– In which Dorn explains, uh, Dorn explaining.
There’s a term in popular use now that I have mixed feelings about, “mansplaining”. I realized how much I didn’t like it during a recent conversation with my learned friend Kelly Samek. The conversation was about a website called AreMenTalkingTooMuch.com, which contains an online version of a sort of chess timer that you can use at a boring meeting if you want, as the website says, to:
Few people will try this online experiment, I suspect, without having a good guess of what the answer will be, which is kind of the point. Like the term “mansplaining”, the point is that men overexplain things to women and under-listen to explanations from women, regardless of topic or the relative expertise of the men and women involved.
During the conversation with Kelly I felt like I needed to defend myself against being guilty of practicing mansplaining, even though she didn’t accuse me of it, and I agree that men in general (including me) do indeed do it.
I immediately felt guilty about feeling defensive about mansplaining, because hey, with all the societal advantages that being a guy brings, I should be able to suck up a little harmless ribbing. And that’s not just my feeling–it’s the zeitgeist. I tried a search on gender based stereotypes, and my first hit (MDHealth.com) informed me that stereotyping male attributes (sex-obsessed, lazy at home, presidential) is “fun”. The search didn’t yield any hits that were outraged by the male stereotyping, just as I wouldn’t expect to find any sites outraged by lawyer jokes.
Why should I feel bad about the word “to mansplain”? Well, for one thing, it’s a derogatory stereotype, which we liberals are supposed to hate (unlike all those conservatives!). (That’s irony, you got that, right?) I remember being shocked the first time I heard someone use the verb “to jew”. I’m not shocked by, and in fact have used myself, “to gyp” and “to welch”, but now I know their origins, I know intellectually what’s wrong with them.
For another thing, the word allows someone who doesn’t know anything about me to draw a negative conclusion about me based solely on my gender. The fact that it’s a true conclusion just makes it worse.
I don’t mind being characterized accurately even when it’s unflattering (he said self-importantly, if not very self-awarely), but I’d rather people use what they know about me to describe me, and not just a stereotype. I have a word that I think better captures what I used to do at work, and what I still do now, and I would appreciate it if everyone added it to their lexicon:
“Dornsplaining”. OK?
thanks!
-Dorn
7/3/19