Johannesburg – Before American writer Rebecca Solnit published her collection of essays titled, Men Explain Things to Me, women did not have a word to describe the offensive, derogatory, condescending and patronising way in which some men sometimes speak to them.
In one of the essays, published in 2008, Solnit recounts how while attending a posh shindig in Aspen Colorado, in the US a gentleman whom she had been introduced to casually said to her: “I hear you have written a couple of books.”
When she corrected him that there are actually several books and began delving into the topic of her most recent one, the gentleman interjected, only to describe how he had read a book on the same subject, which he said was a very important source on the subject.
Solnit goes on to tell us how her friend tried four times to tell the gentleman that in fact the book he is describing was written by the woman he was standing next to.
When the message finally sunk in; the man was embarrassed. This is more common than women would care to admit. And it can be as subtle as when a woman says her favourite sport is soccer and then a man asking her “who her favourite player is” and “what position he plays”?
Would he ask another man, who has just professed his love of football, such a question?
Solnit’s work inspired the term mansplaining. Mansplaining is described as a pejorative term, meaning to “comment or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner”.
And women are all too familiar with mansplaining. Kathryn Maude, an assistant professor in women and gender studies at the American University of Beirut, quipped on Twitter that she had to listen to men telling her that there wasn’t any women writing during the Middle Ages.
It did not matter that they were saying this to a woman with a PhD in medieval women’s writing. She is not alone. Ask hundreds of women who are being given 101 classes by men who are not even experts in a particular subject.
It gets worse when men try to explain a women’s only experience to a woman. A male doctor telling a firsttime mom that giving birth is not any different from pooping. The BBC asked author Kim Goodwin to give men a simple guide to stop them from mansplaining. She offered a useful chart that asked simple questions such as: “Did she ask you to explain it?” If you answer “yes”, the chart would indicate that you are not mansplaining.
If you answer “no”, the chart would go further to ask: “Do you have more relevant experience?”
If she has more than you, then you are definitely mansplaining.
If you have the same experience, you are mansplaining.
Fact is: mansplaining, though insidious, is serious and some would even argue its a form of gender-based violence.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
Sunday World
