Mansplaining

Mansplaining, a portmanteau of the words man and explaning, is the act of "a man condescendingly explain[ing] something to female listeners". Lily Rothman of The Atlantic defines it as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman," and Rebecca Solnit ascribes the phenomenon to a combination of "overconfidence and cluelessness" that some men display.

The neologism was inspired by Solnit's 2008 essay Men Explain Things to Me, in which she relates an anecdote of a man at a party expounding on a book to her, without realizing that Solnit was the author of the work. The word soon became popular in the feminist blogosphere, and then exploded into mainstream usage, as a much-needed term for an old concept and a frequent experience. It was selected for New York Times' 2010 word of the year list; nominated for American Dialect Society's most creative word of the year in 2012; added to the online Oxford Dictionaries in 2014; and engendered parallel constructions such as whitesplaining and rightsplaining. As the word has become more popular, some commentators have complained that its misappropriation, overuse, and overly-broad use have diluted its original meaning and made its use counter-productive, or even inflammatory, in some instances.

Definition

Mansplaining also covers a heterogeneous mix of mannerisms in which a speaker's reduced respect for the stance of a listener, or a person being discussed, appears to have little reason behind it other than the speaker's assumption that the listener or subject, being female, is not expected to have the same capacity to understand as a male would, or their views are not given the same respect a male's would be given. It also covers situations where it appears a person is using their conversation primarily for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, by holding forth to a presumed less capable female listener in order to appear knowledgeable by comparison.

Rebecca Solnit's original essay took the idea further than the bare concept of mansplaining, to cover its consequences, which she describes as covering many situations where women, whether members of the public or professionals and experts within some area, are routinely seen or treated as less credible than men, or as needing a man to validate their testimony or insights, stating that this is one symptom of a widespread behavior that "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence".

Mansplaining differs somewhat from many other forms of condescension since it is specifically a gender-related form of condescension and is rooted in a sexist assumption which assumes that a man will normally be more knowledgeable, or more capable of understanding many matters, than a woman.

Generalization to other divisions beyond gender

Mansplaining is considered a patronizing act in gender divisions, and has been generalized to include racial divisions and political divisions, for example whitesplaining, and rightsplaining.

History

The word is thought to have been first used in 2008 or 2009, shortly after San Francisco essayist Rebecca Solnit published an April 2008 blog post titled "Men Explain Things to Me; Facts Didn't Get in Their Way.". In it, she did not use the word mansplaining, but defined the phenomenon as "something every woman knows". Her post involved the story of a man she met at a party, who began to didactically describe to her a recent "very important" book (which it transpired he himself had not read, but had read about in a review). The man needed to be told by her accompanying friend three or four times that Solnit was in fact the author of the book concerned, before actually paying attention to and absorbing the information that the woman he was trying to explain the significance of the book to, was in fact the author.

Solnit's original essay went further, to cover the consequences of this gendered behavior, drawing attention to its effect in creating a conspiracy of silence and disempowerment. Solnit later published Men Explain Things To Me, a collection of seven essays surrounding this theme.

A month later the word mansplaining appeared in a comment on the social network LiveJournal, and its usage has grown since. The term quickly gained wide recognition, and in 2010, The New York Times named mansplainer as one of its "Words of the Year."

Since 2010, journalists have described U.S. Republican politicians including then-presidential nominee Mitt Romney, then-vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan and Governor of Texas Rick Perry, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, and various characters on the HBO drama series The Newsroom as mansplainers.

Controversy

There has been disagreement among women regarding the usefulness of the term. Given its gender-specific nature and negative connotation, the word has been described by Lesley Kinzel as being inherently biased, essentialist, dismissive, and a double standard. Annie-Rose Strasser states that that the term is too easily misunderstood and misappropriated, which makes it counterproductive in calling out problematic behaviour. She cites the coinage of the term "womansplaining" to describe a woman interacting with someone in a condescending manner as evidence of this misappropriation.

See also

• Sociolinguistics

External links

• Men Explain Things to Me; Facts Didn't Get in Their Way - April 13 2008, essay copy
• The dictionary definition of mansplaining at Wiktionary