#mansplained

It is so incredibly frustrating to be talked down to by anyone. I start feeling like I’ve put off an air of stupidity or said something to make this person think I’m an idiot. Generally, having things explained to me is helpful; I like to think I’m an open person who enjoys learning. But having things explained to me condescendingly is not. It’s upsetting in more ways than one, and I doubt I’m alone in feeling that way.

In comes “mansplaining”: When a man starts explaining something to me that I gave no indication of not knowing, or for which I did not ask clarification, or maybe I don’t actually give a rat’s ass about the topic at hand but, because it’s so important in this particular man’s world, I obviously should.

It happens everywhere, all the time, since as long as I can remember. At work, men like to tell me how to do my job. And just to clarify, my job is too easy. It’s a placeholder job that allows me to blog during the day until I can find something to do with my life that I actually care about. So. Easy. Yet I sit here, occasionally ordering supplies, taking attendance, or (the horror!) having to buzz visitors in or validate their parking, having things mansplained to me. “This, my dear, is how you use the parking validation machine.” Again, to be clear, to validate parking I take the ticket from the visitor, stick it in a small machine, the machine stamps it, and I hand it back to the person. It’s so easy that it’s almost painful, and definitely mind-numbing. To do it wrong, I suppose I’d have to not do it at all…

How do I know this particular clarification regarding parking validation is mansplaining? How do I know I’m being mansplained at when the man who works in the billing department shows me how to track a supply order? (I was brought up in the 21st century, for God’s sake.) I know because not a single female has attempted to show me how to use the validation machine. Not a single female working at this company (many of whom are my direct bosses) has tried to show me how to track an order, how to stamp the mail with a date stamper, how to refill candy jars, how to use my badge to swipe in… But men who are not my bosses, who have no reason to think I don’t know how to do these very simple tasks, still explain these things to me.

Maybe they like to feel useful or helpful. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t and won’t sit here pretending they are. Being talked down to makes me feel stupid, unintelligent, dense. But I know that I’m not. I wish mansplainers could understand that my female body and my acquired and subsequently chosen femininity do not make me unintelligent. These things make me different from them in a few slight ways.

(We can talk about brain size, gray vs. white brain matter, and left vs. right sides of the brain, but still it’s been proven that learning capabilities and intelligence are unrelated to sex or gender.)

Is that perhaps the point, though, to make me feel stupid, like I can’t learn or need help learning? Do mansplainers do it unconsciously in order to feel more powerful, more in control, superior in some way?

I don’t know. But I do know that, to be a man, you don’t need to know everything. You don’t need to pretend to in order to maintain some semblance of control. We’re all human and we can’t know everything. Accept it. Our culture needs to accept it as a whole or else little boys will continue to grow up into mansplainers and little girls will continue to be talked down to. I’m just not OK with that, or with the future looking so bleak, or with any of my future children having to grow up in a world where mansplaining is accepted as the norm. I don’t want my daughters mansplained at or my sons to be mansplainers, to feel the need to prove their power or their worth as men.

Culture is capable of change; I believe that.

It’s also imperative we all accept that, male or female, we are all capable. I do not need anyone to speak condescendingly toward me in order to teach me anything. At that point, if I actually don’t understand something, I’d rather teach myself. (I promise, I’m smart enough.)

Men can complain about a term like “mansplaining” all they want, but, like it or not, it exists with a foundation. It wouldn’t exist to explain the frustration of being talked down to if, for years and years and years, women as well as other men had not been spoken down to by these specific men, mansplainers, knowingly or not.

Do I seem bitter or angry? Maybe I am right now. Maybe I just had the billing guy mansplain what an order number is to me, and maybe I’m sick of it. Maybe I’ll get over it, but maybe I shouldn’t.