Mansplaining

Hahahaha. Love it! So true too. I can't tell you how many times I've had men "explain" things to me I knew far better than they did. Smile and nod when I really just wanted to deck him.

I love mansplaining. I use it all the time. Y'see, it's when a gentleman has no choice but to delineate all the important, crucial and necessary characteristics of a particular topic or argument because he simply knows more about it than you. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

There's a perfectly easy and understandable explanation for mansplaining.

Well that's kind of a sexist word. I thought everyoine here was past this? Maybe I should be using the word douchebag around here and have everyone laugh about it.

Ha ha this douochebag was bla blal bla... and then he...

Women while victimized by this should also realize that this happens amognst groups of men as well, some men are always right and are always the loudest/most agressive in explaining themselves, I have seen it in 'alpha' women as well, though much less often, whatever the reason it's a low thing to do, and I unfortunately have been guilty of it, try as I might, sometimes i'm not as conscientious as I should be.

It's not all it's cracked up to be.

ElizaQ:

Basicly the slur "mansplaining" is bigoted and sexist towards men to begin with.. Such words are not tolerated against women here so why should we tolerate hateful words against men?

You got a problem with someone , stop beind so reactionary and think about it.

I could come up with bigoted reactionary slurs about Jews, Africans, homosexuals, conservatives, teenagers, immegrants, old people, lawyers etc.. How would you react then?

You want me to go on about Muslims? Christians? How about I use the word "retarded" to discribe some people?

You can dress up the bigotry in any off hand comical way you want , it's still comes from the same place.

Hi trippie, it is not possible to be sexist against men, since oppression works in one way: those who have power against those who don't. Since we live in a patriarchal society, it's men who have power. Mansplaining is not sexist, it is a fun, if troublingly true description of a way patriarchy functions and operates in our society.

Oh and I'd suggest you don't do this:

Quote:

I could come up with bigoted reactionary slurs about Jews, Africans, homosexuals, conservatives, teenagers, immegrants, old people, lawyers etc..

To make a point. And don't use the word "retarded." It's offensive.

oops

i had a feeling i'd be accused of "mansplaining".  was i being condescending? i think i was just making a comment against unjustified violence.

And Catchfire, while i don't agree that the term mansplaining is in itself sexist, isn't another component of sexism making hurtful generalizations based on gender? 

for example when catherine mckinnon says "all consensual hetero sex is violence against women" or "all men are good for is fucking and running over with a truck", or some stuff in SCUM manifesto like men are just "walking dildos", while it doesn't represent most women's perspectives, still sounds like hateful sexist comments to me.  

i'm not saying her views are threatening , i just think they're as sexist and oppressive in nature as anything else i've heard.  

Also, i would disagree with the essence of your post(along with remind's) that when men try to talk to women about feminism and just have a conversation, especially on the internet, that if we disagree on anything, even minor points like "women can't be sexist" even when we agree on the larger issues like the fact we live in a patriarchal society that that is somehow wrong and we should only be observers not participants, unless we agree on everything. 

i think as long as we're not disrespectful or abusive and we don;t challenge the basic tenets of feminism we should all be encouraged to participate.

maybe it comes across more forceful cause it's written and not said, but i'm not implying women ARE sexist and oppressive, just that those particular quotes are.  you may think they're great and that's fine, hopefully we can argue the finer points of them at some point, and hopefully it will be a discussion that includes women!

I still have a problem tho with the idea that if an issue here is tagged "feminism" as opposed to "culture" then i can't disagree with anyone or take issue with someone joking about "decking" people.  I wholeheartedly agree feminism needs a space where the basic tenets are taken as a necessary starting point, but i don't think views like "deck em'" or running people over with trucks fit into that.

that being said, you're right, now we're just getting off topic so let's call it quits or discuss this through pm if you want.

I don't think those quotes are great or fine but I understand them.  Like I've said, taking back language and empowerment.  It's not that you can't disagree in the feminism forum, it's just that the disagreement needs to come from a more nuanced perspective.  i.e. - the feminist one.

I don't like to do PM.  This is a good example of mansplainin' I think.  Are you really serious that you take a woman saying "deck em" about a man is analagous to a man saying "deck em" about a woman, because that's how it seems to come across.  You're still not getting the power dynamics.  catherine mckinnon was trying to sound like a man in the quotes you provided if you want my honest opinion.  She was doing some mansplainin'.

The Problem With Men Explaining Things

Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.

I wouldn't be surprised if part of the trajectory of American politics since 2001 was shaped by, say, the inability to hear Coleen Rowley, the FBI woman who issued those early warnings about al-Qaeda, and it was certainly shaped by a Bush administration to which you couldn't tell anything, including that Iraq had no links to al-Qaeda and no WMDs, or that the war was not going to be a "cakewalk." (Even male experts couldn't penetrate the fortress of their smugness.)

Arrogance might have had something to do with the war, but this syndrome is a war that nearly every woman faces every day, a war within herself too, a belief in her superfluity, an invitation to silence, one from which a fairly nice career as a writer (with a lot of research and facts correctly deployed) has not entirely freed me. After all, there was a moment there when I was willing to let Mr. Important and his overweening confidence bowl over my more shaky certainty.

Don't forget that I've had a lot more confirmation of my right to think and speak than most women, and I've learned that a certain amount of self-doubt is a good tool for correcting, understanding, listening, and progressing—though too much is paralyzing and total self-confidence produces arrogant idiots, like the ones who have governed us since 2001. There's a happy medium between these poles to which the genders have been pushed, a warm equatorial belt of give and take where we should all meet.

More extreme versions of our situation exist in, for example, those Middle Eastern countries where women's testimony has no legal standing; so that a woman can't testify that she was raped without a male witness to counter the male rapist. Which there rarely is.

Credibility is a basic survival tool. When I was very young and just beginning to get what feminism was about and why it was necessary, I had a boyfriend whose uncle was a nuclear physicist. One Christmas, he was telling—as though it were a light and amusing subject—how a neighbor's wife in his suburban bomb-making community had come running out of her house naked in the middle of the night screaming that her husband was trying to kill her. How, I asked, did you know that he wasn't trying to kill her? He explained, patiently, that they were respectable middle-class people. Therefore, her-husband-trying-to-kill-her was simply not a credible explanation for her fleeing the house yelling that her husband was trying to kill her. That she was crazy, on the other hand....

 

Really interesting article, Catchfire.  Loved the anecdotes about Important Guys I and II.  Reminded me of some men I've conversed with about my own work.  What's truly funny is that when the blond guy says exactly the same things (since we collaborate on our films), he is rarely told he doesn't know much about the subject - I, on the other hand, get a load of advice on who I should talk to if I really want to know what's going on (generally, I've already interviewed them or ruled them out). 

Timebandit wrote:

Really interesting article, Catchfire.  Loved the anecdotes about Important Guys I and II.  Reminded me of some men I've conversed with about my own work.  What's truly funny is that when the blond guy says exactly the same things (since we collaborate on our films), he is rarely told he doesn't know much about the subject - I, on the other hand, get a load of advice on who I should talk to if I really want to know what's going on (generally, I've already interviewed them or ruled them out). 

Reminded me of a time when I worked with a male partner on issues for a few years.  It was a common thing.  At first when I pointed it out to him he said no that doesn't happen.  I didn't argue, just asked him to pay more attention.  One day the lightbulb went on and he saw it in all it's mansplaining glory.  Have to hand it to him, it made him really angry and together we worked out ways, sometimes quite funny ones (to us at least) to combat it.