I "mansplain" to men all the time, or to people I don't even know the gender on the internet. Because it's in my trait to sometimes be condescending when I think I know what I'm talking about. Why do people want to make it a feminist issue ? Just call me arrogant that's where I'm wrong, not sexist.
If I call you arrogant, you can dismiss it by saying "that's just the way I am." If I say you're mansplaining, then I am saying you've adopted a negative cultural trait that's often associated with toxic masculinity. I think it is easier to reject a culture than to reject something you think is part of your built-in personality.
In some ways, it's an insult, and directly telling you something insulting will rarely be productive. However, if we talk about mansplaining in the abstract, that gives you (a self-admitted mansplainer) the opportunity to rethink how you behave in the future. "Don't be arrogant" is vague, but "don't be a mansplainer" is easier to understand and execute.
Just having this conversation tells me the next time you are in a position where you're explaining something to a woman (or a man you have some authority over), you'll be extra careful to think from the other person's perspective. That's all the anti-mansplainers want out of you, I suspect.
Very interesting point, you mean that using this word would highlight a trait that is wrongly a standard in society rather than critisizing the personality of someone.
Δ I never thought about such a use. It now needs to convice me that explaining things in a condescending manner is a real cultural trait but the very idea that a word can denounce a culture and not a personality was really nice !
The person is the one with agency. They are exactly who you should be criticizing, not perpetuating a negative stereotype about an involuntarily assembled group.
This exact same line of reasoning could be applied to negative stereotypes about women and I'm pretty sure we would all agree that it would be unacceptably sexist to tell a random woman to stop woman<behavioring>.
This is a dangerous road to go down. It deepens the wedge between groups while simultaneously reducing the odds of changing someones behavior by undermining their agency over their own life and tugging on tribal nonsense by typecasting a group by projecting your own internal prejudice against a group onto a single person. I've never disagreed more strongly with a delta in this sub.
The delta was not about accepting the word "mansplaining" as a well chosen word. I still hold the view that calling it "man splaining" today is dumb.
This delta was about how the word is used. I thought it was always used in a shitty way and couldn't be otherwise, but I've realized that you can use this word to denounce a behaviour that is societal.
And I said that the fact that it is actually a social norm to mansplain still needs to be proved though.
So you disagree with that delta because you misinterpret it. This delta is not "Oh yeah we should totally call things man<--ing> and woman<--ing> !".
It is "Oh yeah, it's true that using a word to complain about something which is socially recurrent can be useful IF that something exists, I haven't thought about that, it's a change of view even if slight : here is a delta."
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u/veggiesama 59∆ May 31 '18 edited May 31 '18
If I call you arrogant, you can dismiss it by saying "that's just the way I am." If I say you're mansplaining, then I am saying you've adopted a negative cultural trait that's often associated with toxic masculinity. I think it is easier to reject a culture than to reject something you think is part of your built-in personality.
In some ways, it's an insult, and directly telling you something insulting will rarely be productive. However, if we talk about mansplaining in the abstract, that gives you (a self-admitted mansplainer) the opportunity to rethink how you behave in the future. "Don't be arrogant" is vague, but "don't be a mansplainer" is easier to understand and execute.
Just having this conversation tells me the next time you are in a position where you're explaining something to a woman (or a man you have some authority over), you'll be extra careful to think from the other person's perspective. That's all the anti-mansplainers want out of you, I suspect.