The Dicktionary
Please do not use the word "mansplain." It makes me want to hurt you. I'm sure other people feel the same way.
The Dicktionary
Please do not use the word "mansplain." It makes me want to hurt you. I'm sure other people feel the same way.
Here's a feminist, but a married feminist, with a pretty reasonable explanation:
http://www.xojane.com/issues/why-you-ll-never-hear-me-use-term-mansplain
Of coure, that doesn't mean anyone at xojane took her advice...
jerry at October 30, 2013 9:19 AM
appending "man" to the front of anything to demonize or subtly humiliate... is a problem I would have... [manties, murse, mansplaining...]
even the article that Jerry linked to makes some pretty straight up suppositions, that are at the heart of the problem.
Seems like this situation is when an individual thinks that they alone have the understanding of an issue and nobody, but certainly nobody of your gender could possibly understand it.
Sounds like it could cut both ways, no?
This falls in the falsehood that only a man could be sexist, and only a white could be racist, etc...
somewhere along the way I realized how I tend to reply...
"you couldn't possibly understand X!"
'okay, I'll buy that, can you explain it to me?'
". . . . ."
'mmm, I see.'
SwissArmyD at October 30, 2013 10:08 AM
There are cases where the term fits, but now its used to dismiss anything a man says, regardless of how he says it. It's just a way of saying 'f*ck you and shut up because you're a man'. And it's usually coming from the type of woman who would go ape sh*t if a man dismissed a woman that way.
pikachu at October 30, 2013 10:12 AM
Will you hold it against me if I use womansplain?
I R A Darth Aggie at October 30, 2013 10:17 AM
And it's usually coming from the type of woman who would go ape sh*t if a man dismissed a woman that way.
That's how you can tell if something is (racist|sexist|something-ist): if you reverse the parties and you still find the situation offensive, it probably is offensive. If your reaction changes, then it probably isn't and you're just a garden variety hypocrite.
I R A Darth Aggie at October 30, 2013 10:25 AM
The mansplain is a vast grassy area outside of Mannheim.
Thus the name.
Sigivald at October 30, 2013 11:59 AM
The lady rain is pain that falls mainly on the mansplain.
pikachu at October 30, 2013 12:24 PM
I'd managed to never hear the term mansplain until today. Thanks a lot. I don't think womansplain is likely. It's too long for today's abbreviated society. Besides being as stupid as mansplain.
Speaking of idiot terms, is saying "hashtag" really a thing now, or is it just the media trying too hard again?
Pricklypear at October 30, 2013 12:36 PM
Okay, I promise to never use mansplain, if we can get our daily dose of specklebelly, aka Aida.
Annie at October 30, 2013 3:35 PM
Diminutive and "cutesy" nickname are used to diminish the other party whose position one wants to undermine.
It's straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.
"Mapsplaining" is a way of implying watching a man explain something is like watching the dog try to play the violin. He's enthusiastic about it, but too stupid to ever actually master the subject.
And yes, like the woman in the story, I'd get a bit peeved if someone steamrolled me trying to play the expert on my own book to one-up me. But that behavior was on that guy, not men in general.
She ain't the first to suffer this. And she won't be the last. And just because she can get a group of women together to commiserate doesn't mean it's a gender-bias thing.
Oh, by the way, women do the same thing to men in their own way.
An article not too long ago reported a study that determined that women often say that men cannot do domestic chores correctly because men don't do them the way the women think they should be done; or men who may be inexperienced in doing the particular chore, make a mistake. Women are then quick to take over and dismiss the men as incompetent. As a result, these women find themselves burdened with the majority of the domestic chores and stressed because they feel their men won't help them. This dynamic was especially prevalent with childcare duties.
Yet, when men were left to become adept at diapering a baby, doing a load of laundry, or performing other domestic chores, they generally succeeded. One woman in the article admitted that it bugged her that, when she stopped interfering, her husband was actually better at childcare duties than she was. She felt her gender role was being usurped.
Men in general do need to adjust to women having technical expertise and accept that it doesn't impugn their manhood to have a women know more about technical matters than they do.
And women need to get over the us versus them foundation of '60s feminism. Sometimes the guy who's a jerk to you is just a jerk, not the vanguard of paternalistic sexism.
Conan the Grammarian at October 30, 2013 4:47 PM
Hear, hear.
Jim P. at October 30, 2013 5:48 PM
"An article not too long ago reported a study that determined that women often say that men cannot do domestic chores correctly because men don't do them the way the women think they should be done."
My ex picked a major histrionic fight with me because she didn't like the way I loaded the silverware into the dishwasher. That was where it started to sink into my brain how badly personality disordered she was. Four months later, we were divorced.
Cousin Dave at October 31, 2013 7:02 AM
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