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FWIW, I just mentally switched out some of those words for "presidential candidates."
Help to avoid mansplaining
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FWIW, I just mentally switched out some of those words for "presidential candidates."
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I'm finding myself trending away from tolerance towards lack of ill-intent.
One of the hallmarks of privilege is indifference toward learning.
A person may think they have no ill-intent when they are simultaneously ignorant and 'splaining.
To my mind, there is a subtext of contempt in the taking up of a teaching posture when one should clearly be trying to learn.
My in-laws were big on 'splaining of various bents. (MIL always wanted to tell me how to cook. SIL once told my husband that she had the exact same skill-set creatively as I do because she was in a slightly related field. She also insisted on being the one to take her mother to the doc after MIL broke her wrist because "I do medical transcriptions so I can understand what the doctor is saying better than you can". Of course, my in-laws are also all significantly older than I am so some of that was based around my apparently being part of a young and clueless generation.)
So, yes. There are other iterations that are not specifically men explaining things to women, but that one is extremely prevalent. And I've yet to find a woman who has not had a man explain something to her at some point. (Frequently strangers, which is where it tends to depart from other types of explaining is that there's frequently no other level of interaction - like work training or family, etc - just some rando stopping to tell you that you're doing something wrong or "did you know...?")
I once had a dude at the bank tell me that having recently replaced the CV joint/axle on my car* couldn't have anything to do with a minor transmission fluid leak because "they aren't connected". And I was like "Oh really? How do you think the transmission makes the car move then?" And he turned real red and went from being all "I work on my car sometimes" < (he literally said this to me when he saw me checking the trans fluid and wanted to know if I needed help with it) to "I don't really know that much about cars".
*I didn't do the replacement, Mr. Aggy did. It took a couple of days for the new gaskets to seat properly at which point there was no more leak.
So, yes. There are other iterations that are not specifically men explaining things to women, but that one is extremely prevalent. And I've yet to find a woman who has not had a man explain something to her at some point. (Frequently strangers, which is where it tends to depart from other types of explaining is that there's frequently no other level of interaction - like work training or family, etc - just some rando stopping to tell you that you're doing something wrong or "did you know...?")
I once had a dude at the bank tell me that having recently replaced the CV joint/axle on my car* couldn't have anything to do with a minor transmission fluid leak because "they aren't connected". And I was like "Oh really? How do you think the transmission makes the car move then?" And he turned real red and went from being all "I work on my car sometimes" < (he literally said this to me when he saw me checking the trans fluid and wanted to know if I needed help with it) to "I don't really know that much about cars".
*I didn't do the replacement, Mr. Aggy did. It took a couple of days for the new gaskets to seat properly at which point there was no more leak.
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Excellent follow-up point, and to that specifically, I've been in and around higher education and teaching as a discipline for long enough that I've actually seen it happen and called out a few asshats myself. That kind of insipid reaction to women in any context, whether they're in positions of authority or not, bugs the crap out of me...I can learn from anyone, and don't look at a persons genitals as the determining factor as to whether they know their material or not.
Two specific examples comes to mind:
Example 1
In college I took a political theory class taught by a professor named Dr. Best (the students referred to her as Dr. Beast because her courses were very demanding and beastly to study for...). I screwed up Marx and Machiavelli in my final essay, just flipping them inadvertently. Because my undergraduate major was Political Science and I was an upperclassman at the time, I actually had a chance to meet with each professor after the semester to discuss any thoughts, comments, etc. rather than an anonymous form. Before giving me my final essay back, Dr. Best asked me to verbally explain the theories of Marx and Machiavelli to the best of my recollection in our post-class discussion. I was a bit confused as to the request, but did so (correctly this time).
She flipped open the little blue essay book I had written in, made a few notes, and then passed it over. This woman changed my grade on the fly from an A- to an A, with a note that said something to the effect of:
"Jason, I think you just had a mental lapse. In your compare/contrast essay you referenced Machiavelli then gave me Marx's talking points and vice versa for the following paragraph. Good job though, congrats on the 4.0 this semester - A"
I was floored...
Example 2
Much less of a story, but when I took my PMP certification course, it was taught by a woman. I learned more from her than most of my college professors! That woman was amazing, and I've actually applied a few of her teaching techniques in my own course deliveries since.
I'm drawn back to a point from Aggy and others. In conversations about marginalization, I'm torn about how much sense it makes for a person outside those experiences to ask, "You mean, is this like my experience X from a position of privilege?"
If I said, with all good intentions, "Hey, your experience as a person of color sounds like my experience doing X as a white person?" the response would surely be, no, these experiences are not the same. Because of assumptions people make about me and themselves, that manifest in how they interact with me, my life is different from yours, every second of every day.
-isms are not good for anybody. It is not fair to be born with the short end of the stick. It is not fair to be born with the long end of the stick and have no idea what things look like from the other side.
If I said, with all good intentions, "Hey, your experience as a person of color sounds like my experience doing X as a white person?" the response would surely be, no, these experiences are not the same. Because of assumptions people make about me and themselves, that manifest in how they interact with me, my life is different from yours, every second of every day.
-isms are not good for anybody. It is not fair to be born with the short end of the stick. It is not fair to be born with the long end of the stick and have no idea what things look like from the other side.
I think at the heart of mansplaining one of the problems is an absence of audience awareness.
Writers always need to think about their readers: who are they? What do you really know about your readers/audience?
Don't assume that you're an authority.
There's a problem with mainstream Western cultures in that men and women are encouraged to perceive male = authority.
There's a strong pattern of mansplaining, which requires that a man be explaining unnecessarily and inappropriately to a woman.
What's important is that these are instances where the men know they are explaining to a woman. They know my name is Lisa; they use it. And they are making assumptions, perhaps without realizing it, because they know I'm a woman.
In terms of my experience with it on AW, in terms of examples, I primarily encounter it in terms of:
In each of these cases, they haven't thought about their audience / reader; they've made assumptions about that audience / reader. And those assumptions are that they're an authority, and I am not.
One way to avoid mansplaining (or the larger social problem of being ) is to think about audience, and try not assume.
ETA: It occurs to me that in a broader, non-gendered context, that the kind of top-down approach isn't an effective teaching methodology in general; sure lecturing is often necessary, but you tie your lecture to a context and an audience; you take the learner's POV into consideration and you don't dumb down, you don't assume ignorance; you provide context. You possibly even deliberately teach to the top end of the scale, with context to help those who are less advanced.
Writers always need to think about their readers: who are they? What do you really know about your readers/audience?
Don't assume that you're an authority.
There's a problem with mainstream Western cultures in that men and women are encouraged to perceive male = authority.
There's a strong pattern of mansplaining, which requires that a man be explaining unnecessarily and inappropriately to a woman.
What's important is that these are instances where the men know they are explaining to a woman. They know my name is Lisa; they use it. And they are making assumptions, perhaps without realizing it, because they know I'm a woman.
In terms of my experience with it on AW, in terms of examples, I primarily encounter it in terms of:
- Men who don't seem to realize that I really am a sys admin.
- Men who want to let me know what "real lesbians" are like because they have a lesbian friend. SMH. I can't even . . . with that one.
- Men who want to let me know how something works in terms of Middle English or Celtic languages or ancient Celts or Medieval literature.
In each of these cases, they haven't thought about their audience / reader; they've made assumptions about that audience / reader. And those assumptions are that they're an authority, and I am not.
- I've been running and supporting and creating servers since the 1990s. I've got certificates and on the job experience. I've been Admin on this server since 2006; and before that, was coaching the previous male Admin who didn't even know how to use SFTP or SSL. I've supported thousands of users and done tertiary support; I've written documentation and help systems and done QA. But male users tend to assume I don't know what I'm doing, both in terms of explaining things (and often, getting it wrong) and flat out contradicting me, like the guy yesterday who insisted that we're running Windows on AW. (Cold day in Hell before that happens . . . .)
- It's really stupid to lecture a lesbian about lesbians. Really really stupid. This is not as great a faux pas as men lecturing women about women and women's issues, but it's darn close.
- I have a Ph.D. in English. I read Old English, Middle English, Old Norse, Old Welsh, Old Irish . . . and a bunch of other equally dead languages. I know this stuff.
One way to avoid mansplaining (or the larger social problem of being ) is to think about audience, and try not assume.
ETA: It occurs to me that in a broader, non-gendered context, that the kind of top-down approach isn't an effective teaching methodology in general; sure lecturing is often necessary, but you tie your lecture to a context and an audience; you take the learner's POV into consideration and you don't dumb down, you don't assume ignorance; you provide context. You possibly even deliberately teach to the top end of the scale, with context to help those who are less advanced.
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So, what can be helpful is to take an instance of discrimination and roll that out to a theoretical "What if this were happening every day?" One instance of discrimination is likely to be similar to another (if it's actually discrimination, not just one being hurt by not being the priority or audience), but one instance of discrimination is not the same as daily discrimination or systematic discrimination. And some types of discrimination (i.e. women being marginalized by systems of patriarchy) can be somewhat mitigated by other types of privilege. White women will have the same problems as WoC, and wealthy white women won't have the same problems as poor white women, etc.
It's not a binary of "everyone in this group has privilege and everyone in this group doesn't" but a really complex Venn diagram of who has privilege and who doesn't and where that overlaps or doesn't.
This plays into the whole 'splaining issue because even when advice is being offered in a genuine (if frequently tone-deaf) way, the 'splainer is making assumptions about what is true for themself being automatically true for the 'splainee. (See, again the dude and his co-worker who used each others emails. He didn't realize that a large part of her "work" was convincing clients that she knew what she was talking about, something he did not have to do nearly as much. So advice to "Just tell them this," wouldn't be helpful because that wouldn't be enough when the clients thought they were talking to a woman.)
A lot of this is really about insecurity. On points where I'm fully confident that I'm an expert, I feel less pressure to prove it.
Haha. I'm the opposite. Areas where I know that I know what I'm talking about I get really stabby when folks downplay my experience. Areas where I'm not as experienced? More likely to disengage from an argument (even if I *think* I'm actually right).
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This. So much this.
Not a mansplaining incident, but I recently had drinks with a group of people who all (apart from me), work together. The conversation turned to their newest coworker and people's first impressions of him. The women in the group all agreed that he was creepy and condescending, while the men all thought he was just a swell fella.
I actually started laughing, and pointed out that it was a perfect example of how the same person can present different personas to different groups, and that, knowing nothing about the guy apart from what I'd just heard, I'm sure he WAS creepy and condescending to the women, and that the men just never saw that side of him.
What I found interesting is that, judging from the direction the conversation initially took, if I hadn't pointed this out I don't think anyone else present would have noticed it. It had already leaned into "skeptical men thinking women are exaggerating or being overly sensitive" territory. To the men's credit, they immediately saw I had a point and reversed tack on that thinking (they're a good-hearted and intelligent bunch).
(I didn't mention that the men must have seen this guy interacting with their female coworkers and, in an ideal world, maaaaybe they should have noticed something was amiss. Social blinders really are tough to shed).
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SMH - seen many of those myself, unreal, yet so common these days
THIS!!!
I have had professors that teach in a condescending manner and that bugs the crap out of me - being lectured to never imho has been an effective teaching methodology. I'd rather be talked to than at any day of the week. I've always found it better to relate to learners at a personal level, and then simply make it about a transfer of knowledge among us rather than disseminating down.
One of the first things I say in my classes is that while I've been teaching a while, I do not have all the answers and I don't even pretend to. Someone is going to ask a question at some point and I won't know the answer. But rather than BS learners, I'll just say, "Great question! Let's mark that for research and we can either discuss as a class in case someone else knows it, or I'll dig into it and get you an answer by the end of the week."
Invariably, I ditch the Powerpoint decks my boss made and just show everyone live on a soft switch, and then have them do the same from their work stations. I think most people learn more by interacting and doing rather than having it spoken about (regardless of whether you are talking to or at them...lol). The context is critical, otherwise nothing ever sticks.
My SIL's husband does this all the time; he doesn't always actively "explain" stuff (though he's tried to school me on current political events before--after saying he doesn't follow politics because he's too busy to keep up!) but definitely he takes information or correction from men more seriously and with less antagonism than he does from women. It's highly irritating, but if I called him out on it, he'd just respond with ridicule (Millennial snowflake!) and knee-jerk denial, just the same as he has with every other opinion of mine that he's disagreed with, whether that opinion has anything to do with him or not. He'd have to have a sufficiently manly man call him out on it to take the accusation seriously, I think.
And men who are aware enough to see it happening and willing to stand up and say something in response are pretty few and far between, in my experience. Even my own husband-ish will agree that BIL's perspective is warped but would rather play devil's advocate to make sure I "understood BIL's argument properly." I mean, seriously, dude? You're gonna man-splain a man-splainer'? I don't think I've ever felt so condescended to before, and in such a personally hurtful way.
But hey, I'm young and there's still time for someone else to be even more of an asshole. 
And men who are aware enough to see it happening and willing to stand up and say something in response are pretty few and far between, in my experience. Even my own husband-ish will agree that BIL's perspective is warped but would rather play devil's advocate to make sure I "understood BIL's argument properly." I mean, seriously, dude? You're gonna man-splain a man-splainer'? I don't think I've ever felt so condescended to before, and in such a personally hurtful way.
But hey, I'm young and there's still time for someone else to be even more of an asshole. 
I was thinking about this - 'splaining matters to me in part because I have this terrible fear (*shh. This is just between us, right?) that if I ever become a grandmother, I'll grandmasplain everything till they haul me away. And I just realised that it's not that I have the slightest insecurity that I'd be right but that I'm not entirely secure the kids would understand just how exactly right I am.
So I think the insecurity might be not exactly insecurity around ability, but insecurity around acknowledgement. And also entitlement and position.
This is where certain lifestyle choices are helpful. When someone has a sensitive part of your anatomy literally in a vise you learn how to do the 'shut up and listen' thing real fast.
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I just came across this very public display of mansplaining:
https://www.facebook.com/marilee.talkington/posts/10155051385188961
https://www.facebook.com/marilee.talkington/posts/10155051385188961
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I don't like conflict and am very likely to back down in a conversation. Our lab is evenly distributed between males and females at this time. The other week I had three instances of not being believed when I was certain of the information I was given. The first was the most mansplain-y.
We add salt to waters we test when we're using specific organisms that have salinity preferences. When we do this, we also make a control water using the same salt and a control water using natural seawater. The salted control water is our dilution water. There are two types of salts. We're receiving a bunch of waters from a client that we're testing over the summer. The first of these we used a special salt for the test and control waters. The rest we're using our normal salt. This was explained very clearly to me on a Saturday I happened to be working (thank goodness, or nobody on Sunday would know). He said it, and I accepted it as true. The Sunday crew is different, and I explained the exact same thing to the Sunday supervisor when he was deciding what waters to make up. He would not believe me when I said that we were using the normal salt for all tests except the first one. He explained over and over that we had to use the same salt for the test water as the control water, and I explained over and over that I was talking about using the same salt for both because the test water was salted with the normal salt. He ended up making a control water with the special salt that eventually we threw out because we never used it (I had already made sure there was enough of the other water to get through dilutions the next morning). This got me a, "I should have believed Sage."
Monday, we're prepping for a new test with different critters. When we make our reference tests with these critters, we put them in jars, but for this client, we put them in cups. I say this to the guy prepping it. I reiterate it. He goes and asks same supervisor as above, who says, "No, I think we put them in jars." Cups was the right answer, and I got another, "I should have believed Sage." (Seriously, both of them said it that day!)
The week before I had started to prep a test, and I finished it that day. On one set of cups I had written 0.15% and on another I had written 0.19% for the same dilution, and my supervisor (different guy from above) found the 0.19% and changed it to 0.15%, which is indeed what the dilution should be. I looked at it, and went, "Huh, I'm really sure the paperwork said 0.19%," but I had gotten the 0.15% right on the other cups, and the paperwork was nowhere to be found, so he just kept assuring me that it was no big deal, just a little mistake. Whereas, I wanted to make sure that the paperwork wasn't wrong on some pages and right on others, because I used different pages for the different cups. He just kept explaining that it was okay, I just made a mistake, it happens, no matter how much I insisted that I was pretty sure the paperwork was wrong. Not too surprised when I was making dilutions the next day and found that the pages that I would have used for the 0.19% cups sure enough had had the wrong information caught and corrected by another coworker. I didn't get the satisfaction of being told I was right, but I still felt satisfaction in knowing it.
What I find interesting about this is a) in all three cases it was guys who didn't believe me, and b) no matter how sure I was that I was right, the guys did manage to insist enough that I started to doubt myself, even though they were bold in their certainty that they were correct until I proved them wrong.
We add salt to waters we test when we're using specific organisms that have salinity preferences. When we do this, we also make a control water using the same salt and a control water using natural seawater. The salted control water is our dilution water. There are two types of salts. We're receiving a bunch of waters from a client that we're testing over the summer. The first of these we used a special salt for the test and control waters. The rest we're using our normal salt. This was explained very clearly to me on a Saturday I happened to be working (thank goodness, or nobody on Sunday would know). He said it, and I accepted it as true. The Sunday crew is different, and I explained the exact same thing to the Sunday supervisor when he was deciding what waters to make up. He would not believe me when I said that we were using the normal salt for all tests except the first one. He explained over and over that we had to use the same salt for the test water as the control water, and I explained over and over that I was talking about using the same salt for both because the test water was salted with the normal salt. He ended up making a control water with the special salt that eventually we threw out because we never used it (I had already made sure there was enough of the other water to get through dilutions the next morning). This got me a, "I should have believed Sage."
Monday, we're prepping for a new test with different critters. When we make our reference tests with these critters, we put them in jars, but for this client, we put them in cups. I say this to the guy prepping it. I reiterate it. He goes and asks same supervisor as above, who says, "No, I think we put them in jars." Cups was the right answer, and I got another, "I should have believed Sage." (Seriously, both of them said it that day!)
The week before I had started to prep a test, and I finished it that day. On one set of cups I had written 0.15% and on another I had written 0.19% for the same dilution, and my supervisor (different guy from above) found the 0.19% and changed it to 0.15%, which is indeed what the dilution should be. I looked at it, and went, "Huh, I'm really sure the paperwork said 0.19%," but I had gotten the 0.15% right on the other cups, and the paperwork was nowhere to be found, so he just kept assuring me that it was no big deal, just a little mistake. Whereas, I wanted to make sure that the paperwork wasn't wrong on some pages and right on others, because I used different pages for the different cups. He just kept explaining that it was okay, I just made a mistake, it happens, no matter how much I insisted that I was pretty sure the paperwork was wrong. Not too surprised when I was making dilutions the next day and found that the pages that I would have used for the 0.19% cups sure enough had had the wrong information caught and corrected by another coworker. I didn't get the satisfaction of being told I was right, but I still felt satisfaction in knowing it.
What I find interesting about this is a) in all three cases it was guys who didn't believe me, and b) no matter how sure I was that I was right, the guys did manage to insist enough that I started to doubt myself, even though they were bold in their certainty that they were correct until I proved them wrong.
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MDSchafer
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Whenever I go to a convention I just cringe when I hear a male panelist say, "I think what she meant was..."
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Except when it's time to point out in full view of a large crowd that behaviors have become anti-social. Then it's quiet time.
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Well, crowds have been known to turn on expressions of conscience.
Still. Being pilloried would make one's point...
Still. Being pilloried would make one's point...
There might be something to this. When I got my psychology degree (in the Eighties, in case this info has been superseded by more current research), we were taught that as a group (this says nothing about individuals), preschool girls had better listening and interpersonal skills than boys, and this continued through to adulthood.
It might help to digest this. If it's still true, that would put men as a group at a disadvantage when it comes to listening skills. Not that this absolves them from making the appropriate effort. It helps me, patience-wise, to realize that something is harder for someone else than it is for me.
***
Okay, now for my anecdote. My husband and I own a construction company. This was never my goal in life, but I must admit it pays the bills better than teaching ever did.
It's not fun being the lone woman on the jobsite, but usually it's even worse when I'm almost the only one. Most of the time I can't even get a key to the woman's job johnny out of a secretary. Apparently, since I'm dirty, (waterproofing is incredibly messy, and sandblasting ain't much better), I don't count. God forbid their clean little backsides should touch the same seat as mine, even though everyone I know always lines the seat in a public restroom.
Then there are the men. I've had to fire guys because they couldn't take direction from a woman. I don't have an ax to grind in this area, but there's no such thing as almost waterproofed. It's like roofing in that way. If your roof leaks in the corner, typically you aren't happy that it isn't the whole thing, especially if you just paid a great deal of money to have it done properly. Compound this with the fact that many of our jobs are below grade. To fix a roof, you climb on top. To fix below-grade waterproofing, first you have to get out the 'dozer, ripping out all the landscaping, etc. I can't afford mistakes. It's perfect or it's no good. It has to be done my way because it's my ass on the line. (And, y'know, because we've looked up the specs and we don't cut corners.) But there are some men who just can't take this.
What's really amusing are the superintendents who can't believe I'm in charge. They always want to talk to one of my employees. I hate dealing with that crap anyway (I skip out of every job meeting I can--they're about the most inefficient use of time there is.) So, fine. Let a man explain waterproofing to the guy running the job. I'd rather get some work done. I get paid by the foot. Fortunately, all our areas of expertise are ones that I can compete or outperform the men in, barring heavy lifting, because they're all about skill. One of my employees, Dan, got really embarrassed by this. But he knew his stuff, so I told him I had no problems with it. I didn't have to deal with some guy who couldn't wrap his head around thinking that a woman might know her own trade better than he does. (Almost no general contractors self-perform waterproofing. They typically take the carpentry and concrete work.) And waterproofing is often a poorly understood trade. Much of the time, I have to teach the inspectors how to inspect me.
It's just part of my life, and I deal with it. It does help to remember that I'm getting paid more than most superintendents, and we're rarely on a given job for very long.
ETA: I thought I should add a codicil to this. A few guys have been very supportive, even protective of me. On one jobsite, Sean was my six-foot-four tattooed guardian angel. He dropped his tool belt and told a guy who gave me much more than the common rash of crap to either shut up or wade in. (That was such a beautiful day. I made Sean a main character in one of my stories for it, set on a jobsite and all. https://cathleentownsend.com/2016/07/19/tool-thief/)
So it isn't all one way. I don't want to leave you with the impression that all guys on construction sites are jerks.
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Here's a good example:
A guy I know patiently explained to my girlfriend and his own girlfriend that cat calling women on the street "wasn't offensive".
The really funny thing was when my girlfriend told him he was mansplaining he told her he was offended by that term and he wanted an apology.
A guy I know patiently explained to my girlfriend and his own girlfriend that cat calling women on the street "wasn't offensive".
The really funny thing was when my girlfriend told him he was mansplaining he told her he was offended by that term and he wanted an apology.
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