Can someone mansplain mansplaining to me? It seems like any time someone with a beard inhales sharply.

Kind of like how manspreading is men sitting down.

And the male gaze is men looking at things.

I’m memestealing this!
From one thief to another, cool.

Probably bait, but I’ll take it anyways.

Mansplaining is when you make an assumption that a woman doesn’t know something basic and fundamental about a topic, and then explain it to them like they’re an idiot or a child. You may not even be aware you’re doing it as a man, because misogyny is ingrained into our culture and social conditioning. Such is the nature of microaggressions; you do them without realizing, because it’s a bias that has become so baked into your worldview as to become subconscious.

It’s easy to avoid doing, though. Anytime you’re about to explain something, to a woman or otherwise, simply first ask if they are familiar with ‘x topic’. If the answer is yes, proceed without explanation, if the answer is no, explain as you would to anyone else without condescension. It’s literally that easy.

“Doesn’t know something basic and fundamental”?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining

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

He didn’t know she was the author. I mean, that’s a pretty simple mistake to make. I wouldn’t assume someone I’m casually speaking to at a party is the author of the particular book on the particular subject we are chatting about. What are the odds?

But somehow this is extrapolated to any time any man monologues. And implicitly that only men do this, and only to women. Let me blow your mind: sometimes men bloviate to other men. And sometimes women do this to men.

Mansplaining - Wikipedia

Funny, you cut off the important bit right before that quote where the man cut her off as she was about to explain her most recent book. Here’s a bit of context:

“She began to talk about her most recent, on Eadweard Muybridge, 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.

See how the context changes the situation? She was already speaking, and the man cut her off, assuming she was unaware, and explained to her something that he would have learned to be unnecessary if he had simply treated her as a conversation partner to be listened to, rather than something to be narrated at.

I can already tell I’m not going to be able to convince you, though. In order to support your point (and, perhaps, avoid any self-reflection) you’ve ignored nuance - generally bad practice when talking about the intricacies of social interaction. Certainly, men monologue to men, men monologue to women, women monologue to men, and women monologue to women, but much like when people equivocate the fear of sexual assault to the fear of false accusations, the thing being ignored is the amount that these things happen; they are not equivalent.

To be absolutely clear: I am a man. An autistic man, even. One who loves to learn, loves to info-dump, and has more female friends than male. In all my time info-dumping to my female friends, I have never once been accused of mansplaining, because I ask before I explain to ascertain their knowledge, and I actually listen when they speak.

Funny how that works.

I genuinely don’t understand what difference it makes. She began to explain, implying she hadn’t said she was the author of the book he had locked and loaded. He cut her off. This could either be excitement on the topic they both had interest in or a slightly rude faux pas.

If she said “yep, heard of that book — I wrote it” and he said “you can’t be the author — you’re a woman” the misogyny would be obvious.

The fact that one person cut another off in one conversation doesn’t mean every time a man opens his mouth he’s “mansplaining”. Or maybe it does, since the definition seems to mean whatever the speaker wishes it to be. Bringing me back to my first post.

Cutting her off was definitely rude, but I agree that it’s silly to ask everyone you meet if they wrote each book you want to discuss with them.

If you had something like

Alice: I’ve been researching a guy recently, do you know anything about him?

Bob: I recently read a book about him, have you heard of it?

Alice: I wrote that book.

Bob: Wow, cool to meet you. I really liked your work!

Bob still assumes that Alice didn’t write the book until told otherwise, but he doesn’t cut her off, and this conversation is perfectly pleasant.

The only place I see those terms used to describe benign behavior is in rage bait. My guess is that you haven’t heard someone use those terms in a serious way because of an internet bubble or something.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining Wikipedia says it originated as a call out for internalized misogyny, but now is used very generally.

I bet you could find info on the rest pretty easily.

Also its real ironic that your comment meets the definition of mansplaining lol.

“(for a man) to comment on or explain something, to a woman, in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner”.[1][2][3][4]

I’m not a woman though, but if any read your comment that you meet the strict definition lol.

Mansplaining - Wikipedia

Asking someone to explain mansplaining is mansplaining. Got it.

Homie I gotta stop biting. If you can’t see how your comment was:

  • overconfident
  • inaccurate
  • oversimplified
  • and could be read as condescending

Idk what to tell ya.

Good luck out there.

Asking someone to explain something is none of those things.
Oh yeah you are 100% right. It was the rest of the comment.
BTW I think you are a fine fella. Sorry I didn’t say that more. I wish ya the best.

You asked, but then gave three inaccurate statements that have already had detailed answers about the meaning. It isn’t mansplaining because you weren’t directing it at a woman, but the comment as a whole would fit the definition if it was directed at a woman.

Can someone mansplain mansplaining to me? It seems like any time someone with a beard inhales sharply.

Kind of like how manspreading is men sitting down.

And the male gaze is men looking at things.

All three terms are more nuanced than that even if some people ignore the context and use them in a sexist way against men in general. There will always be a number of people who use words incorrectly.

Mansplaining is when you explain a subject to a woman as if she doesn’t know it, when she would be fully expected to know it. An example would be a man without an astrophysics degree explaining astrophysics with condescension to a woman with an astrophysics degree. It sounds silly but I’ve seen it happen, more often than not it happens online though because terminally online people tend to be more condescending.

Manspreading is more often when dudes intentionally take up more sitting space than they clearly need in public when it’s obvious there is enough space for additional people. Often it’s a lack of self awareness.

Male gaze is the way women are most often portrayed in visual arts and media from a heterosexual, masculine perspective, often objectifying them as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. It suggests that media is often constructed and consumed from a male perspective.

Hell, even a lot of sexualization of men is from the male perspective. Having spoken to a lot of women about how they experience attraction, most aren’t very interested in the hypermasculine view of the male “ideal body” and are far more interested in certain behaviors and mannerisms, or even just the look of their face and hands, rather than everything else.

I’m writing this not as an argument, but as taking your questions in good faith. I hope it was in good faith.

What I picture in my head when I hear the term manspreading is the guy on every bus or subway who is sitting in a middle seat with legs spread wide. It could also be arms around the backs of the surrounding chairs.

Yeah pretty much the jist of it.

Tbf I see teenagers do it a lot too but their brains aren’t fully developed yet.

You know men tend to be larger than women?

I had a live-in partner complain that all the clothes in the laundry basket were mine. I looked. We wore the same amount of clothes, mine were just bigger, taking a larger volume.

Size doesn’t make you spread your legs out to block two other seats or make you wrap your arms around the back of the other seats. I’ve seen plenty of men who can keep their hands and knees in front of themselves.
But … it does? If you’re tall, your arms and legs are longer, so they stick out further. As I found out on an 11 hour flight where the people to my left and right decided they both needed both arm rests, it’s painful to sit with your elbows touching each other.
Alright, I see the problem. I’m describing how some men literally spread their arms across the back of multiple seats and how some men literally spread their legs out so that each knee is blocking access to each seat beside the and you are interpreting that as people complaining about guys being allowed to use their armrests. No one is complaining that you take up physical space. They are complaining that you are spread out in a way that blocks access to the space around you that you don’t need. If you don’t sit down and spread your knees wide enough to block access to the seats next to you, then the term manspreading doesn’t apply to you.

So taking up unnecessary public space is something particular to men? Do all men do this, or just only men?

Or are we gendering bad behavior to win internet points?

Trans woman who pays a bit more attention to mannerisms than most people, both in men and women.

  • Yes, it’s a real thing
  • It’s at least 90% men, and I’m being generous
  • It’s not most men that do it (especially in the sillier ways)
  • Size matters not
  • Picture a teenager in black sweatpants and a hoodie, on his own in a bus. That’s the most common I think. It’s generally men who try to project an image of strong masculinity or coolness. They don’t really do it with other people because it’s silly. It might be an unconscious thing, idk. It still looks stupid. It’s mostly men because it’s a masculinity thing.

    It’s great if you don’t do it, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you didn’t. But there very much is a type of guy who does it. And there is no common type of woman for that specific behavior.

    Doesn’t match my experience but I appreciate you sharing your perspective.

    Sadly, my experience is that post-covid everyone is always rude and selfish and oblivious to others. People seem to love standing three-across on sidewalks or in doorways for a LONG time.

    I just came from Costco where EVERYONE leaves their carts perpendicular across aisles regardless of their genital configuration or gender presentation.

    I’m beginning to enjoy ramming them out of the way.

    Manspreading is more often when dudes intentionally take up more sitting space than they clearly need in public when it’s obvious there is enough space for additional people. Often it’s a lack of self awareness.

    I feel like doing it intentionally and doing it because you’re lacking self awareness are sorta at odds

    Fair enough, let’s just assume most of them lack self awareness, because that makes the most sense.

    There are definitely some cases where it’s intentional, I’ve definitely experienced dudes trying to take my space on the bus by pushing into my leg.

    Mansplaining is when you are a male and you open your mouth to say something. It might have been used properly in the past but now it’s just a buzzword used to silence people.

    It does seem to be a way to shut men down without making any kind of point. Look at some of the responses in this thread.

    Another “emotional invalidation” or “NPD.”

    Mansplaining is when a man & woman have a conversation, he catches a puzzled look on her face with prolonged silence, he proceeds to elaborate & try to clarify the last topic to clear up confusion so she can participate, thereby pisses her off, because she already understood & the man didn’t mindread. It’s basically like any human interaction.
    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.
    Yeah the intention is far easier to sus out when it’s in person, especially with a known person. I’m a woman and I have ADHD and I do this to my husband all the time.

    I am very guilty of asking people if they know about something then telling them anyway.

    Too many cases of people confidently telling me they know about computers, point to the monitor and tell me it’s a CPU, then proudly call the computer under their desk the hard drive. The only reason their “CPU” won’t turn on being they need to press the power button on the monitor.

    It’s exposition for the voices in my head.
    I’ve had this experience before. I was excited to talk about what I learnt whilst volunteering for a war museum, and wanted to share my excitement with people. Got accused of Mansplaining. It really was upsetting, since I was just talking about a lovely experience and didn’t want to upset nor offend anyone…

    They already knew everything you had to say?! War experts out there I guess

    1 “fun” fact if you got it, maybe one of the less bloody/violent ones 😇

    I knew about this before a bit, however in the museum they have a few bits dedicated to what information we have of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance attempt.
    As the Nazis tried vehemently to erase evidence of dissent, amongst other things of course, the story of Scholl’s attempt at gathering resistance has survived - despite her expected demise.

    I have not read up on my History in many years, however it’s often a short yet symbolic read to the persistence some humans have shown in the face of terror. I do recommend it.

    Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

    Sophie Scholl and the White Rose movement, while less known to Americans, is a powerful example of youthful resistance to the Nazi Regime.

    The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

    Incredible

    Sophie Scholl and the rest, heroes and martyrs

    Distributed anti-nazi pamphlets and tried to take all the blame to save their friends. Defiant to the end, supporting their country but not its evil divergence.

    RIP:

    Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, and Kurt Huber

    My partner has taught/trained me to ask “would you like to hear more?” before I info-dump on him.

    Example: Me: “at work today I’ve been playing around with configuration settings for Primo VE, specifically the search scopes… Um… would you like to hear more?” Response: “I’m glad you have an interesting problem at work and no, no thank you.”

    You are a starship troopers propaganda video. Would you like to know more?
    Yep! I even use that tone of voice with him.
    Then she spent two hours talking about every single thing she experienced at work and her remarks on them…
    There was no “she” in my story.
    I was just alegorizing an unbalanced relationship, not trying to describe yours.
    Fair enough. I’m a tad prickly about it because folks assume sometimes and it gets tiring.
    The problem with this, and it’s a serious one, is that gives them the opportunity to say no.

    As a fellow autist, but also a cis woman person, I think there’s a genuine and clear difference between the two, but.. I viscerally understand infodumps when the other person already knows..

    You gas yourself up so much to share the thing and they are like.. mmhmm. Deflation city. And it’s hard to stop yourself from sharing your own personal understanding of things with people, even if they can correct you, which you hope they will do if you are wrong, omg that would be amazing!

    That contrasts so hard with the condescending “I know more than you” attitude. Because the things those dipshits pick to harp on are usually the more superficial aspects of the thing.

    Like that’s nice, I’m glad you know the specific term for the thing, genuinely, now let’s proceed from our mutual understanding and iron out the details together!

    But that’s really different from someone who talks over you, is wrong, won’t be proven wrong, don’t care or know all that much (like dunning kruger sort of thing)

    That’s a great observation Nougat! Great job!
    Thank you! That’s exactly what I wanted to hear!
    So, what’s the latest topic you want to info-dump about? I’m curious and invite an info-dump.
    I just fixed one of my motorcycles, and I'm currently doing a deep dive on the pros and cons of phenolic caliper pistons. I could go on about motorcycling and vehicle mechanics all day every day.
    My brother in law is a guy who knows pretty much everything about everything. Pretty much any interesting topic you bring up, he’ll have a deeper, more interesting conversation ready about that topic. This might sound annoying, but he’s got a way of making it seem like you’re discussing something you both already understand. Like, he isn’t explaining things unless you ask, he’ll say things like, “I’m sure you’ve already seen/heard of this”, “Maybe you were the one who told me this, but…”, (even when I’m pretty sure he knows I wasn’t) etc. By giving you the credit for the information, it removes the feeling of him trying to be superior or condescending. This might still be mansplaining, I don’t know. I’m a man, so maybe I have more of an ignorance for being mansplained to since I don’t have to constantly put up with it, but this feels a lot more like a man explaining rather than mansplaining
    I like how OOP gets the name wrong also. Shane not Shawn. It really makes it feel extra condescending.
    They’re good dogs, Brent.
    C’mon Bront. Every dog is a perfect 13/10.
    Bratt is just angry for no reason.
    That’s so cool you noticed that, Jiff! Eagle eyes over here…