Another HUGE VICTORY for Men’s Rights! Some guy on the internet told a woman that the term “mansplaining” is mean to men! And then he used the “c-word” a couple of times!
At first glance, this might not be seen as the HUGE VICTORY that it truly is, men’s rights-wise, but get this! The guy in question is the guy who made Minecraft! A VIDEO GAME that LOTS OF PEOPLE LIKE. Which makes his opinion on this subject really really super important, for some reason.
Naturally, the fellas who hang out in the Men’s Rights subreddit understand what a TRIUMPH this is for men’s rights. There are currently three posts on this WORLD HISTORIC EVENT in the subreddit’s top ten.
Over in KotakuInAction,the main GamerGate hangout on Reddit, the regulars are if anything even more AWAKE to this monumental achievement for all mankind. They’ve got FOUR posts on it in their top ten.
So let’s check out the Minecraft dude’s carefully reasoned argument, which he Tweeted out yesterday.
You can tell he’s totally right about this, and also quite BRAVE, because he got 3700 likes and retweets for it.
Persson went on to explain his PERFECT MANLOGIC in more detail.
Ha ha! Because this explainy thing that men do to women constantly but that women do to men pretty rarely is equivalent to calling car crashes “womendriving” because, ha ha, women can’t drive and are responsible for 90% of all car crashes no wait, that’s not even remotely true; the demographic group that is responsible for far more than their share of accidents is teenagers.
When one Twitterer suggested it might perhaps behoove him to listen to women on this issue, Persson quickly saw through this MISANDRIST OPPRESSION of men who want to talk pretty much constantly.
Actually, Mr. Persson, as I have learned from years of doing this blog, there is no possible way to shut up men who want to inform you at great length of their opinions about feminism and what women are doing wrong. You can ban them from your comments, sure, but some of them will keep trying to post comments for months if not years afterwards.
And certainly Mr. Persson felt no need to shut up. Instead, he kicked his MANLOGICAL STEM LOGIC up a notch by unleashing the ultimate tool in the MANLOGICAL STEM LOGICKING toolkit. I refer, of course, to the c-word.
Here he applied the MANLOGIC STEM LOGICKING directly:
But don’t worry, gals! He’s totally got your back! He’s an EQUALITYIST who’s all for equality between the genders and not for sexism at all!
Huh. Apparently being into “equal rights and against sexism” requires one to go around calling women the c-word, which is TOTALLY NOT SEXIST because sometimes men get called “dick” which is TOTALLY the equivalent of the c-word., I mean it’s not like the c-word is widely considered the worst possible insult in the English language or anything.
Luckily, we have a KotakiInAction commenter called DaedLizrad to Gatersplain to us why it’s totally ok to refer to women with that special word.
Why is calling a man dick acceptable but dropping the c-bomb(seriously your too cowardly to use the word outside a quote?) is so reprehensible?
Its likely to be because of gynocentrism, even if you feminists refuse to accept(or even entertain the possibility) that society cares more about women than men you cannot convince me that feminists, both female and male, don’t clearly value women more than men, that is why treatment of a woman in the same exact way as a man is considered more abusive, because you don’t care about men as much as women.
You sit there and defend a sexist word designed to shame men for speaking to women about any topic, it is only used to tell men to shut up, like it was being used to there against Notch.
You sit there using and excusing gendered slurs against men while clutching your pearls screaming “think of the women” to the same treatment aimed at women, you feminists are all gynocentric and you c*nts can f*ck right off with your double standards.
Meanwhile, fellow KiAer Saddex took a moment of his time to let us in on what “mainsplaining” ACTUALLY is:
The thing with mansplaining is that, just with religion, it’s an unfalsefiable hypothesis. There is really no way to prove that it’s actually a real thing. Sure, might be a couple of assholes out there, but isn’t that same with women as well? Are you sure that if a man, or woman talks condescending to you, that it must be because of your gender? What about your personality, or the actual context? Did you say something just before that would be considered stupid by other people?…
I am going to treat people who tries to convince me that mansplaining actually is real thing like I treat people who try to convince me that god is real. You can believe if you wish but I rely on proof, and the burden of proof lies on the believer. It’s so satisfying to know that these people act just like religious extremists, should be compared to those and that you can use very similar argumentation to debunk what they’re saying.
Yes, what better way to debunk those ladies who get mansplained constantly than telling them they’re irrational fanatics who are seeing things that aren’t there, and that they probably brought this totally imaginary thing on themselves anyway by being such, well, the c-word thing.
All in all, an outstanding victory for the forces of Men’s Rightness and Ethics in Guys Who Make Video Games Calling Women the C-word.
@ EJ (The Other One)
The crazy thing is I agree with all of these people, I agree that women in general are, in society, treated worse than men, all I’m saying is that the linguistics to the word make it appear that the term could only be used to describe a man. when in fact I have been *splained to before by the opposite sex, and I agree that it fucking sucks, but let’s not ignore the fact that the wording does not help the cause in a positive light. Because to an outside person, it appears that the term could only ever be used to describe men, when my entire relationship with one girl was *splain central.
That’s the reason I disagree with the term’s etymology, but I do agree with the ideology of equality, and I will continue to vote for, and push for people that want just that. Because some day I may have a daughter, and I want her to have an ever better chance at a good life than I have.
Okay, with the greatest goodwill in the world, I think you’re missing the point here.
*Splaining is a mixture of two factors:
– 1) Someone being an asshole by assuming that you don’t know stuff.
– 2) That person making that assumption because they are more privileged, rather than because they’re just an asshole.
That relationship sounds annoying, and I completely understand that it’s offensive as hell and you have my sympathies; but it’s not *splaining because it does not fit the second part of the definition. It’s just her being an asshole.
If I gave this speech to a woman who didn’t know any of this stuff, it would be me being a sexist. If I gave this speech to a man who knew it all already, it would be me being an asshole. If, however, I gave it to a woman who knew it all already, I would be mansplaining.
Therefore:
– Because our society privileges men over women, there is such a thing as mansplaining.
– Because our society privileges white people over black people, there is such a thing as whitesplaining.
– And so on. There will be age-related forms of splaining, religious forms of spaining, able-bodied versus disabled splaining, and doubtless many others.
However, because each form of privilege is different and unique, they are specific things. Mansplaining is inherently different from whitesplaining because the way society teaches men to see women is inherently different from the way society teaches white people to see people of colour. Therefore, it is useful to have specific terms for them so that they can be referred to, recognised and studied.
Questions?
Anyone of any gender can be condescending to anyone of a gender.
That’s not what mansplaining is. Seriously. There’s several explanations of what mansplaining is in this very thread. Including the one I just provided. Apparently you chose to only listen to the poster who identified himself as male.
Funny, that.
> Man comes in to a conversation about mansplaining.
> Proceeds to mansplain to the group of people, who are often assumed to be 100% female, what the person who started the conversation actually meant, and then tries to condescendingly explain why mansplaining is totes a sexist term against men u guis, and you need to be more inclusive to men in feminism because reasons!
> Fails to see the irony, even when pointed out by other commenters.
Putting aside the obvious “Mansplainer Mansplains Mansplaining to Women Who Are Concerned About the Sexism Behind Mansplaining for the Billionth Time” stuff for a moment, there’s something else I’d like to address, and I’m only going to say this once: Feminism isn’t about men. And coming in here and demanding that we be more inclusive to men otherwise we’re “not really for equality” is bullshit.
Do you walk up to a group dedicated to helping black people with inequality and demand that they offer to include white people in their group and give them equal importance in discussions about racism? Do you walk up to a transgender rights group and demand that they offer to include cis people in their group and give them equal importance in conversations about transphobia? Do you walk up to another LGBTQA+ group and demand that they include straight people in their group and give them equal importance in discussions about homophobia, biphobia, etc.?
And would you insist that any of these groups isn’t “really about equality” if they didn’t include people that they obviously are not there for?
If the answer to these questions is “no”, then why the fuck do you expect feminists to give you inclusion and equal importance in conversations about sexism against women when you’re not a woman?
Don’t worry, I already know the answer: Because you’re still under the (rather sexist) belief that you, as a man, know more about everything than a woman does, including her own life experiences. Whether you know it or not.
(And thus, we have come full circle back to the topic of mansplaining.)
Now, allow me to make an addendum here: Men can contribute to the conversation when it comes to sexism. I’m not going to deny this. Hell, this website is run by a man, and many of our regular (and wonderful) commenters are indeed men, and they do add to the conversation, and yes, sometimes they are even more knowledgeable about specific things than some of our women and non-binary commenters.
However, they do something you do not: They listen when they need to, and understand that they don’t know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of sexism. They don’t try to dominate the conversation when it comes to sexism, and they certainly don’t try to tell anyone here that they don’t know their own life experiences or feelings on the subject at hand.
Men (cisgendered men, for the most part) do NOT experience sexism. They experience a lot of detrimental things because of their gender, like toxic masculinity, but they do NOT experience sexism, despite people trying to constantly label Toxic Masculinity as such. Therefore, cis-men do not have equal say in discussions about sexism as women, as far as I’m concerned.
Feminism can, and does, help cis-men. A lot of feminism’s goals undoubtedly benefit cis-men. (For instance, feminists are far more sympathetic to male rape victims than any of their “men’s rights activists” counterparts, in my experience.)
But this isn’t about you, William. This isn’t about men as a whole.
It’s about what you and other men are doing, knowingly so or not, and why it’s bullshit. And no, pointing out when you’re doing something sexist isn’t sexist.
Perhaps you could learn a hell of a lot more if you decided to listen to other people (women) on the subject instead of insist on saying your piece because you think you know better.
As for your example about ‘splaining, I agree with EJ: That woman was just being a condescending asshole. She couldn’t ‘splain things to you because she doesn’t hold privilege over you. In fact, you hold privilege over her, and had the roles been switched, you would have indeed fit the definition of ‘splaining.
We need a word that means “to write something you thought was on fleek, only to have Paradoxy post something right after you which makes you look like an amateur in comparison; and then you realise that the only reason you got in first is because she was busy writing her amazing post, and you should probably have stayed quiet.”
I suggest “Paradoxically Eclipsed” or “paraclipsed.”
@EJ
Nah, he’ll read yours and ignore hers, so it’s good to have both.
@weirwood
To be fair I have commented on other ladies in this thread, I have read your definition, and have listened, what I was saying is that the general public will only read that wiki, and assume that is the only definition. My issue then is targeted at the wiki for being incorrect then, not at you or any of the other fine ladies in this thread.
@EJ I’m glad you took the time to write all of that out, because it was a much kinder post than some I have been reading, I would say she was *splaining however because often she had a higher grade(in school , long time ago, no hard feelings toward her now) than myself, and tried to use that as leverage to prove all of her points, which means she felt that she was smarter than I was in most cases, I would consider that in itself a form of splaining. But then again maybe it isn’t, but I tell you it is at least similar in a lot of aspects.
Like fucking clockwork.
@William
Please, keep going
Ah, that makes sense. In that case, what you’re coming up against is what we call intersectionality.
Firstly, my condolescences, it sounds like a shitty relationship. I’m glad you got out and I’m glad there are no hard feelings.
Secondly, what she was doing to you was indeed splaining: she was privileged (because she was better educated in some fields) and this made her assume that she knew better than you do about everything. I’ll take a guess that she only saw it as an isolated series of incidents and disliked it when you suggested that it was a pattern?
Let’s talk about privilege and intersectionality, because it seems to be a concept you’re still unsure about. Let me explain this via a f’rinstance.
I have large feet, and wear big shoes. Because of this, when I step on someone else’s foot it hurts them far more than if someone smaller and lighter steps on their foot. As a result, I have to be far more careful than most people.
“That’s not fair”, I might say, “Why do I have to be more careful than others? They get to make mistakes and be careless, why can’t I?” The answer is, because when I make a mistake it hurts more; and that’s due to an accident of birth.
Likewise, I am white and male and heterosexual and able-bodied and educated and dot dot dot. I have a tremendous amount of privilege. This means that it is very easy for me to hurt people by my carelessness, emotional as well as physical, which means that if I don’t want to hurt people I have to be one tiptoe-ing-around-things motherfucker.
I also stutter. Because of this strangers occasionally think that I am stupid, which I would find hilarious if it wasn’t so aggravating. This is a form of privilege which I do not have.
Does this mean that me stepping on people’s toes hurts them less? Hell no. Does me having big feet mean that it’s okay for people to mock my speech impediment? Hell no. They are separate issues, which come up differently at different times. Indeed, it’s possible for both to come up at once, and when that happens it complicates things enormously.
So. There is such a thing as mansplaining. You have done it in this thread. There is also such a thing as being education-splained to. You have had it done to you. Both suck when you’re not the one doing it. Both are invisible when you are the one doing it. It is important not to do them, so if you have metaphorical big stompy feet of privilege, take care of where you put them.
Let’s also take a moment to talk about kindness.
When you came into this thread, you mansplained to people. Ironically, you did it about mansplaining, which makes it hilarious.
This does not mean you are a bad person. It means that you did a bad thing. There’s a distinction. You didn’t do the bad thing because you’re evil; you did it because you hit a momentary perfect storm of assholish behaviour and sexism.
As a result, people are pissed with you, and they have every right to be. Being angry is the appropriate response. If you expect kindness and patience when you stand on someone’s foot, your sense of judgment is off; especially if you’re wearing the big stompy shoes of privilege.
Mansplaining is two things: assholishness and sexism.
We can’t do anything about assholishness. It’s a human trait. Some people are assholes more often, some people less often, but it comes and goes. We are all assholes at times. What’s important is that we try to overcome it with compassion and patience and thinking before we put our hands on our keyboards.
On the other hand, sexism is something we can do something about. It’s not a character trait, it’s an infection. I have it too. We all have it. We all make assumptions about people based upon their gender, because human minds are pattern-matching machines and are built to make assumptions. However, we can overcome this. There is a cure.
The cure is long and hard and painful and involves listening to people, empathising with them, and examining your own behaviour. The first part of that is to acknowledge that you have the infection.
Say it with me: I am a sexist. I desire not to be a sexist, and in order to do so I have to acknowledge that I am infected.
It’s true for me as well as it is for you. The cure is not easy. If you want to take it with me, you’d be very welcome. There are other men, identifying-as-male and AMAB people on this website who are taking it every day. We do what we can. We help each other.
I am a kind man, when I can be. But it is important to understand that this is because I choose to be, not because anyone innately deserves kindness. You came in being both a sexist and an asshole. Being shouted at and mocked was the appropriate response.
Um, no.
http://displaynote.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Brienne-Im-No-Lady-About.me_.gif
You are in no position to complain about women being condescending after that shit. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if your ex wasn’t splainy at all. She probably just had you refuse to listen to her or take her seriously one too many times and stopped putting up with it.
As a man, EJ does not experience misogyny and is in a better position to react to it in a calm manner. That is how he chooses to deal with trolls and clueless mansplainers. One of his male privileges is that other men listen to him. Since I do experience misogyny, it frustrates me and in my experience, trying to educate willfully ignorant men leads nowhere. 99% of you are unwilling to listen and learn from women anyway, so why bother being nice and patient? Why waste my time giving you lengthy explanations that you almost certainly will dismiss out of hand? This is a misogyny mocking site, not a feminism 101 site and it’s perfectly valid to react to your PRATTs with mockery and annoyance. It’s not my problem or the problem of anyone else here that you were too lazy to do anything but read a brief wiki definition of mansplaining before attempting to discuss it.
ETA: Ninja’d on some of the second part of my post!
@all
I apologize for me sounding intensive to anyone, my main quarrel in all of this is just a confusion of the terminology, which I, and any other person who would look at the term’s definition elsewhere, would not have the same community of people to explain their case, I have read everything in this post in full, and I have taken all of what you said into consideration, and I realize that what some of what I said does sound insensitive, but know, I didn’t mean to make that the case. I just wanted to say that I generally dislike the wording of this very real thing that I understand does happen, don’t get me wrong, I’m here like any other outside person reading this, just trying to understand it all. That’s why I said EJ was being more polite because he is being a little kinder than some on this thread, and I know you have been riled up by previous posters so your patience is a lot more thin, and I get that. But know this in general had we all been standing in a room together, and I were able to better word myself, trust me I know I’m not the best writer in the world. I feel as though I would have been better able to say my issue in all of this, and I don’t feel as though we would have experienced this on such a negative level. I feel in general we as humans end up taking certain things out of context more often when we read something vs. actually hearing someone speak about a topic.Again I apologize for upsetting any of you, but know that really wasn’t what I wanted to do.
Ah well, I tried.
This is going to become one of those threads that never dies, isn’t it? I can just imagine. Offended splainy dudes as far as the eye can see.
I realize that Google results differ by the region of the person doing the search, but they are relatively uniform. Just on the first page of Google results for “mansplaining” I got a tumblr full of women recounting their experiences with mansplaining, an Atlantic article detailing the history of the term, and an article about Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, which is what started the term. There were also a couple of clickbait posts whinging about the word. If you were confused about the term, why couldn’t you have clicked on some Google hits?
Why should any of us care whether you like the wording? It’s a word women use to explain a misogynistic experience we commonly have. As PI already said, feminism is not about men. Instead of whining about how you don’t like the term, you should ask yourself why the term is making you feel defensive. Given your behavior here, it’s likely because mansplaining to women is something you do. The good news is, now you know and can change it. Being an ally means being uncomfortable sometimes. If you choose to, you can use that discomfort as an opportunity to become a better person.
I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that if I were you. It’s not that we misunderstood you. Your posts are clear enough. The fact that you feel, as a man, that you have any right to take issue with how women discuss their experiences with misogyny? That’s the problem here. Social justice movements aren’t about coddling members of the privilege class.
Martin Luther King Jr was obviously referring to racism in his letter from jail in Birmingham, but this can be applied to any other kind of oppression.
A privileged person does real harm to the cause of the oppressed when they claim to be on their side and yet are placing their own feelings above everything else. Feminism doesn’t need to seek men’s permission, anti-racism movements don’t need to seek the approval of white people, trans rights causes don’t need to prioritize cis people etc. If you think they do, you are part of the problem.
I somewhat appreciate the apology, but it’s a little bit of a “sorry you’re offended” type of apology and I don’t really think you get it yet. If you truly do want to learn, feel free to lurk. You’ll learn a lot from people here.
Edit button isn’t showing up, but the whole MLK letter is worth reading
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
I don’t know what’s sadder: That William stuck to the approved script so thoroughly that he ignored PI and buddied up to EJ even after I called it, or that he’s part of an online keyboard “Movement” that hasn’t figured out how sentences and paragraphs work yet.
There’s a saying, William, that I feel applies to you here: “A hit dog hollers”.
In other words, you seem to be taking offense at “mansplaining” because you feel like it targets you, as a man.
Though, I would posit that if you don’t mansplain, why should it bother you so much what word we use? If it isn’t about you, and you aren’t like that, and you know what it’s like and you know it’s bad, why are you so offended by the word itself?
Oh, and no, we don’t accept “I just worded it improperly, and you would totally get it and agree with me, or at least not be so impatient with me if I just said it better” as a proper excuse for one’s negative actions around here.
We know what you meant. We don’t agree with you.
There’s another saying, that I personally enjoy saying, that also applies here: “Intention isn’t magic”.
I don’t care if your intention wasn’t to be rude and insensitive, you still were. To further EJ’s example, if I may be so bold:
Say EJ did step on someone’s foot. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t mean to step on that person’s foot, that person is still in pain. That person is still feeling the consequences of EJ’s action of stepping on their foot, therefore EJ’s intent to not step on their foot at all is meaningless.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” and all that.
Same goes for mansplaining. It may be your intent to just educate someone and not to be sexist at all, but the fact of the matter is, the person you’re mansplaining to is still feeling irritated and upset by you, and you’re still contributing to a very sexist problem in society.
And by refusing to listen and insist that you’re right and you just “didn’t word it right”, you’re still contributing. Because instead of stepping back and assessing yourself, you’re still insisting the problem with your actions was on our end, not yours, despite the fact that your actions were sexist.
Intention isn’t magic. It’s nothing. Especially after the fact.
EDIT: Damn, ninja’d by WWTH on a lot of this. XD
Kind of OT, but if I wrote a story, do you think I should try and be “diverse” even though I’m a cis, moooooostly het white guy? I don’t think I could write about issues well, and so I’d rather not include political stuff that I don’t have any real stake or experience in.
I usually don’t tend to take part in discussions about terminology or real life problems when I don’t have a real connection to the issue(s) at hand, mainly so that I don’t end up coming across as a complete and utter asshat. Which makes it all the more cringey for me to see men (and it is almost always men) come into threads like this and try to “educate” the Mammotheers about things. It really shouldn’t be this difficult to learn how to not be a d*ck (apologies to Adam Hills for stealing his material).
If I may: If you’re not comfortable including “political stuff” or “issues” in your writings, then I would most definitely not try to diversify, or at the very least, do quite a bit of research before you do, and find out how the people you wish to emulate in your stories would feel about certain issues that will, almost assuredly, come up, depending on the story being written.
Though, I will also say that I personally don’t really like it when issues I face as a person (Sexism, homophobia, etc.) are classified as “political”. It rather smacks of the nonsense argument of “Including these characters is just politics!” I see from many Status-Quo Warriors who are throwing tantrums because there is not a Cishet White Male Protagonist in a piece of media.
Of course, I feel that way mostly because I don’t feel like my existence is “political” in nature.
@FrickleFrackle:
Yes. If you write about white guys then your book will end up only being accessible to white guys.
Worse, the book will end up being very accessible and very enjoyed by the sort of white guys who like books that don’t have any diversity in them. They’ll think of your book as being a welcome relief from the unceasing schemes of the SJWs, and will think of you as one of their own.
1) You’ll need to do a looooooot of research to reasonably pull it off. 2) Chances are that despite point 1, you won’t be able to nail it if you don’t have the same experience. I’d suggest stay away from it to be honest, especially if it’s political as well.
never mind this never happened i shouldn’t talk about this