I feel like âmansplainingâ has lost all meaning. It used to be about men going out of their way to correct someone that didnât need correcting, particularly if they were wrong themselves, and most often with women. Now people use it on men justâŠsaying things to anyone.
I get that people are touchy on the subject, and I respect anyoneâs right to not want or need help. I think how Mr. Solomon handled it was correct - ask if they want your input and respect their answer. Itâd just be nice if people didnât use cultural memes to dismiss others out of hand.
Yeah in my books, âMansplainingâ has never had proper meaning. It was just a way of blaming men for a particular behaviour, which is generally neutral to begin with.
Is an interesting topic of discussion, unfortunately, they always seem to attach these things to a specific gender or race and it makes the whole thing sound childish. Itâs like the concept of micro-aggressions, I like the idea of investigating the subtleties of human behaviour which can have covert but large effects, but they immediately attach it to race and racism.
The people who came up with it just didnât have a lot of real world experience dealing with people. Most likely college kids writing from their own, narrow minded viewpoint (with a dash of narcissism)
Womansplaining I guess? Itâs not a popular phrase or even one Iâve ever heard anyone else use, but it somewhat fits as she explained it because she felt like you donât understand cooking as a guy. But itâs missing the other context where mansplaining only became a popular term because lots of women could identify with their own personal experiences of being condescendingly explained to just because theyâre a woman.
Thought it was assuming someone youâre talking to needs to be eli5 something like properly configuring a firewall. As a woman I always have to step on eggshells not to embarass guys doing that because every time I mention anything that indicates I have experience in IT and tech support they seem put off and stop talking to me lol⊠especially if then I try to share what Iâve done to fix an issue that has been plaguing say the office and they donât understand what Iâm talking about.
I think though intersecting into someoneâs conversation is very rude at least where Iâm from. In public I donât expect to interact with a stranger unless theyâre about to warn me about a bobcat behind me lol.
I donât interject in other peopleâs conversations even though I may be knowgeable about it because who am I to them? Theyâre having a friendly conversation and I walk up and go âxcuse me maâam, actually, it was Jennifer Lopez that was being referenced in the taco kisses episode of South Park, not Shakiraâ. Again, just awkward?
I have never liked the term. I am also in a technical role and feel like if I say anything to a women at work I will be yelled at.
Like okay I had to go to speech therapy for years the very fact that I can talk at all is a miracle of medical science. Any other time in human history I would be effectively mute. So now I am working with someone, I have to not only figure out the answer to their question I have to spend all this effort to get my mouth to move to say the answer and if I explain it even slightly wrong I am an awful person who deserves to have their life ruined.
I donât know what you donât know. Sometimes I am not going to simplify my answer not enough sometimes I am going to simplify it too much. I am going to make a mistake and for that I am sorry.
Frankly I do avoid it because I donât want to be accused of something. If I donât interact I canât interact incorrectly.
I get what youâre saying about interjecting in strangerâs conversations, but that actually happens all the time (initiated by men and women, to men and women) here in Canada. Itâs actually one of my favorite things about Canada! Iâve got into some spirited discussions with random strangers about all sorts of things, and bonding with strangers with immediate familiarity is something Iâve grown to really enjoy.
Unless Iâm in an introverted mood, in which case I just mumble and run off lol
I definitely agree that you donât just butt into a strangers conversation in public. Thatâs just weird.
When it comes to tech though you have to at least get where those guys are comming from. Itâs not because youâre a woman, itâs because itâs tech. You canât assume people know anything about tech otherwise youâll be half way through explaining the thing before you find out that the person youâre explaining it to doesnât know what a right mouse button is and they think the internet is an icon on their desktop. You canât know what everyone else knows so the easiest thing is to assume they know nothing. If you work in IT or any other tech field long enough itâs really easy to wind up talking to everyone like they lick windows just because thatâs the safest thing to assume until proven otherwise.
As far as the IT guys avoiding you, they may just feel awkward for treating you like a window licker, or they may just be leaving you alone because now they know that you know what youâre doing. I work in a different support job now but I still have coworkers that I donât really interact with because I know them and trust them enough to do most stuff on their own. However that also means that if they seek me out then something is very wrong and itâs probably going to be a pain in the ass because if it wasnât then they would have fixed it themselves.
I feel like âmansplainingâ has lost all meaning
Yeah, they misused the term.
Mr. Solomon handled it was correct - ask if they want your input and respect their answer.
You forgot step #3! Not whine about it online.
He offered, they declined, we didnât need to hear about it. The only reason we heard about it is because he felt slighted, or is trying to make some anti-feminist point. Iâm sad that he felt bad, but not everyone is going to want the free stuff youâre offering. That doesnât make them bad people, or feminism a bad movement.
So if a female biologist who wrote a PHD thesis on the origins of RNA overheard some men talking about the origins of life and when the women wants to chime in because she is a subject matter expert, the men tell her they âdonât need a black womanâs explanationâ. And after being told this she is in the wrong for venting online? Please. Your just as sexist as the people you claim to be opposed to.
You cannot in good faith compare people who have suffered because if their skin color to those who have not, when talking about situations where skin color comes up.
Are both situations racist by pure definition? Sure. Just like punching a man and punching a child are both punching. One is much more wrong.
One racially motivated act (say hitting someone because of their skin color) is not any more or less racist depending on the race of the victim. If you believe that, it is by definition a racist value youâre holding.
Thereâs a difference when it comes to contextual, social and historical factors. Like the word cracker is insensitive but doesnât carry the hateful connotations and discrimination that the N-word possesses.
But anyone trying to say itâs more or less appropriate to hate on any single group is just demonstrating their own implicit and explicit racial biases.
One racially motivated act (say hitting someone because of their skin color) is not any more or less racist depending on the race of the victim.
This is only true if you donât think the severity of the damage correlates to the severity of the racism. If we go with your definition, then all racism is equivalent, and we canât tell any apart. That seems like an arbitrarily limiting and useless way to think about it. Why would we not want to be able to compare how severe each racist act is?
But anyone trying to say itâs more or less appropriate to hate on any single group is just demonstrating their own implicit and explicit racial biases.
This is only true if you think all groups are equally strong and equally oppressed by each other and the system. But if thatâs not the case, then I would say itâs OK to be mean to the ones who are stronger or less oppressed. Itâs a means of coping with the inequality. Just like we normal folks like to mock billionaires, while theyâre actively causing suffering.
If one person engages in a racially motivated attack on another individual, it is not any more or less racist if the victim was black or white.
If a man was walking down the street and was beaten to death by an angry mob based entirely on the individualâs race, is it less racially motivated if the victim was one race over another?
Are we punishing people for the sins of our ancestors? Does historic racism against one race justify mistreatment of another thru a retributivist mindset?
This backwards hypervigilant, hypersensitivity and hypocritically encouraging implicit and explicit racism as morally permissible retributivist actions needs to stop. Racism is racism. We need to respect each other as equals if we want racism to stop. Youâre calling for unequal treatment/enforcement of social policies based on oneâs race. Fuck that noise.
If one person engages in a racially motivated attack on another individual, it is not any more or less racist if the victim was black or white.
Ok, so youâre conflating the terms âracistâ and âracially motivatedâ. Yeah, if you do that, then your point makes sense.
Two different actions with different impacts can be different amounts of racist, but both could be equally racially motivated. For example, itâs way more racist for someone to want to murder a black person than it is for someone to be afraid of a black person and cross the street when theyâre coming. Both are equally racially motivated, but different amounts of racist. See the point? More impact = more racism.
And if we can agree that itâs the âimpactâ that makes something more/less racist, then we can see how a white person saying X and a black person saying X could be different amounts of racist, depending on the impact. If a Latino would call a white person the N word, thatâs less racist than calling a black person that. Right?
Does historic racism against one race justify mistreatment of another thru a retributivist mindset?
I couldnât tell you. All of the racism thatâs present today, and still ongoing, means we donât know the answer to that. Find me a place where this happens and Iâm happy to learn.
Itâs reductive to take that as saying âitâs more appropriate to hate on white peopleâ. They worded it a bit poorly imo but the analogy theyâre responding to is still crappy. There isnât an issue of black women assuming white men donât know the origins of RNA, but there is an issue of men assuming women donât know anything about ânerdyâ things like film. Obviously they assumed wrong with Ed Solomon, but the analogy is still in bad faith because itâs wouldnât be for the same reason.
This specific situation described in this post is an issue of âwomen assuming that the man offering his take on a subject was ignorant about it and driven by machismâ (as thatâs exactly what they accused him off when they called his offer one of âmansplainingâ).
(In fact what makes this a bit of a story is that rather than just saying âNo thanksâ, they instead explicitly accused him of offering an ignorant opinion driven by sexist)
Surelly both the âmen assuming women donât know anything about ânerdyâ things like filmâ and âwomen assuming that men offering their own take on a subject are ignorant and driven by sexismâ are equally wrong?!
How is instantly presuming such bad things about other people purelly on the basis of the number of Y chromossomes they were born with, less sexist if its acting/voicing prejudice (quite literally: they prejudged the other person) from XX persons towards XY persons than if it is from XY persons towards XX persons?
Itâs kinda the whole point of this whole comment thread: prejudice is prejudice and its discriminatory to excuse it for some people but not for others purelly on the bases of some having being born with certain characteristics and the others not.
Youâre making a lot of assumptions about what I said. It doesnât excuse it, I directly said they were wrong in this instance. My comment was directed towards the absurd comparison of women incorrectly assuming a white guy was mansplaining and a black woman who knows about the origins of RNA being dismissed. Itâs really ignorant to equate the widespread, discriminatory assumption of women and black people being stupid and uneducated to two women not giving credit to the MIB writer lol. The former affects your education, livelihood, and career and the latter is funny at best and manufactured rage at worst. They are not at all equivalent.
I just want to clarify this again because this is just a Reddit-tier mentality thatâs super brain dead: just because Iâm saying this guy isnât a tragic victim doesnât mean Iâm a crazy radical feminist that hates men.
As a brown person. It doesnât matter what color you are. Someoneâs race shouldnât matter at all when comparing how fucked up something is unless itâs directly culturally relevant.
A white guy vs black woman RNA paper writing PhD being told gtfo is equally offensive. Race only matter like if you told the white guy vs black woman something like a joke about picking cotton or the white guy a joke about him fucking his sister.
Telling someone âyou donât matter / you are the enemyâ for over a decade and to millions of people is how an actual white nationalist movement became a thing. You can only tell people how horrible and evil they are until they start to believe in it.
Mocking a culture that has been abused because of their culture (Jews) is worse than mocking a culture that has not been abused for their culture (Karens). But mocking white looking people for being white isnât the same as their culture. It matters what you mock.
Donât punch down. Itâs not more complicated than that. And if youâre not sure if youâre punching down, donât punch.
I was just saying that bc it seemed too cynical when you said we didnât need to hear about it at all. I guess I donât 100% know his intent either but there hasnât been any reason to doubt it so far.
I never said anything about feminism or that they were bad. Iâm just making an observation on the situation here. I also donât think itâs unreasonable for a person to share an interesting personal experience on a forum designed to share exactly that. And he doesnât sound âslightedâ to me. More amused than anything, because itâs an amusing story.
Yup, and itâs fine, until the guy above me starts to comment on their choice of words.
It can either be a funny note where we all laugh, or it can be an analysis of peopleâs word choice and reaction. When itâs the latter, his whining will be met by my whining, until all the whining stops :-P
I feel like âmansplainingâ has lost all meaning. It used to be about men going out of their way to correct someone that didnât need correcting, particularly if they were wrong themselves, and most often with women. Now people use it on men justâŠsaying things to anyone.
I get that people are touchy on the subject, and I respect anyoneâs right to not want or need help. I think how Mr. Solomon handled it was correct - ask if they want your input and respect their answer. Itâd just be nice if people didnât use cultural memes to dismiss others out of hand.
We used to call these people patronizing but it got gendered for some reason
Itâs funny because âpatronâ in âpatronizeâ comes from âpaterâ which means father.
And âcondescendingâ is also available to describe this behavior.
Yeah in my books, âMansplainingâ has never had proper meaning. It was just a way of blaming men for a particular behaviour, which is generally neutral to begin with.
Nah, it came from a very real workspace behavior where men would explain things to women when the woman would be the expert.
Itâs very well studied: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/it-s-man-s-and-woman-s-world/201603/the-psychology-mansplaining
Is an interesting topic of discussion, unfortunately, they always seem to attach these things to a specific gender or race and it makes the whole thing sound childish. Itâs like the concept of micro-aggressions, I like the idea of investigating the subtleties of human behaviour which can have covert but large effects, but they immediately attach it to race and racism.
The people who came up with it just didnât have a lot of real world experience dealing with people. Most likely college kids writing from their own, narrow minded viewpoint (with a dash of narcissism)
Because itâs a specific subset of patronizing, where it wouldnât have happened if the target were not a woman.
What about the other way around, whatâs that called? Like Iâve had women âmansplainâ cooking to me because I am a guy.
Womansplaining I guess? Itâs not a popular phrase or even one Iâve ever heard anyone else use, but it somewhat fits as she explained it because she felt like you donât understand cooking as a guy. But itâs missing the other context where mansplaining only became a popular term because lots of women could identify with their own personal experiences of being condescendingly explained to just because theyâre a woman.
Iâm pretty sure I had a woman mansplain something to me once in the meat aisle at Samâs when I was making a joke about a rib roast to my wife.
Youâre just gaslighting us!
:P
DonnerâKruger effect in action.
Thought it was assuming someone youâre talking to needs to be eli5 something like properly configuring a firewall. As a woman I always have to step on eggshells not to embarass guys doing that because every time I mention anything that indicates I have experience in IT and tech support they seem put off and stop talking to me lol⊠especially if then I try to share what Iâve done to fix an issue that has been plaguing say the office and they donât understand what Iâm talking about. I think though intersecting into someoneâs conversation is very rude at least where Iâm from. In public I donât expect to interact with a stranger unless theyâre about to warn me about a bobcat behind me lol. I donât interject in other peopleâs conversations even though I may be knowgeable about it because who am I to them? Theyâre having a friendly conversation and I walk up and go âxcuse me maâam, actually, it was Jennifer Lopez that was being referenced in the taco kisses episode of South Park, not Shakiraâ. Again, just awkward?
I have never liked the term. I am also in a technical role and feel like if I say anything to a women at work I will be yelled at.
Like okay I had to go to speech therapy for years the very fact that I can talk at all is a miracle of medical science. Any other time in human history I would be effectively mute. So now I am working with someone, I have to not only figure out the answer to their question I have to spend all this effort to get my mouth to move to say the answer and if I explain it even slightly wrong I am an awful person who deserves to have their life ruined.
I donât know what you donât know. Sometimes I am not going to simplify my answer not enough sometimes I am going to simplify it too much. I am going to make a mistake and for that I am sorry.
Frankly I do avoid it because I donât want to be accused of something. If I donât interact I canât interact incorrectly.
Wow, they sound like some insecure guys lol.
I get what youâre saying about interjecting in strangerâs conversations, but that actually happens all the time (initiated by men and women, to men and women) here in Canada. Itâs actually one of my favorite things about Canada! Iâve got into some spirited discussions with random strangers about all sorts of things, and bonding with strangers with immediate familiarity is something Iâve grown to really enjoy.
Unless Iâm in an introverted mood, in which case I just mumble and run off lol
I definitely agree that you donât just butt into a strangers conversation in public. Thatâs just weird.
When it comes to tech though you have to at least get where those guys are comming from. Itâs not because youâre a woman, itâs because itâs tech. You canât assume people know anything about tech otherwise youâll be half way through explaining the thing before you find out that the person youâre explaining it to doesnât know what a right mouse button is and they think the internet is an icon on their desktop. You canât know what everyone else knows so the easiest thing is to assume they know nothing. If you work in IT or any other tech field long enough itâs really easy to wind up talking to everyone like they lick windows just because thatâs the safest thing to assume until proven otherwise.
As far as the IT guys avoiding you, they may just feel awkward for treating you like a window licker, or they may just be leaving you alone because now they know that you know what youâre doing. I work in a different support job now but I still have coworkers that I donât really interact with because I know them and trust them enough to do most stuff on their own. However that also means that if they seek me out then something is very wrong and itâs probably going to be a pain in the ass because if it wasnât then they would have fixed it themselves.
Yeah, they misused the term.
You forgot step #3! Not whine about it online.
He offered, they declined, we didnât need to hear about it. The only reason we heard about it is because he felt slighted, or is trying to make some anti-feminist point. Iâm sad that he felt bad, but not everyone is going to want the free stuff youâre offering. That doesnât make them bad people, or feminism a bad movement.
So if a female biologist who wrote a PHD thesis on the origins of RNA overheard some men talking about the origins of life and when the women wants to chime in because she is a subject matter expert, the men tell her they âdonât need a black womanâs explanationâ. And after being told this she is in the wrong for venting online? Please. Your just as sexist as the people you claim to be opposed to.
You cannot in good faith compare people who have suffered because if their skin color to those who have not, when talking about situations where skin color comes up.
Are both situations racist by pure definition? Sure. Just like punching a man and punching a child are both punching. One is much more wrong.
Fuck all that noiseâŠ
One racially motivated act (say hitting someone because of their skin color) is not any more or less racist depending on the race of the victim. If you believe that, it is by definition a racist value youâre holding.
Thereâs a difference when it comes to contextual, social and historical factors. Like the word cracker is insensitive but doesnât carry the hateful connotations and discrimination that the N-word possesses.
But anyone trying to say itâs more or less appropriate to hate on any single group is just demonstrating their own implicit and explicit racial biases.
This is only true if you donât think the severity of the damage correlates to the severity of the racism. If we go with your definition, then all racism is equivalent, and we canât tell any apart. That seems like an arbitrarily limiting and useless way to think about it. Why would we not want to be able to compare how severe each racist act is?
This is only true if you think all groups are equally strong and equally oppressed by each other and the system. But if thatâs not the case, then I would say itâs OK to be mean to the ones who are stronger or less oppressed. Itâs a means of coping with the inequality. Just like we normal folks like to mock billionaires, while theyâre actively causing suffering.
If one person engages in a racially motivated attack on another individual, it is not any more or less racist if the victim was black or white.
If a man was walking down the street and was beaten to death by an angry mob based entirely on the individualâs race, is it less racially motivated if the victim was one race over another?
Are we punishing people for the sins of our ancestors? Does historic racism against one race justify mistreatment of another thru a retributivist mindset?
This backwards hypervigilant, hypersensitivity and hypocritically encouraging implicit and explicit racism as morally permissible retributivist actions needs to stop. Racism is racism. We need to respect each other as equals if we want racism to stop. Youâre calling for unequal treatment/enforcement of social policies based on oneâs race. Fuck that noise.
Ok, so youâre conflating the terms âracistâ and âracially motivatedâ. Yeah, if you do that, then your point makes sense.
Two different actions with different impacts can be different amounts of racist, but both could be equally racially motivated. For example, itâs way more racist for someone to want to murder a black person than it is for someone to be afraid of a black person and cross the street when theyâre coming. Both are equally racially motivated, but different amounts of racist. See the point? More impact = more racism.
And if we can agree that itâs the âimpactâ that makes something more/less racist, then we can see how a white person saying X and a black person saying X could be different amounts of racist, depending on the impact. If a Latino would call a white person the N word, thatâs less racist than calling a black person that. Right?
I couldnât tell you. All of the racism thatâs present today, and still ongoing, means we donât know the answer to that. Find me a place where this happens and Iâm happy to learn.
Itâs reductive to take that as saying âitâs more appropriate to hate on white peopleâ. They worded it a bit poorly imo but the analogy theyâre responding to is still crappy. There isnât an issue of black women assuming white men donât know the origins of RNA, but there is an issue of men assuming women donât know anything about ânerdyâ things like film. Obviously they assumed wrong with Ed Solomon, but the analogy is still in bad faith because itâs wouldnât be for the same reason.
This specific situation described in this post is an issue of âwomen assuming that the man offering his take on a subject was ignorant about it and driven by machismâ (as thatâs exactly what they accused him off when they called his offer one of âmansplainingâ).
(In fact what makes this a bit of a story is that rather than just saying âNo thanksâ, they instead explicitly accused him of offering an ignorant opinion driven by sexist)
Surelly both the âmen assuming women donât know anything about ânerdyâ things like filmâ and âwomen assuming that men offering their own take on a subject are ignorant and driven by sexismâ are equally wrong?!
How is instantly presuming such bad things about other people purelly on the basis of the number of Y chromossomes they were born with, less sexist if its acting/voicing prejudice (quite literally: they prejudged the other person) from XX persons towards XY persons than if it is from XY persons towards XX persons?
Itâs kinda the whole point of this whole comment thread: prejudice is prejudice and its discriminatory to excuse it for some people but not for others purelly on the bases of some having being born with certain characteristics and the others not.
Youâre making a lot of assumptions about what I said. It doesnât excuse it, I directly said they were wrong in this instance. My comment was directed towards the absurd comparison of women incorrectly assuming a white guy was mansplaining and a black woman who knows about the origins of RNA being dismissed. Itâs really ignorant to equate the widespread, discriminatory assumption of women and black people being stupid and uneducated to two women not giving credit to the MIB writer lol. The former affects your education, livelihood, and career and the latter is funny at best and manufactured rage at worst. They are not at all equivalent.
I just want to clarify this again because this is just a Reddit-tier mentality thatâs super brain dead: just because Iâm saying this guy isnât a tragic victim doesnât mean Iâm a crazy radical feminist that hates men.
As a brown person. It doesnât matter what color you are. Someoneâs race shouldnât matter at all when comparing how fucked up something is unless itâs directly culturally relevant.
A white guy vs black woman RNA paper writing PhD being told gtfo is equally offensive. Race only matter like if you told the white guy vs black woman something like a joke about picking cotton or the white guy a joke about him fucking his sister.
Telling someone âyou donât matter / you are the enemyâ for over a decade and to millions of people is how an actual white nationalist movement became a thing. You can only tell people how horrible and evil they are until they start to believe in it.
What if that person is white of Jewish origin? Or Irish? Heck, I know a Lebanese guy whoâs whiter than me and has red hairâŠ
Mocking a culture that has been abused because of their culture (Jews) is worse than mocking a culture that has not been abused for their culture (Karens). But mocking white looking people for being white isnât the same as their culture. It matters what you mock.
Donât punch down. Itâs not more complicated than that. And if youâre not sure if youâre punching down, donât punch.
Itâs not anti-feminist to laugh at the irony of saying no to the MIB writer clarifying the origins of the story. Itâs just a goofy story lol.
And if he wrote it to be a goofy story, then Iâm with you. I donât know his intent.
I was just saying that bc it seemed too cynical when you said we didnât need to hear about it at all. I guess I donât 100% know his intent either but there hasnât been any reason to doubt it so far.
I never said anything about feminism or that they were bad. Iâm just making an observation on the situation here. I also donât think itâs unreasonable for a person to share an interesting personal experience on a forum designed to share exactly that. And he doesnât sound âslightedâ to me. More amused than anything, because itâs an amusing story.
Itâs a funny anecdote from the creator of Men in Black about being shut down for mansplaining the origins of Men in Black. Yikes.
Yup, and itâs fine, until the guy above me starts to comment on their choice of words.
It can either be a funny note where we all laugh, or it can be an analysis of peopleâs word choice and reaction. When itâs the latter, his whining will be met by my whining, until all the whining stops :-P
They could have ended at âNo thank you.â They decided to go all in on being an asshole to a complete stranger. They should have been called out.