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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.
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.
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 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.
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?!”).
Just ask if they wanna know
Neurodivergents be like: “Wait people don’t want to know this? That’s absurd. So anyway, what I was saying was…”
How many “Men” are just ND?
How many “Men” are just ND?
None. Men are cool to hate, get with the program.
It would be cool if we could keep sexism off lemmy. This isn’t reddit.
“Mansplaining” is sexist. It’s the equivalent of saying women are airheads, or gossips, or talk too much.
Is each man expected to just… Assume that everyone else shares their exact knowledge? Would such an assumption not therefore eliminate most communication entirely?
Or what if we decided to divide up groups by something other than gender. Would it be okay to say “asiansplaining” or “jewsplaining” or “gaysplaoning”?
Can a trans-man mansplaining? Can a trans-woman mansplain? Is there a separate category of “transplaining”?
Here’s an example of “mansplaining”: I’ve been beekeeping for close to ten years. A gentleman joined our group recently who has had maybe a few months’ experience. Wearing a brand new bee suit and gloves, he proceeded to tell me how to carry out a basic hive inspection. He was not assuming I shared his exact knowledge, he was assuming I knew even less than him.
The term mansplaining came about because it encapsulates a very common scenario. I know a few chaps who constantly explain stuff to me that I know a lot more about than they do, and in a very condescending way. One old codger even patted me on the head and said, “A young thing like you wouldn’t know about MS-DOS.” I bought my first computer in 1984.
I haven’t found mansplaining as prevalent among young men, I must say. They seem more open and egalitarian in their approach, more respectful. Though a friend told me, “It’s because you remind them of their granny.”
And yes, women can mansplain
