Womansplaining

HugalHugal Shipmate
edited September 2020 in Hell
There has been a lot of discussion on here about Mansplaining. Well what about womansplaining. I have been told how to do things I know how to do sometimes better by a woman. There seems to be an assumption that men know nothing.
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Comments

  • About what ?
  • In my mother's case, the lawnmower.
  • Yes, I do it. My son just smiles until it clicks with me that this is his subject of expertise - and needs no explanation from me.

    Let’s just call it ‘splaining though. There is often no gender bias, just the assumption you know more than someone who actually has more knowledge/experience than you.

    Mansplaining is different entirely and has an air of superiority and ingrained sexism that everyday ‘splaining doesn’t.
  • Boogie wrote: »
    Mansplaining is different entirely and has an air of superiority and ingrained sexism that everyday ‘splaining doesn’t.

    Bullshit. That's gender essentialism, and you can shove it up your nagging fishwife arsehole :smile:
  • edited September 2020
    .
  • My sister always assumes I'm stupid. That may be specific to being a sister however.
  • The whole 'splaining thing for me personally comes from a place of wanting to help but also feeling I know better.....really not a good look!
    For me it's about being a teacher and possibly a mother- My husband has had occasion to utter "You are not talking to one of your boys now!" (14 years in my final job teaching at an all boys school)

    Exploring other people's motivation for their annoying behaviour is IME quite tricky as I can be reactive as can other people but it can also be fruitful.
    I am now remembering all sorts of situations which I could have handled so much better...oh dear!
  • I have a manager here who does exactly that -insists on knowing every time something goes wrong, and then makes a suggestion which belies the fact that they know jack about what I'm actually doing. All contributing to my growing unhappiness here.

    Though I do think the fact that they are female is incidental to the real issue, which is that they have the management skills of a dead whelk.

    AG
  • There's a difference - a big difference - between being a regular interfering arsehole, and being a sexist interfering arsehole.

    "You can't possibly know how to do X properly because you're a woman/man, and you're lucky that there's a man/woman here to explain it to you" is sexist, no matter which way around it is.

    And yes, having how to look after your own children explained to you by random women is really, really annoying.
  • edited September 2020
    I'd take it over the same explanation delivered by the one you have to live with - but perhaps that's just me :smile:

    All our managers at work are female. And a fair proportion of ministers at church. They give the lie to gender essentialism - they're as good, and bad, and power-crazed, and greedy, and humble as any man I've encountered in the same roles. A bit like the black people. Not sure about the LGBT angle, my sample size is a bit deficient there and a trans woman I know well is doing unfortunate things to the stats.
  • I thought that there is a theme that men are useless, I don't know if it is mainly spread by women or not. It used to be common in advertising, where a guy would do something stupid, and others would roll their eyes. There's one at the moment on TV, about kitchens, where brother in law asks, have you fixed it yet, husband smiles weakly, and wife and brother mutually eye-roll. Probably not womansplaining. But I recall this from working class Manchester, but maybe it was some kind of mutual gender hostility. Men, what are they good for!
  • Admin could you please put the P in the title for me thanks
    Yes there was this men are stupid attitude but threads have not gone down well on it here.
    I am the only guy in my team. I get womansplained a lot
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    There's a difference - a big difference - between being a regular interfering arsehole, and being a sexist interfering arsehole.

    "You can't possibly know how to do X properly because you're a woman/man, and you're lucky that there's a man/woman here to explain it to you" is sexist, no matter which way around it is.

    And yes, having how to look after your own children explained to you by random women is really, really annoying.

    Rev T was a house-husband and looked after the Tubblet fill time until she started school. ie: Parenting.

    If he had a pound for the number of women who asked if he was baby-sitting / covering for mother or assumed that he didn't have a clue how to change nappies etc then you and he would have quite the evening before the 10pm curfew. Used to drive him nuts.
  • Hugal wrote: »
    Admin could you please put the P in the title for me thanks
    Yes there was this men are stupid attitude but threads have not gone down well on it here.
    I am the only guy in my team. I get womansplained a lot

    What do you mean, threads have not gone down well?
  • GwaiGwai Epiphanies Host
    This pisses me off. You and your "womensplaining" bullshit. I don't think you have any fucking clue what real sexism is, @Hugal . And I don't mean the kind that Doc Tor or Rev T went through, so that's definitely sexism and thus malodorous. I mean the kind where I couldn't work in tech without having to always be ready to be told I couldn't handle it and didn't belong. I mean the kind where as a professional woman I will have my competence doubted regularly because of my name. My (female) boss and I have a plan to handle sexist people who report to me. Because we need them. My daughter is preteen child, but she already recognizes sexism where she goes. Perhaps because she knows that if she follows her career goals, a large majority of the women beside her will drop out because of sexism. And I have barely scraped the surface of what I have myself seen and heard.
  • Leorning CnihtLeorning Cniht Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    Hugal wrote: »
    Admin could you please put the P in the title for me thanks
    Yes there was this men are stupid attitude but threads have not gone down well on it here.
    I am the only guy in my team. I get womansplained a lot

    Others have raised the point that there is a difference between having someone 'splain at you because someone of your sex couldn't possibly understand X, and having someone 'splain at you because the 'splainer likes their own voice and can't imagine that anyone else could know more than them.

    If you are the only person of your sex in the company of a group of the opposite sex, it's probably easy to read a case of the second kind as a case of the first kind.

    ETA: (I'm not saying that you are making this error. I have observed it in lone women in a group of men who assume that there's mansplaining going on, when the 'splainer merrily does it to everyone.)
  • Gwai wrote: »
    This pisses me off. You and your "womensplaining" bullshit. I don't think you have any fucking clue what real sexism is, @Hugal . And I don't mean the kind that Doc Tor or Rev T went through, so that's definitely sexism and thus malodorous. I mean the kind where I couldn't work in tech without having to always be ready to be told I couldn't handle it and didn't belong. I mean the kind where as a professional woman I will have my competence doubted regularly because of my name. My (female) boss and I have a plan to handle sexist people who report to me. Because we need them. My daughter is preteen child, but she already recognizes sexism where she goes. Perhaps because she knows that if she follows her career goals, a large majority of the women beside her will drop out because of sexism. And I have barely scraped the surface of what I have myself seen and heard.

    This basically reads as "I've experienced sexism so you couldn't possibly have also experienced sexism". Which is just illogical.

    Let's accept for the sake of argument that you have indeed experienced more sexism. It does not follow that the sexism that someone else has experienced is not "real". But that's your choice of word.

    Frankly, the original post doesn't give nearly enough explanation of what's going on to know whether there's sexism involved. I'm not jumping to conclusions. But at the same time as yelling about how this is all bullshit you're also acknowledging that yes, when men step into roles traditionally assigned to women, they do get women treating them as if they couldn't possibly know what they're doing.
  • ETA: (I'm not saying that you are making this error. I have observed it in lone women in a group of men who assume that there's mansplaining going on, when the 'splainer merrily does it to everyone.)

    It doesn't depend on the gender balance. In one online group I've been part of which has considerably more women than men, I was accused of mansplaining twice by 2 different women who didn't like it when I said I thought they were wrong about something.

    In one case I knew quite well that I'd said exactly the same thing to a man on the same topic just a couple of days earlier (whatever hot topic was doing the rounds). In the other case I didn't even initially know that the person I was talking to was a woman, so no, I was quite sure I hadn't taken her gender into account.

    I should also note that in at least one of these cases, there were other women in the group who were looking at what I'd said and responded that no, there wasn't any mansplaining tone to it. But it's quite easy for someone to simply look at the gender of you and of themselves and reach conclusions that that must be the driving force of the conversation.

    Plus, of course, if you are a man accused of mansplaining, trying to explain what mansplaining actually is will get you precisely nowhere because then it will just be that you are mansplaining mansplaining.

  • I thought that there is a theme that men are useless, I don't know if it is mainly spread by women or not. It used to be common in advertising, where a guy would do something stupid, and others would roll their eyes. There's one at the moment on TV, about kitchens, where brother in law asks, have you fixed it yet, husband smiles weakly, and wife and brother mutually eye-roll. Probably not womansplaining. But I recall this from working class Manchester, but maybe it was some kind of mutual gender hostility. Men, what are they good for!
    IIRC, the things the men are clueless about chores around the house. Activities designated as female. So definitely not womansplaining. Definitely sexist, but not towards men.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    I should also note that in at least one of these cases, there were other women in the group who were looking at what I'd said and responded that no, there wasn't any mansplaining tone to it. But it's quite easy for someone to simply look at the gender of you and of themselves and reach conclusions that that must be the driving force of the conversation.

    In fairness, once you've been on the receiving end of some kind of identity-based discrimination a bunch of times, it probably becomes your first assumption. And I agree that someone in a privileged position trying to explain to that person that, while they've experienced plenty of discrimination, this particular case isn't that, is difficult.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    I thought that there is a theme that men are useless, I don't know if it is mainly spread by women or not. It used to be common in advertising, where a guy would do something stupid, and others would roll their eyes. There's one at the moment on TV, about kitchens, where brother in law asks, have you fixed it yet, husband smiles weakly, and wife and brother mutually eye-roll. Probably not womansplaining. But I recall this from working class Manchester, but maybe it was some kind of mutual gender hostility. Men, what are they good for!
    IIRC, the things the men are clueless about chores around the house. Activities designated as female. So definitely not womansplaining. Definitely sexist, but not towards men.

    But men are also designated as useless at things they are supposed to do. My kitchen example means that your husband couldn't build a real kitchen, but Willywongers of Essex could, all men.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Activities designated as female. So definitely not womansplaining. Definitely sexist, but not towards men.

    This. The men in the standard "household" advert are clueless about ordinary household tasks, but we are expected to find this amusing. The idea of a grown man with a family being unable to successfully operate the oven is seen as funny. It's not a criticism of the man that he can't operate a fairly simple and familiar device that's been in his home his entire life - we're supposed to chuckle that of course he can't use the oven, because he's got a wife for that.

    There's another trope where the man is basically hopeless at some manual DIY type task, but thinks that he ought to be good at it, because he is a man. And so we see him ineffectually struggling with some bit of self-assembly furniture or whatever for hours, until the competent wife shakes her head, and calls in the handy-person company being advertised to fix it.

    That's the same sexism. Just as men are "expected" to be confused by ovens, kitchen cleaners and laundry, so they are expected to have genetic knowledge of cars, home repair, and sports.
  • I'm with @Gwai on this one. Because the societal context for this is sexism, which is structural, systematic and baked in.

    I'm reminded of white people who suggest they experience racism. They might I suppose in some situations, because anything and everything is possible in the world, but the facts are that white people are not the usual targets of racism in any of our societies.
  • But men are also designated as useless at things they are supposed to do. My kitchen example means that your husband couldn't build a real kitchen, but Willywongers of Essex could, all men.

    Lots of people couldn't build a real kitchen. Fitting a kitchen well requires a number of different skills. Expecting some junior accountant man to have those skills just because he has a penis is sexist nonsense. There's no reason to expect that anyone whose training and background is in sitting at a desk with a computer would be able to competently install a kitchen.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Activities designated as female. So definitely not womansplaining. Definitely sexist, but not towards men.

    This. The men in the standard "household" advert are clueless about ordinary household tasks, but we are expected to find this amusing. The idea of a grown man with a family being unable to successfully operate the oven is seen as funny. It's not a criticism of the man that he can't operate a fairly simple and familiar device that's been in his home his entire life - we're supposed to chuckle that of course he can't use the oven, because he's got a wife for that.

    There's another trope where the man is basically hopeless at some manual DIY type task, but thinks that he ought to be good at it, because he is a man. And so we see him ineffectually struggling with some bit of self-assembly furniture or whatever for hours, until the competent wife shakes her head, and calls in the handy-person company being advertised to fix it.

    That's the same sexism. Just as men are "expected" to be confused by ovens, kitchen cleaners and laundry, so they are expected to have genetic knowledge of cars, home repair, and sports.

    That seems pretty accurate to me. Although in my family, there were a few women who used to say that men are fucking useless, period. I don't know how to categorize that, nor how widespread it is/was.
  • There is a phrase, "The confidence of a mediocre white man" And it is on full display when a man who has experienced sexism is now an expert.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    Gwai wrote: »
    This pisses me off. You and your "womensplaining" bullshit. I don't think you have any fucking clue what real sexism is, @Hugal . And I don't mean the kind that Doc Tor or Rev T went through, so that's definitely sexism and thus malodorous. I mean the kind where I couldn't work in tech without having to always be ready to be told I couldn't handle it and didn't belong. I mean the kind where as a professional woman I will have my competence doubted regularly because of my name. My (female) boss and I have a plan to handle sexist people who report to me. Because we need them. My daughter is preteen child, but she already recognizes sexism where she goes. Perhaps because she knows that if she follows her career goals, a large majority of the women beside her will drop out because of sexism. And I have barely scraped the surface of what I have myself seen and heard.

    This basically reads as "I've experienced sexism so you couldn't possibly have also experienced sexism". Which is just illogical.
    Yeah, but I don't think that is what she is doing. She is giving examples of real sexism.

    Some women not giving a man the respect he thinks he deserves is not necessarily sexism. As you acknowledge.

    orfeo wrote: »
    But at the same time as yelling about how this is all bullshit you're also acknowledging that yes, when men step into roles traditionally assigned to women, they do get women treating them as if they couldn't possibly know what they're doing.
    Except that often men get treated as heroes for managing simple shit like the very basic needs of a child, for actually cleaning their flat without help, etc. Still sexist, but not quite the same.
    Sexism towards men is like racism towards white people. It is exists, it is not good, but it does not have the same effect. And it is often a reaction to the centuries of prejudice coming the other way.
    Not saying it isn't whinge-worthy, just not the same.

    Given the history and the definite men's rights trend of misidentifying behaviour as sexism, showing one's work is almost a prerequisite.

  • GwaiGwai Epiphanies Host
    edited September 2020
    orfeo wrote: »
    Gwai wrote: »
    This pisses me off. You and your "womensplaining" bullshit. I don't think you have any fucking clue what real sexism is, @Hugal . And I don't mean the kind that Doc Tor or Rev T went through, so that's definitely sexism and thus malodorous. I mean the kind where I couldn't work in tech without having to always be ready to be told I couldn't handle it and didn't belong. I mean the kind where as a professional woman I will have my competence doubted regularly because of my name. My (female) boss and I have a plan to handle sexist people who report to me. Because we need them. My daughter is preteen child, but she already recognizes sexism where she goes. Perhaps because she knows that if she follows her career goals, a large majority of the women beside her will drop out because of sexism. And I have barely scraped the surface of what I have myself seen and heard.

    This basically reads as "I've experienced sexism so you couldn't possibly have also experienced sexism". Which is just illogical.
    Nope. What I am saying is that I had to walk 6 miles to get here, so don't tell me that if you had to walk across the house that was clearly unfair and prejudice. Or to put it differently, if straight person T goes to tell four queer friends of theirs that they make too many queer jokes and they, T, are hard done by because of it, I bet that not one of T's friends will have a drop of sympathy.
    orfeo wrote: »
    Let's accept for the sake of argument that you have indeed experienced more sexism. It does not follow that the sexism that someone else has experienced is not "real".
    Indubitably very true. But it might mean that I have the perspective to tell you that having met a couple rude women somewhere is not automatically sexism. In fact, the OP could be being sexist himself by assuming that any woman who ignorantly thinks herself an expert could only be doing it because of her gender. However, I have seen enough real sexism that I will not jump to silly conclusions and pretend that is my opinion.
    orfeo wrote: »
    Frankly, the original post doesn't give nearly enough explanation of what's going on to know whether there's sexism involved.
    And that is exactly what ticked me off. This is me saying to the OP "Aww, bless your heart, you little idiot. Just because your mom thinks she knows better than you isn't sexism. It's probably just a mom forgetting you grew up. But it surely does prove you don't know fucking shit what sexism is.
    orfeo wrote: »
    I'm not jumping to conclusions. But at the same time as yelling about how this is all bullshit you're also acknowledging that yes, when men step into roles traditionally assigned to women, they do get women treating them as if they couldn't possibly know what they're doing.
    And please note that I did particularly acknowledge what the fathers have gone through as sexism and shitty. They shouldn't have had to go through that, and if I were there, I would have said something. My husband is the main caretaker of our kids, and I do speak up when I hear that stuff.
  • Gwai wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Frankly, the original post doesn't give nearly enough explanation of what's going on to know whether there's sexism involved.
    And that is exactly what ticked me off. This is me saying to the OP "Aww, bless your heart, you little idiot. Just because your mom thinks she knows better than you isn't sexism. It's probably just a mom forgetting you grew up. But it surely does prove you don't know fucking shit what sexism is.

    No, it doesn't. It doesn't prove anything at all, because it doesn't contain any more information than "I have a grievance". @Hugal's subsequent post suggests that the women in question are his co-workers, and not his mother.
    Gwai wrote: »
    But it might mean that I have the perspective to tell you that having met a couple rude women somewhere is not automatically sexism. In fact, the OP could be being sexist himself by assuming that any woman who ignorantly thinks herself an expert could only be doing it because of her gender.

    I'm just going to quote this again:
    Others have raised the point that there is a difference between having someone 'splain at you because someone of your sex couldn't possibly understand X, and having someone 'splain at you because the 'splainer likes their own voice and can't imagine that anyone else could know more than them.

    If you are the only person of your sex in the company of a group of the opposite sex, it's probably easy to read a case of the second kind as a case of the first kind.

  • Speaking as a man whose current career is house husband, can we all agree that while it is in the abstract equally sexist to suppose that a man is incapable of childcare and that a woman is incapable of tech support or management, in the real world childcare is not remunerated and tech support and management are. Thus the practical effects on society as a whole are rather different.
  • Others have raised the point that there is a difference between having someone 'splain at you because someone of your sex couldn't possibly understand X, and having someone 'splain at you because the 'splainer likes their own voice and can't imagine that anyone else could know more than them.

    If you are the only person of your sex in the company of a group of the opposite sex, it's probably easy to read a case of the second kind as a case of the first kind.

    [/quote]This does not excuse it. Your example is one of sexism. Not getting the difference between 'splaining and ego mightn't be hardcore misogyny, but it still results from at least low key sexism.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Speaking as a man whose current career is house husband, can we all agree that while it is in the abstract equally sexist to suppose that a man is incapable of childcare and that a woman is incapable of tech support or management, in the real world childcare is not remunerated and tech support and management are. Thus the practical effects on society as a whole are rather different.
    Speaking as another house husband (Gwai's husband as it happens,) can I loudly second this post?

    Hell, I'll intensify it and note that fields that are traditionally "female" (nursing, caretaking, taking care of small children) are also the professional fields that seem to have terrible investment-to-return ratio.

    As I've been fond of saying in conversations around racism, sexism, and other legacy prejudices that seem to linger on like lumbering flesh golems...it all runs together.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Others have raised the point that there is a difference between having someone 'splain at you because someone of your sex couldn't possibly understand X, and having someone 'splain at you because the 'splainer likes their own voice and can't imagine that anyone else could know more than them.

    If you are the only person of your sex in the company of a group of the opposite sex, it's probably easy to read a case of the second kind as a case of the first kind.

    This does not excuse it. Your example is one of sexism. Not getting the difference between 'splaining and ego mightn't be hardcore misogyny, but it still results from at least low key sexism.

    I think I get what you're saying. It may not completely excuse it, but it does in my view provide explanation and mitigation.

    Let me give an example, which is quite closely based on real life. Imagine a group of people who meet regularly to coordinate work on a particular thing. A new member is appointed to the group, and that new member is asked to take minutes. The new member is the only woman in the group, and feels aggrieved that she has been assigned the secretarial task.

    We'll assume that, because she's a woman in a largely male world, she's had plenty of experience of sexism.

    Only in this case, it's not sexism. The practice of this group is to always appoint the newest member to take the minutes, because it has discovered that this forces the new member to ask for explanations of jargon and other in-group knowledge, and so gets them up to speed quicker.

    So:

    1. The woman was mistaken to assume that her being assigned the secretarial task was a sexist act. By your argument, the woman was being sexist, although I think that's a rather harsh view.
    2. The man in charge of the group could have anticipated that the lone woman being assigned the secretarial task might suspect sexism, and explained the group's practice and reason, rather than just asking her to take minutes.
    3. What actually happened was that the woman in question sat silently fuming throughout the meeting, and then blew up at the man in charge after the meeting had finished, pretty much accusing him of outright sexism. The man apologized and explained point 2, the woman apologized, and everyone moved on.
  • mousethiefmousethief Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    I would be happy if people would stop shouting "mansplaining!" every time a man explains something to a woman. It becomes like the boy who cries wolf. It robs the word of any meaning at all. It is being used as a final-word, shut-down-the-discussion gobstopper. It's bullshit.

    If a woman gives a man some reason to believe she is an expert on a subject and he persists, then label away.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Others have raised the point that there is a difference between having someone 'splain at you because someone of your sex couldn't possibly understand X, and having someone 'splain at you because the 'splainer likes their own voice and can't imagine that anyone else could know more than them.

    If you are the only person of your sex in the company of a group of the opposite sex, it's probably easy to read a case of the second kind as a case of the first kind.

    This does not excuse it. Your example is one of sexism. Not getting the difference between 'splaining and ego mightn't be hardcore misogyny, but it still results from at least low key sexism.

    I think I get what you're saying. It may not completely excuse it, but it does in my view provide explanation and mitigation.

    Let me give an example, which is quite closely based on real life. Imagine a group of people who meet regularly to coordinate work on a particular thing. A new member is appointed to the group, and that new member is asked to take minutes. The new member is the only woman in the group, and feels aggrieved that she has been assigned the secretarial task.

    We'll assume that, because she's a woman in a largely male world, she's had plenty of experience of sexism.

    Only in this case, it's not sexism. The practice of this group is to always appoint the newest member to take the minutes, because it has discovered that this forces the new member to ask for explanations of jargon and other in-group knowledge, and so gets them up to speed quicker.

    So:

    1. The woman was mistaken to assume that her being assigned the secretarial task was a sexist act. By your argument, the woman was being sexist, although I think that's a rather harsh view.
    That is not quite the same thing as my example. I wouldn't see the woman as being sexist or at least not blindly sexist. Seeing a waddle and webbed feet in a duck pond and shouting duck might be an assumption, but it is not without reason.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    I would be happy if people would stop shouting "mansplaining!" every time a man explains something to a woman. It becomes like the boy who cries wolf. It robs the word of any meaning at all. It is being used as a final-word, shut-down-the-discussion gobstopper. It's bullshit.

    If a woman gives a man some reason to believe she is an expert on a subject and he persists, then label away.
    When it is right more often then wrong, it doesn't lose its meaning. If the existence of the misuse of a word strips its meaning, then English might as well be discarded as a language.
    It is not incumbent on a woman to prove her knowledge, it is the assumption that she won't have such knowledge that makes it mansplaining. It makes it worse when the woman is an actual expert.
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    Gwai wrote: »
    This pisses me off. You and your "womensplaining" bullshit. I don't think you have any fucking clue what real sexism is, @Hugal . And I don't mean the kind that Doc Tor or Rev T went through, so that's definitely sexism and thus malodorous. I mean the kind where I couldn't work in tech without having to always be ready to be told I couldn't handle it and didn't belong. I mean the kind where as a professional woman I will have my competence doubted regularly because of my name. My (female) boss and I have a plan to handle sexist people who report to me. Because we need them. My daughter is preteen child, but she already recognizes sexism where she goes. Perhaps because she knows that if she follows her career goals, a large majority of the women beside her will drop out because of sexism. And I have barely scraped the surface of what I have myself seen and heard.

    You have gone way over my OP things that are not there. As it happens I have gone for Lots if jobs and got interviews and After going in the places for a meal found a woman has the job.it has happened a lot of times. I have had way more woman managers than men. I was, in a deceitful way forced out of one kitchen because the woman wanted me out. I know this because I had seen them do it to other men. The way they treated me nearly led to me committing suicide. So things are not as black and white as you seem to think.
    I know my job. I do not need someone to tell me how to do it. I have a very high level health safety in catering certification. I do not need anyone to tell me about hygiene in the catering trade. I know how to bake (I have two patisserie certificates) I do not need to be told how to make a cake. I can clean, iron and make beds, when I first qualified in catering I got a house keeping qualifications so and have used said skills. I can professionally clean and cook. If I had a pound for amount of times I have been told how to do these things by a woman, I would never need to work again. So it is womansplaing not sexism.
  • @Leorning Cniht describes a situation that looked like sexism, but wasn't. One that the woman reasonable thought it was, but was incorrect.
  • Missed the edit window please excuse some of the dyslectic mistakes .
  • I've been accused of mansplaining geology to a geologist, when I thought we were having a discussion about geology between equals.

    Yes, I agree with Dafyd's point above about remuneration. My counterargument is that 20 years ago when I was the only bloke in the play park, only bloke at the specifically and deliberately titled "Mother and Baby group", the only bloke in the women's toilets because that's where they put the baby changing table, it was pretty fucking lonely and it screwed my shit up for years. Don't underestimate the impact of sexism on men who take on traditionally female roles.
  • Hugal wrote: »
    Admin could you please put the P in the title for me thanks
    Yes there was this men are stupid attitude but threads have not gone down well on it here.
    I am the only guy in my team. I get womansplained a lot

    Others have raised the point that there is a difference between having someone 'splain at you because someone of your sex couldn't possibly understand X, and having someone 'splain at you because the 'splainer likes their own voice and can't imagine that anyone else could know more than them.

    But on the other hand, if my communicative style is generally splainery, it doesn't really get me off the hook to say: 'I'm not misogynist, I'm condescending to everyone!'
  • AmosAmos Shipmate
    Two Hell threads in rapid succession from Hugal--this one and the desserts one. And IIRC his first two. Sorry you're going through a tough patch, Buddy.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    I've been accused of mansplaining geology to a geologist, when I thought we were having a discussion about geology between equals.

    Yes, I agree with Dafyd's point above about remuneration. My counterargument is that 20 years ago when I was the only bloke in the play park, only bloke at the specifically and deliberately titled "Mother and Baby group", the only bloke in the women's toilets because that's where they put the baby changing table, it was pretty fucking lonely and it screwed my shit up for years. Don't underestimate the impact of sexism on men who take on traditionally female roles.
    Roles men defined. I am not saying that you, and other men, have not suffered or that it does not suck. However, fixing that is part of the same problem that women complain about.
    I've no problem saying that sexism affects men, but I do have one with divorcing the reason that sexism exists from that effect,.
    Too often "Women can be sexist too" is used as a counter to complaints about male sexism. It is the same problem with the same source that requires the same fix.
    The opposition is the same: men* who benefit from, and/or buy into, the sexist narrative.


    *Yeah, some women as well, but they are not typically a significant part of the power structure and are still feeding from the male perspective regardless
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Too often "Women can be sexist too" is used as a counter to complaints about male sexism. It is the same problem with the same source that requires the same fix.
    The opposition is the same: men* who benefit from, and/or buy into, the sexist narrative.


    *Yeah, some women as well, but they are not typically a significant part of the power structure and are still feeding from the male perspective regardless

    I mostly agree with you. Women, however, are pretty much all of the power structure when it comes to young children. Granted that the territory has been essentially ceded to them by the patriarchy, but by God, when I was bringing up my kids, they held on to that like it was the pass at Thermopylae.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Too often "Women can be sexist too" is used as a counter to complaints about male sexism. It is the same problem with the same source that requires the same fix.
    The opposition is the same: men* who benefit from, and/or buy into, the sexist narrative.


    *Yeah, some women as well, but they are not typically a significant part of the power structure and are still feeding from the male perspective regardless

    I mostly agree with you. Women, however, are pretty much all of the power structure when it comes to young children. Granted that the territory has been essentially ceded to them by the patriarchy, but by God, when I was bringing up my kids, they held on to that like it was the pass at Thermopylae.
    When you have been given little, you guard it jealously. Especially as those places would be seen as safe spaces.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    I've been accused of mansplaining geology to a geologist, when I thought we were having a discussion about geology between equals.

    Yes, I agree with Dafyd's point above about remuneration. My counterargument is that 20 years ago when I was the only bloke in the play park, only bloke at the specifically and deliberately titled "Mother and Baby group", the only bloke in the women's toilets because that's where they put the baby changing table, it was pretty fucking lonely and it screwed my shit up for years. Don't underestimate the impact of sexism on men who take on traditionally female roles.

    I'm afraid this still happens - our village has a "music with Mummy" session at the community centre. My kids are all tweens and teens now though.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Too often "Women can be sexist too" is used as a counter to complaints about male sexism. It is the same problem with the same source that requires the same fix.
    The opposition is the same: men* who benefit from, and/or buy into, the sexist narrative.


    *Yeah, some women as well, but they are not typically a significant part of the power structure and are still feeding from the male perspective regardless

    I mostly agree with you. Women, however, are pretty much all of the power structure when it comes to young children. Granted that the territory has been essentially ceded to them by the patriarchy, but by God, when I was bringing up my kids, they held on to that like it was the pass at Thermopylae.
    When you have been given little, you guard it jealously. Especially as those places would be seen as safe spaces.

    Again, I get that. It doesn't make it not-sexist though.

    fwiw, I spent longer arguing with my A level physics teacher that the few girls in the class had as much right to be there as the boys than I did learning A level physics. But he was a dinosaur even then. And yes, I did escalate the issue to the college principle. And no, nothing was done.
  • If we we want to avoid being accused of mansplaining or womansplaining, I suggest bearing in mind that (a) none of us knows everything and not all of what we think we know is correct, (b) matters of individual taste are just that, and (c) saying less is often wiser.
  • In the online sphere - I think part of the problem can be clash of posting habits.

    If some one posts a status such as: “don’t ask me about this weekend”, or “tfw when somebody else’s deadline becomes your urgent problem” - it usually means they want to talk as about this. They want someone to say “what happened ?

    There is now a set of people who post “don’t ask me about about work stress“, and are hoping people will respond with “feel better soon” or with pictures of cute animals etc

    Likewise there are people who post on social media the equivalent of “I’ve got a splitting headache and not even solpadine will shift it !” And are then surprised / annoyed when people reply with advice and home remedies for headaches. Responding “I did not ask for advice”, whereas the people responding to them are understanding the action of their posting random health info to strangers *as* a request for advice or why post it, why would you ask for emotional support from people you don’t actually know ?

    So in terms of man/woman/othersplaining - I think sometimes this arises from clash of conversational / posting style. For example, you might think you are using a rhetorical question, the person you are talking to may believe it is a real question. “Why would they think I don’t know that ? You think”. Well possibly because they have talked to x number of other people who don’t.
  • Amos wrote: »
    Two Hell threads in rapid succession from Hugal--this one and the desserts one. And IIRC his first two. Sorry you're going through a tough patch, Buddy.

    They are my first two in a while. I have been on the ship a long long. Nothing wrong as such just thought they were interesting subjects and a different way to look at issues. Lots of restaurants don’t think about there desserts, woman are as susceptible to splaining as men but that is not the popular image.
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