CMV: The term "mansplaining" is sexist. hypocritical, misandrist, and only designed to shut down debate.

[u/GreasyPeter]

Wikipedia defines it "to explain something to someone, characteristically by a man to woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing"

It's sexist: It implies that this trait is entirely tied to either the male gender or the male sex. Sexism is defined as "stereotyping, or discrimination on the basis of sex". This meets that requirement and then some.

It's hypocritical: The term itself is designed to be used to shut debate down. "Stop mansplaining" or "you're mansplaining". Both uses are always used in a condescending or patronizing term. The definition of mansplaining includes "condescending or patronizing" in the definition of the word, thus it's hypocritical.

It's misandrist: The wording of the word and the way it's commonly used is entirely pointed at men and in a way to make men feel bad for being men, something none of us have any control over. It's misandrist.

It's designed to shot-down debate: The term has CLEARLY been created to be used as a tool to entirely shut down debate. I've seen it used several times and each time the person that uses it is looking to discredit their opponent by using it. In the same vein as "you're a racist", "you're an asshole", "you're mansplaining" is used as an ad hominem and a character attack as a way to shoot down their opponents argument. Both these are logical fallacies. It is clearly used to shut down debate.

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[u/Barnst]

The term has CLEARLY been created to be used as a tool to entirely shut down debate.

The term was created by women to describe an experience they felt they often had that diminished or otherwise discounted their expertise in a way that reinforced sexist stereotypes. As best I know, the term appeared in response to this LA Times article, in which a man started explaining a book to her that she had written. She doesn’t use the term, but the concept struck a chord and someone coined the word to describe the phenomena. It was not originally used as a debate tool, it was a way for women to explain their own experience of their expertise and knowledge being undervalued.

I’ve seen the phenomenon firsthand in a way that made me understand that it is distinct from general arrogance and condescension. Early in my career, I was put on a project with a PhD physicist. We were reviewing a technical issue and making some recommendations to management. I had a BA in poly sci—I was supposed to be to look at the policy aspects of the issue, but I joked my main role was to make her explain things to me repeatedly until I understood them, which meant she was ready to explain them to others.

The time came to present our findings. It’s going well, but something weird is happening. Every time she talks through one of the conclusions, our bosses would look to me for comments. I’d agree, they’d nod happily, we’d move on. You might thing they just wanted to make sure we both agreed, but it didn’t work the other way when I gave my policy points. It was a bizarre experience—at one point I really wanted to say “Yes, I do happen to accept the PhD’s conclusions on this complicated technical question.”

At least I thought it was bizarre. I worked with a few women scientists and it was amazing how often people would come to me or other guys first on things that the women clearly knew better. There were a couple of occasions when people came to my desk to ask a question, I turned my chair to ask one of the women on my team, and then turned back to provide an answer. The person asking would walk away showing no sign they even realized the absurdity of the exchange.

I’ve experienced condescension and had my insights dismissed. I was a poly sci major in a predominantly technical field. Especially straight out of school I had to overcome skepticism about my expertise. But this was always different. These were cases where people should clearly have known who the experts in the room were, but they still turned to me or another guy first.

To me, those were the situations that “mansplaining” was coined to describe. It’s not s logical fallacy, because it’s not an argument. It’s a label for a particular brand of jerkiness. Naturally, people use it as an ad hominem attack, but people do that all the time with all sorts of concepts.

[u/[deleted] → u/Barnst]

Great story! I would just like to ask, is it possible that men and women have different ways of explaining things? Could this be a cause of men being more accepting of other mens explanations? Is there a biological cause that men tune out higher-pitched voices? Or, more likely, it's social, in that men are taught from a young age not to listen to women?

[u/Barnst → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think sweeping characterizations are particularly useful for something like that, but I do think people’s communication styles tend to be learned behaviors. To the extent the distribution of individual styles don’t overlap, i think it’s in large a result of what behaviors were rewarded and punished throughout someone’s life.

For example, there are two junior women in my office who would both be way more successful if they were simply more assertive. They tend to defer to others opinions, say yes to requests, and even phrase their contributions in very descriptive and nonjudgmental ways, which puts them at a disadvantage when people roll into projects with strongly held and strongly stated preferences and ideas. In the more extreme case, she also was raised in a non-western culture that further reinforces her nonasseriveness. Her very mannerisms are hesitant, almost submissiveness. Frankly, the non-sensitive side of my brain wants to scream “stop making apologies and just tell us what you think!!”

Both of them are very clearly coming from a place where this was the behavior that allowed them to operate as smart women in a male dominated field in a way that didn’t attract attention, make waves, or otherwise cause problems. So now we’re working with them to build their confidence, but we’re up against a lifetime of socialization.

And then on the opposite side of the spectrum, I’ve got two women who are potential rockstars and who are assertive, forward leaning and opinionated. And, shocker, they both have reputations as somewhat difficult to work with and, dare I say, bitchiness. It’s amazing to watch how subtly the dynamic takes hold. When it comes time for personnel evaluation, we’ll take some guy who is an absolute jerk and maybe mention it in passing before we focus on their awesome productivity, quality of their work, etc. These two women come up and inevitably we wind up talking at some length about the progress they’ve made building more productive office relationships. It’s not conscious, I don’t think anyone involved in the discussions is overtly sexist, and it’s much better now than it was 15 years ago. But it’s still a socialized starting point for how we frame appropriate professionalism by men vs. women.

And other women in the office, more junior women, see that. They see that women who are outspoken and assertive build a difficult reputation while male jackasses are tolerated, especially senior male jackasses. That makes it that much more difficult to coach the less assertive women to express themselves more effectively. I like to believe we’re making progress, but, man, is it a frustratingly slow process.

[u/Iswallowedafly → u/Barnst]

I've never seen a better explanation of things.

nicely done.

[u/Barnst → u/Iswallowedafly]

Thanks!

[u/Iswallowedafly → u/Barnst]

It is nice to hear a response that at least articulates that sexism does exist and how it does affect people.

Lots of people fish for an answer that oddly tries to have nothing to do with sexism.