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My wife has accused me of mansplaining when I really was just sharing the information I had in my head about “the thing” because I was proud of myself about that.
There’s also the “You may already know all this, but it’s worth saying out loud anyway.”
I’m not saying mansplaining isn’t a thing - it certainly is - but there are other innocent “info dump” kinds of things that can look like mansplaining but weren’t intended to be. I try to be very clear about why I am info dumping when I do, but I’m not always able to catch myself in time.
#TouchOfTheTism
Exactly, when I tell my therapist about the funny things I learned about psychology, it’s just me saying stuff that I know now, how I think it’s cool, and asking for further information. I’m well aware that he already knows far more on the topic. If you’re explaining it with a tone of “you fucking idiot woman, I’m educating you”, then that’s mansplaining. Another important possibility, is just phrasing a question as a statement for clarification. Think of how a waiter will repeat your order back to you at a restaraunt. I do the same thing when I learn about a new concept. I repeat back what I think I understood about something to make sure I got it right. Tone is very important. If I don’t sound like I’m trying to be a dick to you, then I’m probably not.
Yeah the intention is far easier to sus out when it’s in person, especially with a known person. I’m a woman and I have ADHD and I do this to my husband all the time.
I’ve had this experience before. I was excited to talk about what I learnt whilst volunteering for a war museum, and wanted to share my excitement with people. Got accused of Mansplaining. It really was upsetting, since I was just talking about a lovely experience and didn’t want to upset nor offend anyone…
My partner has taught/trained me to ask “would you like to hear more?” before I info-dump on him.
Example: Me: “at work today I’ve been playing around with configuration settings for Primo VE, specifically the search scopes… Um… would you like to hear more?”
Response: “I’m glad you have an interesting problem at work and no, no thank you.”
Then she spent two hours talking about every single thing she experienced at work and her remarks on them…
There was no “she” in my story.
Edit: and we just had a test of the system. I got home bubbling about updating Anubis and the new config options, then asked “would you like to hear more?” and he was like “sounds like you had a good day, no thank you” then flopped face-first onto the couch.
I was just alegorizing an unbalanced relationship, not trying to describe yours.
Fair enough. I’m a tad prickly about it because folks assume sometimes and it gets tiring.
I like how OOP gets the name wrong also. Shane not Shawn. It really makes it feel extra condescending.
So I’ve noticed this post isn’t going over very well. I’d like to add a female perspective.
“Mansplain” isn’t meant to say you info dump or over explain a thing. It means that you assume you know more simply based on sex. It’s a type of misogyny that’s more typically overt in boomer culture, but it’s got a following in the whole Tate movement. I have rarely noticed it outside of that generation in the wild.
Now…Guys do infodump, which leads to this confusion, because a lot of people dislike that behavior too. Statistically women do speak less in mixed groups. Put it all together and it’s easy for people to over generalize a very specific behavior. It does happen, but compared to previous generations it’s not as common. It definitely occurs to women who work in non-traditional fields and take on non-traditional roles and I suspect that the same is true for men.
Imagine going to school for years and years. You have your doctorate. You’re in the field for 10 years. You work in field that is 93% male. You find a new job, good pay and reputable. The boss on the daily explains things to you. Some things that are just basic science and not even directly applicable to your work. No other new hires get these interesting and informative chats but what a coincidence, all the other new hires are men. I never called it “mansplaining,” it’s just sexism. One cute word doesn’t capture the malice that is often behind it and makes men who view themselves as harmless defensive. Of course there is pointing out systemic sexism that is ingrained in natural behavior but its important to note the difference in a simple conversation and singling out a woman to explain something while assuming she doesn’t have anything in that pretty little head of hers. Personally hence, I’ve noticed it used most often when the woman you’re targeting is smarter than you and this is a subtle power play to remind her of her place.
I had a woman at a car service counter take in my car once. She was dressed nicely and clean so of course I assumed she only did paperwork.
I treated her like a human. Explained my car symptoms and where I think the problem is. (Car electric went nuts and lost power steering when i hit a puddle.)
Holy crap she knew her stuff. I mentioned it felt like the alternator wasnt performing right and undervolting, but since it’s only when driving threw a puddle it had to be a component siezing and pulling on the accessory belt. She agreed that’s a good place to start and ran through all the bits in that system as well as thier diagnostic steps planned.
I figured she knew about cars but it felt like she was a full on mechanic and was the manager dressed up.
Treating people with basic humanity should be the bare minimum, but sadly it’s a foregone conclusion.
Wouldn’t foregone conclusion mean that people do that?
Yeah fair point, I forget what word I was mixing it up with. Probably forgone?
Why are people so surprised when everyone starts to favor talking to AI’s…
It means that you assume you know more simply based on sex.
Isn’t that misandry to assume the man is a sexist because he’s shitty at explaining things or communicating generally you know like a stereotypical man. We can’t be both incredibly myopic and excessively insightful of nuance.
Let me be more clear:
An operational definition of “mansplaining”: If a man assumes he knows more about than a woman explicitly because he is a man and she is a woman. He explains to her x,y,z from this perspective.
Example: A man always talks over female peers, and explains answers during open ended discussions, because he believes he is better and more rational at open-ended discussions than his female counterparts regardless of any evidence of this, or even in spite of it.
Non-Example: A man informs a woman or others about a topic he is more interested or informed in, at a (possibly annoying) length.
It isn’t misandry to call out this bad behavior. Yes it cuts both ways, but we are talking about this term specifically.
That explanation requires prior knowledge or post hoc knowledge otherwise you’re simply saying it’s based on sex or race.
How is this substantially different then screeching “dei” at every minority that mildly inconveniences you?
It wasn’t an explanation about how to assess whether someone is mansplaining or not – it was a definition of what mansplaining is.
Yeah and I’m asking them to use their definition in comparison, how exactly is saying “he’s mansplaining” substantially different then “dei hire”.
Ed:
https://lemmy.nullspace.lol/comment/66720
Tl;Dr they’re ok saying sexist things because they are a vile human being.
Yeah and I’m asking them to use their definition in comparison
To be clear, no you weren’t. Hence the confusion.
But since you’ve clarified: obviously using any term to unfairly accuse someone of being or doing something is a bad thing. Is that a real question?
That’s exactly what I was doing hence the twice repeated question, you can claim a lot of things but that isn’t one that has legs.
Correct, both are based on assumptions that are as offensive as the assumption that they’re mansplaining or a dei hire or whatever.
My point is that you can’t use either without yourself being bigoted enough to come to a conclusion based on bigoted assumptions so how are they substantially different?
this post seems to be going over well, given the number of upvotes.
I had read a lot of the comments and wondered if it might be misconstrued
I hate how the term “mansplaining” has mutated from “When a man condescendingly explains a subject to a woman who is an expert in that subject, because he assumes being a woman makes her ignorant”, which is certainly a valid thing to be upset about, into “Whenever a man explains anything to any woman” , which is sexist and divisive.
The term is still pretty sexist as originally used though. It inherently implies that it’s a characteristic masculine behavior. If you disagree, allow me to demonstrate:
I just came up with this term, “womancomplaining”, it’s when a woman exaggerates a minor inconvenience into a targeted victimization.
How does that term make you feel? Does it seem to imply that I’m talking about a specific, isolated behavior? Or does it seem more like I’m implying this is a characteristic feminine behavior? Would it feel less sexist if I insisted I wasn’t talking about all women, but if you take offense then maybe you feel defensive about being a womancomplainer? What if I told you to calm down, because if you aren’t guilty of it then I’m not talking about you?
It still seems pretty sexist, doesn’t it.
I think the insulting part of mansplaining is the assumptive nature of it.
This can all be avoided by a soft check before explaining something, rather than assuming a boy/girl/chimp wouldn’t know the first thing about welding/cooking/crochet/throwing feces.
Whenever I have the urge to info dump about a topic I’ll probe with a, ‘You may very well know more about this than I, please let me know before it becomes tiresome.’ 10 out of 10 it works, and usually both of us learn something.
I also love explaining things and get excited when it’s an area i know about, and then got accused of mansplaining. seeing that many men in these comments suffered the same fate, maybe some women could become more chill lol
Can you give some examples?
For example when i start talking about biology and cell mechanisms, or when explaining how i fixed some technical issue that popped up. In the past I wasn’t able to stop, but i’ve learnt my lesson and when i see that i’ve exceeded the maximum talking time (mostly on her face) then i stop talking. Those things aren’t stuff that she does know about, but she’s not very interested in those things.
deleted by creator
Women: “Don’t be condescending”
Lemmites: “What the fuck”
Mansplaining is so 2015. I thought the culture wars had moved on? I see this is 3 years old, but it’s pretty outré even for 2022.
Unfortunately I am autistic and explaining something I think is cool. Only it gets interpreted as condescension :(
Its not always but its often enough
I too hate [opposite gender of reader]
I hate them very much and would not like them on my bed or in my home or in my arms
I hate [opposite gender] and their tendency to be constantly on my mind
She sounds like an asshole
That’s such a cool observation :)
Is try at your attempt at lashing out over hurt feelings?
You’re so insightful!!!
Well she’s not here to impress you.
She’s clearly posting for attention though
You just described the core reason all of us post on the internet. Congrats.
ur mom lies to u
Your mom lies to your dad everyday
Okay but what if I’m excited to talk about dinosaurs? Is it mansplaining because I didn’t know the lady im talking to is a paleontologist ?
And people wonder why many men are afraid to talk to women.
Nah, some people might get offended right from the get go if you start talking about the basics with them, but it’s only a problem if you continue to insist that you know better than them once it becomes clear they have an understanding of the topic. Like, if you’re excited to talk about dinosaurs and the person you’re talking to is a paleontologist, but you pivot to talking about deeper aspects of the topic once you realize, you’re all good! Even better if you start asking them questions to learn from their expertise.
On the other hand, if you realize that they are a paleontologist and completely disregard that, insisting to them that you actually know more than them, or continue trying to explain base concepts, then yeah, you’re a jerk.
how she explains it is literally how i feel. i always worry someone might be thinking I’m mansplaining when really I’m just nerding out and want to talk about interesting info with a friend
i generally assume good intentions and i hope others give me the same courtesy, even if it has sometimes burned me in the past.
This is the type of attitude that makes me not talk to humans. Sure I might know something about it but if I tell you then I am an asshole apparently. So…figure it out yourself.
Just ask if they wanna know
In my experience, nobody has any problem with you sharing your knowledge with them if (1) you’re an actual expert (and not just an “armchair expert”, (2) they actually want or need someone to tell them the information they’re looking for, and (3) you express it courteously and kindly.
In pretty much any case, you’re not likely to ever get good results if #2 isn’t true. Maybe they want to figure it out themselves. Maybe they don’t actually care. Maybe they’re making a joke that people who really are experts would get!
Even if you don’t have #1, you can get a long way with #3 (especially if you frame it as you’re a fellow learner sharing what you’ve gleaned so far, such as by giving them info and asking for something in return—“oh, I found out that you can do X and it works really well, but I could never figure out Y, how’d you do that?!”).
Did she get his name wrong on purpose?
I think she got so focused on her ‘sick burn’, the resulting heat waves obscured her vision, causing her to misread “Shane” as “Shawn”.
