Thursday, October 13, 2016

Mansplaining

Reference to earlier blogpost: http://thenewteddy.blogspot.ca/2016/07/pedantic.html


This has been cropping up more and more so I thought I'd do a little post here so I don't have to explain the same basic facts over and over.


So what is Mansplaining?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining

to explain something to someone, typically a man to woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing."

 "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman"


While the wiki article says "typically" and "often", the origin of the term is with the context of "always"
The origin section (at the time of writing this blogpost) clearly details this with phrases like

 whereupon the man cut her off and asked if she had "heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year" – not considering that it might be (as, in fact, it was) Solnit's book.
implication: he did this because she was a woman

  she did not use the wordmansplaining, but described the phenomenon as "something every woman knows."


So we've confirmed this is something done by a man to a woman

Why is that important? Well consider what happens if this is done by a man to a man

You might not think much, but consider that this can not be something done by a woman because of the word "man".



Either way, this word implies the person committing the act is sexist.



As such, this is either defined, as confirmed, as something done by a man to a woman, or, is something that only Men do.

Frankly the latter is horrifically sexist. It would imply, heavily, that all pedantic men are, in fact, sexist, while not implying the same for pedantic women, or pedantic persons of other gender persuasions. It also goes beyond implying that being pedantic is wrong (check the link at the top of this post for my rebuttal to that) into suggesting that you are sexist just for being a pedant. 

In the words of those in my social circles, fuck that noise.

1 comment:

  1. tl;dr if you use mansplain in the context of a man to another man you are an asshole

    ReplyDelete