{"id":1703,"date":"2009-08-11T09:24:41","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T14:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/?p=1703"},"modified":"2009-08-11T09:24:41","modified_gmt":"2009-08-11T14:24:41","slug":"mansplaining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2009\/08\/11\/mansplaining\/","title":{"rendered":"Mansplaining"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the interesting things about the technological world is that new, precise terminology develops really quickly. This can be confusing and a barrier to understanding things, but when it bleeds over into culture surrounding technology (e.g. newsgroups back in the day and social networking sites now), there’s great jargon that really captures cultural phenomenon.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, I learned the term “mansplain” through meta-comments about a blog post<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Urban Dictionary defines “mainsplain”<\/a> as:<\/p>\n

To explain in a patronizing manner, assuming total ignorance on the part of those listening. The mansplainer is often shocked and hurt when their mansplanation is not taken as absolute fact, criticized or even rejected altogether.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve definitely been guilty of this.\u00c2\u00a0 The example that weighs heavily in my memory happened on a trip back home during my freshman year of college.\u00c2\u00a0 I had just participated in reading Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” as part of a university-wide reading program.\u00c2\u00a0 It was really an eye-opening book for me because it described cultural pressures and beauty standards that, as a man, I really didn’t have to think about or deal with.\u00c2\u00a0 I was excited by my new-found consciousness and filled with moral outrage about the injustice of gendered beauty standards.\u00c2\u00a0 On my trip back, I went with my family to one of my brother’s quiz bowl competitions.\u00c2\u00a0 In talking with one of his female teammates, the subject shifted to gender and appearance.\u00c2\u00a0 I began to describe “The Beauty Myth” and how culture and mass media oppressed women and suggested that she read the book.\u00c2\u00a0 My brother’s teammate cut me off.\u00c2\u00a0 “I don’t read that dykey stuff,” she replied shortly.<\/p>\n

Until recently, this story sat in my mind as an example of how ideas that restrict someone can be internalized, but now I see it as a possible response to my mansplaining.\u00c2\u00a0 Surely, a young woman participating in an intellectual competition, thick with geeky connotations, where women were definitely in the minority didn’t need to have gendered double standards explained to her.\u00c2\u00a0 This kind of mansplaining seems particularly problematic because it’s pedantically clobbering someone about issues of gender.\u00c2\u00a0 This is easy for me, and likely other men, to do because part of male privilege and the expectations and behaviors that perpetuate it is that men aren’t supposed to think about how our lives are mediataed by gender.\u00c2\u00a0 So, it’s a lot easier to try to front with presumed expertise when we learn about how gender works in our society from books or descriptions of other people’s experience than to describe and analyze our own experiences with gender.<\/p>\n

What is the remedy?\u00c2\u00a0 It seems so difficult when I feel conditioned to mansplained. The familiar elementary school report is just one example of how our culture values singular expertise on a subject and assumes that the non-expert doesn’t have anything to contribute to the teaching or learning process.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel like I get most of my validation from the things that I do that are perceived as having the most exclusive knowledge.\u00c2\u00a0 Do I get validation because I enjoy writing computer programs or do I write computer programs because it’s something that is culturally perceived as challenging and talent-requiring?\u00c2\u00a0 What can individuals do with skills or knowledge other than demonstrate their expertise?<\/p>\n

I can answer the last question at least.\u00c2\u00a0 We can do stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 And one thing that is incredibly helpful to me is to do things where I am most definitely and perpetually not expert.\u00c2\u00a0 It forces me to appreciate the abilities or knowledge of others and learn from them.\u00c2\u00a0 Playing music is one of those things and playing soccer is another.\u00c2\u00a0 When I think about gender, it’s hard not to think about soccer because playing it, for me, has always involved playing with women, but the institution has also seemed so male dominated.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s easy for me to fetishize women who play on otherwise all-boys high school teams, or who are the sole lady at the pick-up game, and it’s compelling to say, “I know what you’re facing, I can see how the pressures and expectations of gender are playing themselves out on this field.”\u00c2\u00a0 But, really, we know these things because we live them, on one side of the gender divide or the other, and we can do our best to make these spaces in our lives more gender equal.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally, I rely on soccer as an example of personal changes in gendered interactions because it’s so obvious that what, beyond “teaching” someone skills or pointing out their minority status in the game, what will really benefit women playing in mostly-male soccer games benefits most men too.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t elevate the game when any player makes assumptions about the skills of their teammates.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not fun for everyone when two dudes start yelling at each other over some foul.\u00c2\u00a0 And it doesn’t make anyone more skillful when a handful of skilled players hog the ball and are oblivious to their teammates.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s pretty clear in this example, but generally true, I think.\u00c2\u00a0 While gendered expectations benefit men in a lot of ways, they also restrict us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the interesting things about the technological world is that new, precise terminology develops really quickly. This can be confusing and a barrier to understanding things, but when it bleeds over into culture surrounding technology (e.g. newsgroups back in the day and social networking sites now), there’s great jargon that really captures cultural phenomenon.\u00c2\u00a0… Continue reading Mansplaining<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[257,21293,732,565],"class_list":["post-1703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-gender","tag-mansplain","tag-masculinity","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-rt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}