Why you'll never hear this Feminist use the word "Mansplain"... [View all]

[Bonobo]

http://www.xojane.com/issues/why-you-ll-never-hear-me-use-term-mansplain

“Mansplaining” -- for which I will cease using scare quotes forthwith -- is an internet-born term for what happens when a dude comes into a conversation, usually online, usually happening between a group of women, and proceeds to commandeer the discussion to explain to said women things that they already know. The concept seems to have originated with Rebecca Solnit’s 2008 article in the Los Angeles Times, “Men who explain things to me,” in which she recounts an experience at a dinner party where a male guest repeatedly spoke over her to extol the virtues of a very important book on a particular subject, unaware, in spite of Solnit’s attempts to tell him otherwise, that it was a book of which she was the author.

While the early concept of “men who explain things” may have come from Rebecca Solnit, the precise origins of mansplain-as-portmanteau are a murky subject. I took to Twitter to crowdsource the first use and while we couldn’t quite arrive at a definitive moment, the term seems to have come into common use amongst internet feminists around 2010, with much of its momentum coming from this post on ScienceBlogs. By this point, the definition had been expanded a bit:

Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate “facts” about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.

Bonus points if he is explaining how you are wrong about something being sexist!

I hate the word “mansplain.” I’ve never liked it; I didn’t like it even when it was gaily burning through feminist conversations like a cleansing fire lighting up all the annoying crap guys say and do when they feel threatened by feminism, or by feminists. A guy has injected himself into your conversation to tell you why you’re all being unreasonable? MANSPLAINER! It was funny, and empowering, a self-aware scarlet M applied to anyone who failed to choose his words with care.

For one, it’s mad essentialist, and by this I mean it assumes a certain universal set of truths shared by all men. Men mansplain, because they are men, and this is an attribute of a masculine gender. Except there are lots of men who don’t mansplain, and who would rightly be a little irritated by the assumption that something in their chromosomes or genitalia or gender identity somehow operates to make them all susceptible to a particular shared behavior.

The truth is anyone, regardless of gender, can be guilty of this incredibly annoying, frustrating, and dismissive conduct. While it’s certainly powered by sexism, men are not its sole proprietors -- have you heard some of the arguments I’ve gotten from women on stuff relating to body image, about which I evidently know absolutely nothing of merit despite making it my primary field of work for well over a decade? -- and it’s no more acceptable if it’s coming from a non-man.