Mansplaining: The Art of Talking Down to People

A few months ago, I went to open fencing night at an independent club to brush up on my technique.  As often happens, I was the only female fencer there; I’ve been surprised to learn that the sport is very male-dominated outside the collegiate circuit.  It had been a while since I’d picked up a foil; to say the least, I was not on top of my game.  After a particularly ego-bruising bout, one fellow pulled me aside.  He offered some elementary fencing vocab that I’d learned years ago and told me all about how wonderful tournaments are and how you hear the buzzers on the score machines going off all the time and how everyone is sweaty and oh you’ll just absolutely love it.  Apparently, this gentleman was under the impression that I had never competed before.  (For the record, this is my fourth year on Tufts’s varsity team, and I’ve fenced at non-collegiate tournaments, too.)

Boom.  Mansplaining in action.

Image credit: someecards

Man-what? you say.  Mansplaining, as defined by urbandictionary.com, is “to explain in a patronizing manner, assuming total ignorance on the part of those listening.”  Generally, a male does the mansplaining and a woman is on the receiving end, although either gender can fulfill either role.   The term caught fire this past year as memes took over the world and a ring of rape-apologist politicians inspired single-topic blogs such as Mansplaining Paul Ryan. However, the “I know best, sweetie” response is nothing new: mansplaining has been happening for centuries.  Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, seventeenth-century Mexican poet and all-around brilliant scholar, was told by a “Sor Filotea” that her literary endeavors and worldly curiosity compromised her holiness as a nun.  (Spoiler alert: Sor Filotea was actually a pseudonym of the Bishop, who had allowed her to publish her critique, only to then viciously attack her with a false name.  Jerk.) The concept of mansplaining was popularized by a 2008 L.A. Times article by author Rebecca Solnit that described an experience of hers: a man, all puffed-up and proud with literary knowledge, described to Solnit a book he’d read recently. He refused to entertain the possibility that Solnit herself might be the author, which she was.  (And yes, he knew she’d written a book on that subject the very same year.)

To be fair, the fencing incident might not have been motived by pure sexism; considering my performance that night, I wonder if I just put out a general air of incompetence unrelated to my gender.  If the man had introduced himself, I would have probably said something like “Hi, I’m Kelly, I fence for Tufts,” and there would have been less of a misunderstanding.  Perhaps the man was just trying to make me feel welcome and included.  Even so, his behavior still fits the basic definition of mansplaining: the mansplainer assumes a position of expertise and talks to the, mansplainee under the assumption that he or she is an idiot.  ”Mansplaining” is not necessarily synonymous with “evil,” but in every case, it’s insulting, hurtful, and perpetuates the idea that one group or individual deserves more respect and intellectual credit than the other.

By the way, ‘splaining isn’t just about gender inequity; the suffix is used to refer to people who speak with the assumption that they are superior to others based on a difference in class, race, or other difference-denoting quality.  Take a look here.