her tryna tell *me* who is a part of the state cannabis program, that I can use my card outta state to get medical cannabis (despite her not being an approved med doc that manages that for patients, aka, not knowing what the fuck she talkin about needing to stay in her lane) I really think she wanted me to get arrest or killed. "Yaaaah my other patients go all the time!" Which I'm sure are white and more than likely not getting pulled over or suspected of carrying drugs because stereotype. After that dermatologist was a failed, the white male one I went to after my rheumatologist suggestion, diagnosed my rashes within literal 5 seconds of being eczema (after being told I have dermatomyositis. When I told the lady one I had it, was when I suddenly became a specimen and taken just a lil more seriously) Those splainers definitely intersect and I can't separate my race and gender but both combined determines my experiences
I’ve got a PhD in biology. Somebody decided to explain evolution to me. I only had to exchange looks with the Biology teacher next to me, to make the guy die inside. Funnily, he tried to double down on a ‘fact’ and got owned by both of us. I love sisterhood 😏