“Mansplaining”

Trigger Warning(s)

Primary: In this article, I briefly talk about rape and I don’t shy away from descriptive terms.  If this is likely to upset you, please skip the paragraph that starts with the sentence “Now, a real case”.  To maintain a balance between reader comfort and sensitivity to those who may find this disturbing and/or upsetting, I haven’t hidden the paragraph or placed it behind a click-to-display field, but I have altered the text colour to a moderate grey to make it easier to skip past visually without reading the content.

Secondary: The rest of the article should be fine, but is likely to be an emotionally charged topic for many people regardless. I recommend reading in a sitting position with a good cup of tea and an open mind if you find the word “mansplaining” or memories of events you associate with the word evokes strong emotional responses within you.

Preamble

Firstly, let me get a couple of things out of the way to avoid at least some of the hate that foreseeably might be thrown at me for this article:

1. “Mansplaining” is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
2. Misogyny in general is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
3. “Mansplaining” by the definition I settle on in this article is absolutely a misogynistic act.
4. I am fully open to discussing this and changing my views. As a man, there are aspects of this discussion that I am simply not qualified to address from personal experience.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to proceed with my rant.

The Article

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of women complaining about men “mansplaining” to them.  When I go to look at the offence that they’re claiming however, I don’t see it.  What I do see is an overconfident, condescending arsehole who believes his opinion (and potentially a minute or two of web searching) to be equivalent or better than the well-researched or sometimes even expert statements made by the woman raising the complaint. He’s invariably either wrong or technically right but adding nothing of value to what the woman said. But I don’t think he’s “mansplaining”.

Here we start to find ourselves needing a definition.  A general definition of the term – according to Google’s dictionary – goes like this: “the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising.”

I don’t like this definition at all.  It implicitly calls out two genders without giving any indication that the genders in question had anything to do with the behaviour.  Essentially, it means that a man being condescending or patronising in their explanation of something (especially – but not exclusively – when it’s to a woman) is mansplaining, whereas anyone of any other gender doing it isn’t.

I actually don’t mind too much that genders are being called out specifically in the definition, but I do mind that they’re called out without a clear implication that the gender has anything to do with the act.

If that seems like an unimportant distinction, allow me to take a detour to show why it’s critically important. I’ll give one hypothetical example and then one very disturbingly real one.

First, the hypothetical:  Imagine for a moment that we had a different term for murder based on the genders of the people involved.  How crazy would it seem to you that when a woman kills a man, we decide to call it “murder”, but when any other gender kills a man or when a woman kills any gender other than a man we call it “untimely end of life”.  This would obviously be ridiculous.  Women would quite rightly complain vehemently that genders are being assigned different values based on the loaded language involved.

Now, a real case.  In English law, “rape” is defined by the penetration of a vagina, anus, or mouth with a penis.  What this means is that only people who have penises are capable of instigating rape according to English law.  A person who does not have one is incapable of it.  In a classic prison-rape scenario where a group of women hold another woman down and insert foreign objects in their victim’s vagina and other orifices, legally speaking no rape has been committed.  Obviously, a crime has been committed but it’s not “rape” according to English law and indeed carries a lesser punishment.  This is obviously stupid and there are active campaigns to have these laws rewritten.  Further to that, the laws then occasionally explicitly use terms like “man” and “woman” in some parts ignoring the potential of women who have penises to also commit the act and other general gender-related assumptions that are not true in all cases (for example, having sex with a gay married man by tricking him in to thinking that you’re his husband isn’t rape, but doing the same to a straight married woman with the same kind of deception is rape).

Hopefully I’ve now made it clear that terminology that invokes gender (or body parts with implicit or explicit gender assumptions) is problematic.  That doesn’t mean it’s always wrong to do so though.  We don’t live in a genderless world and so we can’t simply pretend that gender doesn’t exist and treat everyone exactly the same.  Just as we live in a world where there is prejudice against skin colours, cultural customs, and religious beliefs, we also live in a world where there is prejudice against gender.  It’s completely justifiable to have terminology (and laws) that distinguish racial and cultural prejudices, and equally so for gender prejudices.  We can (to some extent) wish for a world blind to these things, but pretending we live in that world is a fantasy.

That brings us back at last to mansplaining.  Looking around at more nuanced definitions and discussions about it, it becomes clear that intent and beliefs are fundamentally bound to the concept.  Thus, a definition that I am much more comfortable accepting is, “the explanation of something by a man, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising, on the assumption of his superiority over the recipient due to their gender.”

Under this definition, it’s still the case that only a man is capable of “mansplaining” (it’s right there in the name after all) and so I still find it less than ideal.  After all, even if it’s far less common, couldn’t there also be a woman who believes that all men are intellectually inferior and therefore constantly condescends and patronises in the same way?  Nevertheless, I would say it is now an acceptable definition, as while the gender is still spelled out, it is now clear that the act is done specifically based on a misogynistic worldview. It’s also the case that misogyny is – at least currently – a significantly more prevalent problem in the world than misandry (I could argue that prejudice against non-binary genders is even more prevalent as a percentage, but since most people aren’t non-binary, it’s not something I want to address in this particular article; while fully supporting and accepting that it is a topic that needs representation on its own).

Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t write a condescending remark to me on the various social media platforms that I participate in.  Often, it’s on topics where I do have a level of expertise and study, while their remarks show that they clearly do not.  I am a man, and the people making these remarks are usually – but not always – men.  I consider these people to all be overconfident, condescending arseholes, but I don’t think any of them are “mansplaining” to me.

In a hypothetical alternate reality where I am a woman, I expect that I’d get more of these comments/remarks and the difference would be made up by actual mansplaining.  But the comments and remarks that would remain the same as in this reality don’t suddenly become mansplaining just because of my gender.  They continue to be overconfident, rude, condescending, stupid, and wrong; but they’re not “mansplaining”.

If you’re a gender other than a man, and a man starts explaining something to you in a condescending, offensive, and stupid way, I invite you to call them out on it. I even invite you to tell them that what they’re doing is easily perceived as “mansplaining” but unless it’s clear that it’s because of a misogynistic belief in their superiority based on their gender, I ask you to hold back from telling them that they are in fact mansplaining. Diluting the term does nothing to help fight the real problem of misogyny and also won’t help this person understand their mistake if they can argue it away by saying your gender is irrelevant to their remarks as we assume mine is to all those who direct similar idiocy at me.

Call for comments

I’m aware there may be many aspects of this topic that I haven’t considered, as it isn’t something I’ve spent significant time researching, nor is it something that intersects very closely with any of the areas where I do have expert knowledge.

I’m also very aware that as a man, there are aspects of this topic that I can not possibly understand in the same way as a woman that finds herself the target of this or other kinds of misogyny. I do however have first-hand experience of other kinds of prejudice and I use this to inform my understanding of other kinds, while doing my best to keep in mind that it’s an approximation at best, not an equivalence.

Because of these inherent limitations, I’d very much appreciate anyone who thinks I’m wrong or have made critical errors in any parts of this article to (constructively) weigh in on the topic and show me where I have failed to consider something, have falsely understood it, or have made other errors or mistakes.