Amelia
I am in a group chat, and have been for some time, called “Mansplains”. The group has 10 members, myself included, 5 of whom are men. Most of the discussion in the group is among the women, I think because the type of men who self-select to be in a group called Mansplains are there to learn how not to engage in the behaviour and are thus fairly good listeners. I did not know until I read the postscript to the titular essay in Rebecca Solnit’s 2014 collection Men Explain Things to Me that (after the essay was originally published in 2008, made the rounds, died down and resurfaced again, going viral in fits and starts) Solnit had been credited with the term Mansplain, which was one of the New York Times’ words of the year for 2010. She did not, in fact, coin it and explains in the postscript: “I have my doubts about the word and don’t use it myself much; it seems to me to go a little heavy on the idea that men are inherently flawed in this way, rather than that some men explain things they shouldn’t and and don’t hear things they should” (Solnit, p.13).
The essay describes, in beautiful concision and precise description, an instance of a man explaining something to a woman that seems so absurd as to be exaggerated to fiction… if you are a male reader. I discussed the story with a male friend who asked whether I thought at least some details were embellished, but reading the story as a woman, it only seems too familiar and utterly believable.
Continue reading “Men Explain Things to Me”