I saw this in the Men’s RIghts subreddit the other day and I almost wept with joy. Because here, in the wild, was a man mansplaining mansplaining.to feminists.
Naturally, he gets it wrong.
Feminists did not mean by that men explaining “things” to woman “as if women can’t understand”, but men explaining on behalf of women what it’s like being a woman and specifically what’s good for women. Please advise new recruits of the feminist cult (in response they will tell you, “now you are mansplaning again!” you will answer by explaining again they are using it wrong, “again mansplaining”, “again using it wrong”, and so on – keep at it until she gets tired).
In fact, “men explaining ‘things” to woman ‘as if women can’t understand'” is basically the dictionary definition of “mainsplaining.”
As the dictionary dictionarysplains it:
Now, the Reddit mainsplainer’s example of mansplaining isn’t altogether wrongheaded. “Explaining on behalf of women what it’s like being a woman and specifically what’s good for women” is indeed a form of mansplaining, but it doesn’t encompass the entire meaning of the term.
The concept of “mansplaining” — if I might mansplain for a bit myself — was inspired by an essay by Rebecca Solnit called “Men Explain Things to Me.” Her classic example: a man a party who insisted on explaining a book she had written to her.
He was … telling me about the very important book–with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority. …
Mr. Very Important was going on smugly about this book I should have known when Sallie interrupted him to say, “That’s her book.” Or tried to interrupt him anyway.
But he just continued on his way. She had to say, “That’s her book” three or four times before he finally took it in.
Anyway, that’s kind of the ur case of mansplaining (from an essay you should definitely read if you haven’t already).But the word is so perfect a distillation of how a certain type of man communicates with women that the definition has widened a bit since then. Which is how language works; usage changes, dictionary definitions change.
But that’s a whole other can of worms. Are there any linguists here I could explain linguistics to?
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Hello, blockquote monster, my old friend. It’s been a while since you’ve eaten one of my posts!
On any day ending with a “y,” I will likely have had at least 5 women smugly explain things to me before lunch. The myth that women (specifically, those psychopathic turds hiding behind the veneer of morality known as “feminists”) haven’t been using the term “mansplaining,” in bad faith is precisely that and nothing more – a woman will tell the most obnoxious, easily disproven lie a person has heard, and any attempt to disprove the fallacious logic and false assumptions underpinning this nonsense will be met with the thought-terminating cliche “MANSPLAINING!!!” Lying hags.
@Worthless Worked All That Out
I doubt any women around you are smug. You are probably mistaking how grossed out they are at you for smugness.
So all you have now is just name-calling? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of rational mind that could explain it all…
Liars come in all genders and orientations. But here you are essentializing. If you don’t know that concept look it up.
What do you mean “hag”?
Tell me what you think of when you think of that word. I bet you are one of those assholes who thinks all feminist women are non-cis women who aren’t conventionally attractive.
@Worthless Worked All That Out
And you are still just mansplaining mansplaining
@ Worked It All Out for Some Dubious Definition of “All”
I too have had women “femisplain” why the world is the way it is, why I, as a AMAB cis whatever person am the way I am, what I should fix, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. Wanna know something? This is hardly some kind of universal female trait in our society or any society, and furthermore, it doesn’t mean mansplaining doesn’t happen, isn’t an even bigger problem than any number of self righteous women, or is OK to do.
Even if, and I highly doubt it, you work with multiple feminists who constantly lecture you on things they know nothing about but you are a expert on, that has very little to do with mansplaining as a whole across the world.
Hmmm… I also wanted to write a little “two wrongs don’t make a right” and “you attract more flies with honey” paragraph, but I feel like it would be a wasted effort on you and referring to women as flies isn’t all that flattering anyway.
TLDR version: Some women being mean to you doesn’t justify mansplaining overall. Also, you are most likely a lying asshole.
Edit: I notice a lot of “Only Sith deal in absolutes” going around the Manosphere. Perhaps I should lecture everyone here on my revelation…
@ .45
He ran away it seems. He already went into the name-calling pre-flounce mode so he’s probably scuttled away.
@ Stacy
I admit I have limited experience here, but you seem to be in rare form this last few days. Perhaps he doesn’t like that. He did drop off the radar for a minute there, maybe he’ll be back.
@.45
You’re probably picking up on the energy of my future ascension into divinity as a bitch-goddess. Also I just harnessed and stabled a new particularly hot-bodied guy so I’m riding the energetic wave of that too.
My life is obviously busy and although I love this blog, it’s obviously not my main forum to share my energy, who I am and what I do, so when I am here maybe I blaze more than just shine. And I’ve evolved a lot in the past few year’s too as my art has grown.
So using all that to give misogynistic creeps what they have coming on David’s creatively written blog is just organic.
Probably not. He’s probably the kind of idiot who would stare at me if he saw me coming out of my yoga class and just assume I’m some impressionable hot little blonde girl and creepily stare at my ass with NO IDEA what my life is like.
@ .45
Spell Stacey correctly with my “e” in that part of my name when you @ me!
@WorkedAllThatOut:
I’m going purely by the quality and caliber of your posts here, but my guess is that women are explaining things to you in simple terms because you’re just not very bright.
@Stacey
“He’s probably the kind of idiot who would stare at me if he saw me coming out of my yoga class and just assume I’m some impressionable hot little blonde girl and creepily stare at my ass with NO IDEA what my life is like.”
Some vivid imagination you’ve got there. When you go around inventing scenarios involving me in your head like that, you have hardly any grounds to assert that I’M the creep; frankly, I don’t appreciate being in these little hyper-specific imaginings of yours. It’s actually quite off-putting, and decreases my willingness to engage with you in any meaningful way (I’m partial to that, actually).
@Worthless Worked All That Out
You jerk, learn the difference between inventing a scenario, which I did not do,, and making a reasonable conjecture based upon evidence, which is exactly what I did. The evidence is how you talk about women.
I have plenty of grounds to conjecture that you are likely a creep. I just explained that.
Nice try on the sexist gaslighting language, jerk. I easily recognize it and call it out. Shut up!!
And in person my “shut up!” would be screamed and delivered with a dramatic and fucking pretty damn loud and scary sounding overhand flick. Yes, I carry a real bullwhip and no I don’t use it to physically assault anyone but I do crack it in conversation for emphasis and I damn near always get my way and jerks like you are usually scared off anyway.
I don’t care what you find off-putting!!! I don’t care about your willingness to do whatever the hell you think engaging meaningfully means because from your posts here you obviously have no idea what that means!!!
And even if you WERE a decent person, which you clearly are NOT, I am only interested in cis men for one reason: as worshippers or as people who do something that directly or indirectly helps me gets me the worshippers that I want, and even decent men who are potential worshippers I still JUDGE BY PHYSICAL APPEARANCE. You are so far from being in any category that would make me care whether or not you are “willing to engage” it’s both absurd and infuriating!
A sexist jerk like you daring to speak directly to a living goddess like myself is offensive anyway.
This part was the “tell.”
Like I wouldn’t pick up on that, hah.
Oh, no! The troll might be put off and cease to engage with us if we imagine hyper specific scenarios in which he does not appear as the hero!
Quick! You know what to do!
Me, personally, I’m imagining TrollBoy trying to price compare two different brands of maple syrup, dropping a jar, then slipping on the syrup, banging his head on the floor and suffering a brain injury leaving him unable to form english language sounds except in the form of ABBA lyrics.
@Stacey
By “I’m partial to that, actually,” I mean that I’m actually partial to NOT dealing with you if you can’t be reasonable. You can’t go on flattering yourself like that covered in the dirt from the hole you keep digging yourself.
P.S. Pretty sure that’s not how “gaslighting” works. Maybe I can ask one of your associates for an example that you’ve put them through?
@Worthless Worked All That Out
And yet…you keep trying to engage!
I’m being entirely reasonable given what you have revealed about your attitudes towards women and most regulars here know that.
I owe you nothing.
Also far from being in a hole I’m often on a pedestal. You are so ridiculous without any self-awareness.
And there’s still lots of evidence for my earlier conjectures.
Any idea what troll-creep is talking about here?
I think I know, from experience.
@Crip Dyke
Awesome! Love it.
@Stacey
I’m accusing you of having subjected at least one of your “worshippers” to gaslighting at some point; what kind of “goddess” are you that you have the reading comprehension of a squirrel?
I have very important matters to attend to from here on out. As of now, this discussion is over.
I don’t think it’s worth the time to try to explain to the troll to what my guys are to me, who they are, how they become devoted to me and what we do.
If somebody who knows me wants to try go ahead but he very likely won’t get it and I suspect the question is really just a cover for an attempt to elicit details and examples to satisfy creepy curiosity about something the troll finds (probably creepily?) interesting but isn’t anywhere near evolved enough to handle in an actual connection.
And…a flounce! Voila!
@ TyrantBitchGoddessStacey
Sorry, will be more careful in the future. (I almost went with “As you command”, but over text that might come across with an unintended mocking tone.)
@ Worked Some of It Out
“Very important”? Which video game?
Not that my opinion is particularly important, but I do want to add I was also concerned with the direction the thread was going in, and am grateful to Some Chick, WWTH, and Stacey (and anyone else I may have missed) for redirecting it.
I also want to address your post, Allandrel, as I am also autistic, and I worry a lot about accidentally being rude or condescending as I get to know someone and maybe get caught up in telling them about a special interest or favorite topic. However, I imagine talking in depth because you genuinely love a subject and explaining something to demonstrate your intellectual superiority send *very* different nonverbal signals that most people will easily pick up on. This has been true in my experience, though I know everyone’s experiences are different.
The awfulness of objectionable males like that troll is one reason I’m definitely getting hooves, horns and a tail.