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So I’ve noticed this post isn’t going over very well. I’d like to add a female perspective.
“Mansplain” isn’t meant to say you info dump or over explain a thing. It means that you assume you know more simply based on sex. It’s a type of misogyny that’s more typically overt in boomer culture, but it’s got a following in the whole Tate movement. I have rarely noticed it outside of that generation in the wild.
Now…Guys do infodump, which leads to this confusion, because a lot of people dislike that behavior too. Statistically women do speak less in mixed groups. Put it all together and it’s easy for people to over generalize a very specific behavior. It does happen, but compared to previous generations it’s not as common. It definitely occurs to women who work in non-traditional fields and take on non-traditional roles and I suspect that the same is true for men.
Infodumping male here, I generally do it because in my mind context is important to make sense, and of course I do it regardless of gender. It honestly feels like a detriment, as I feel myself taking too long, but don’t really know how to shorten it. I do it when explaining issues at work or when talking about stuff I like etc, but have audio has times where I tried to be brief then got the wrong info across or forgot to mention something important or just right make sense. It’s like I can’t find the right balance between explaining and dumping.
I didn’t find this post as an insult or anything though.
I have the same problem. I work in IT and when I was on the help desk I was one of the “go to” people if someone needed help with a call. There were a couple times I heard new hires complain that I was “mansplaining” to them because I never knew where someone was coming from in terms of technical ability so when I answered their question I began at the beginning to make sure they understood. I did the same thing regardless of gender but I can see how someone felt like I was being condescending if they weren’t familiar with me. It did always seem like it was people who didn’t want to be there that would complain about it too. On the other hand several people that went on to get promoted off the help desk sent me thank you notes for teaching them so much so it kind of balanced out.
I had an experience with a male coworker. I am a man too.
He asked me because he had a USB and he wanted to put the windows iso onto it but it didn’t work. Eventually he used the media creator (or whatever it is called) but he asked if I knew what the issue was. After a lot of questions, I had figured it out.
He wanted to create a bootable USB by drag and drop the iso onto the usb and the usb was formated in fat32, so the iso was too big for the filesystem.
In that conversation, he said multiple times that he knows about this or that and that he knows computers, e.g. when I asked about the size of the usb (maybe it was a very old USB with like 4gb storage). And I could tell how he was slightly offended by some questions.
Also please note, he was “following” the Microsoft tutorial
Edit: typos fixed
Yea, tons of stuff like that is why I did things the way I did. If I start at the beginning instead of trying to jump around and figure out where you messed up it’s usually much more efficient. There were people who I was confident in their ability enough to skip around but if they were new to me we were going to cover the entire process to be sure.
Tbh, that’s the main reason I stopped talking about things that matter to me with women unless they are asking me for it and keep asking during the conversation.
If I infodump on a guy, that guy thinks it’s because I’m maybe overly excited about my thing.
If I infodump exactly the same way on a woman, it’s because I’m mansplaining.
The only way I know around that is to not infodump on women. I pretty much trained myself to become an introvert around women.
Yup, i do the same, avoids bullshit.
I kinda overdo it though. Woman’s about to cross a road with her headphones on, running the pedestrian red light with intense traffic, not bothering to look either way? I’m not gonna mansplain, that’s offensive, she knows what she’s doing.
Imagine going to school for years and years. You have your doctorate. You’re in the field for 10 years. You work in field that is 93% male. You find a new job, good pay and reputable. The boss on the daily explains things to you. Some things that are just basic science and not even directly applicable to your work. No other new hires get these interesting and informative chats but what a coincidence, all the other new hires are men. I never called it “mansplaining,” it’s just sexism. One cute word doesn’t capture the malice that is often behind it and makes men who view themselves as harmless defensive. Of course there is pointing out systemic sexism that is ingrained in natural behavior but its important to note the difference in a simple conversation and singling out a woman to explain something while assuming she doesn’t have anything in that pretty little head of hers. Personally hence, I’ve noticed it used most often when the woman you’re targeting is smarter than you and this is a subtle power play to remind her of her place.
Mansplainer perspective here. No, it doesn’t come (for me) from a belief that a woman can’t do anything, it rather comes from an instruction from a childhood that boys should always help and defend girls. If I were in place of that boss, my unconscious intent would be to lower the woman’s burden.
I catch myself doing it and stop it but it’s the hardest pattern I have ever corrected insofar.
I really appreciate this perspective and it really does shine light on how one is raised based on their gender. I can think of a multitude of examples from your perspective and also from who you are responding to.
I’m absolutely positive that, regardless of how hard I tried not to, I did raise my son and daughter differently. All I hope is that I did a little better than my parents did for me and my brothers and, should they have kids themselves, my children do a little better than I did, and so on and so forth.
Today is not that day but maybe when I’m dust, society will slowly limp along and evolve. Conversations like this may seem divisive now but I think they’re needed in the grand scheme of things.
Some humans in the future might wake up in a better world because of people like you. Keep it up!
Bruh, I had a colleague who transitioned FTM and he would talk about this all the time. Constantly being told the most basic shit over and over really fucked with the guy before he transitioned, he said not having to deal with it felt like a breath of fresh air.
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No! We must hate men!
Info dump goes both ways, men usually info dump about things, women info dump about people. Its echoed in men vs women photography of trips also. Men typically photograph things (here’s a car/bike/castle I saw), and typically women photograph people.( here’s me and my sister, here’s a court yard with people dancing)
I noticed this with my parents.
All my dad ever sent me pictures of is architecture. Or a tank, he also likes a good tank.
I have no end of pictures on my phone of funny looking houses in Austria or somewhere.
Female. Why i take pics the way i do. I am there and the pic is proof. A pic without my partner, family,friend i can find online or on a postcard to. An animal is also fine.
As a male, my EXIF data proves I was there ;)
I had a woman at a car service counter take in my car once. She was dressed nicely and clean so of course I assumed she only did paperwork.
I treated her like a human. Explained my car symptoms and where I think the problem is. (Car electric went nuts and lost power steering when i hit a puddle.)
Holy crap she knew her stuff. I mentioned it felt like the alternator wasnt performing right and undervolting, but since it’s only when driving threw a puddle it had to be a component siezing and pulling on the accessory belt. She agreed that’s a good place to start and ran through all the bits in that system as well as thier diagnostic steps planned.
I figured she knew about cars but it felt like she was a full on mechanic and was the manager dressed up.
Treating people with basic humanity should be the bare minimum, but sadly it’s a foregone conclusion.
Wouldn’t foregone conclusion mean that people do that?
Why are people so surprised when everyone starts to favor talking to AI’s…
IDK, I often find myself mansplain and not infodump. I am not from the boomers, I’m not sexist in any rational way, I’m pretty left leaning, I am though a piece of shit sometimes.
I think that’s how most people are. They don’t identify as sexist, but they do sexist things because of conditioning. No one ever thinks they’re a bad person, best we can do is try to be aware of our bullshit and keep learning.
No one ever thinks they’re a bad person
Well, there are people who do identify as sexists. Hell, the latest Jubilee episode shows that there are people identifying as fascists. All I wanted to say is that I do not believe that men and women have fundamentally different capabilities.
Nevertheless, I do sexist things and it’s disgusting and I have little to no control over it. Hopefully I will grow to control it
Without getting into philosophy, people who call themselves fascists and sexists don’t necessarily feel they’re “bad” because of it.
Yes, I made a generalization, but this isn’t a term paper and I don’t have references.
I’m really nerding out on synthesisers right now, and 99 percent sure she doesn’t know what after-touch means, or why I’m excited that I picked up a late 90s synth with a good keybed and full midi.
My lady friend doesn’t own anything that looks like a keyboard, so I’ll apologize for the over explanation, then proceed to explain why I’m so stoked.
Essentially, I got, ‘I’m glad that makes you happy!’ Which I know means shit up and move on.
If she wants to know more about modular synthesis or rompers, I’m sure she would ask. I wouldn’t force an explanation on anybody.
Hahaha, my wife puts up with that same shit. I’m building drones on Veroboard. She’ll ask how the electric octopus is coming along and then instant glazed eyes when I tell her how I accidentally let the smoke out of a TL072 but at least I used sockets for all my ICs. She did buy me a JP-8000 a couple of years ago though. She’s a good one.
I love to hear people nerd out on their passions. Personally I view it like a gift.
this post seems to be going over well, given the number of upvotes.
It’s being upvoted, but the vast majority of comments are not in agreement with the person in the screenshot.
There also seems to be a consensus that the term is misused a lot.
We probably shouldn’t use “agreement” as the guage of success?
Discussion is way more valuable
I had read a lot of the comments and wondered if it might be misconstrued
It means that you assume you know more simply based on sex.
Isn’t that misandry to assume the man is a sexist because he’s shitty at explaining things or communicating generally you know like a stereotypical man. We can’t be both incredibly myopic and excessively insightful of nuance.
Let me be more clear:
An operational definition of “mansplaining”: If a man assumes he knows more about than a woman explicitly because he is a man and she is a woman. He explains to her x,y,z from this perspective.
Example: A man always talks over female peers, and explains answers during open ended discussions, because he believes he is better and more rational at open-ended discussions than his female counterparts regardless of any evidence of this, or even in spite of it.
Non-Example: A man informs a woman or others about a topic he is more interested or informed in, at a (possibly annoying) length.
It isn’t misandry to call out this bad behavior. Yes it cuts both ways, but we are talking about this term specifically.
That explanation requires prior knowledge or post hoc knowledge otherwise you’re simply saying it’s based on sex or race.
How is this substantially different then screeching “dei” at every minority that mildly inconveniences you?
It wasn’t an explanation about how to assess whether someone is mansplaining or not – it was a definition of what mansplaining is.
I just gave you a behavioral definition with examples and non-examples. I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to simplify it. I can only assume you’re willfully not understanding. Have a good day.
That’s a neat dodge. How is it different then assuming someone is a dei hire instead of simply an incompetent employee?
As a man with adhd, I do this all the time to men and to women, and I’ve been accused of mansplaining. I’m working on it, but I promise it has nothing to do with sexism. I just think everybody needs to know all the details so rhey can reach the same conclusions as me.
And for what it’s worth, I really appreciate when someone does the same for me on a topic I don’t know about. But I understand how frustrating it is when someone does it on a subject I do know about, so I always try to gauge knowledge before info dumping. What catches me off guard is when someone isn’t interested in learning. They don’t know everything, and they are just OK with walking through life, knowing they don’t know something.
Point is, I really do appreciate the grace presented in the post. I don’t mind if you’re being condescending if you forgive me for oversharing.
Neurodivergents be like: “Wait people don’t want to know this? That’s absurd. So anyway, what I was saying was…”
How many “Men” are just ND?
It would be cool if we could keep sexism off lemmy. This isn’t reddit.
Okay but what if I’m excited to talk about dinosaurs? Is it mansplaining because I didn’t know the lady im talking to is a paleontologist ?
And people wonder why many men are afraid to talk to women.
It’s super easy not to mansplain. When you bring up a subject, just ask if they know about it, then segue into a conversation where you can both participate.
I too hate [opposite gender of reader]
I hate them very much and would not like them on my bed or in my home or in my arms
I hate [opposite gender] and their tendency to be constantly on my mind
So many likes under this toxic shit post, though comments section is full of people with valid conclusions
Luckily I never do mansplaining because I don’t understand how anything works.
Women often complain that when they go to home depot the workers always ask what project they are doing and walk them through how to do it instead of just pointing them to the product they are looking for.
Honestly I’d love nothing more than for a Home Depot worker to ask me about my project and walk me through how to do it. It would save me the inevitable return trip(s) to pick up that one part or tool I didn’t think about.
But I understand that it could be seen as condescending if you do know what you’re doing and just need help finding the thing you already know you need.
Mansplaining is so 2015. I thought the culture wars had moved on? I see this is 3 years old, but it’s pretty outré even for 2022.
I mean they aren’t wrong, she’s patronizing them with condescension they can’t perceive because of their clear deficits.
Women: “Don’t be condescending”
Lemmites: “What the fuck”
She sounds like an asshole
ur mom lies to u
Your mom lies to your dad everyday
they dont talk so i know that aint true :p
That’s such a cool observation :)
Is try at your attempt at lashing out over hurt feelings?
You’re so insightful!!!
Well she’s not here to impress you.
She’s clearly posting for attention though
You just described the core reason all of us post on the internet. Congrats.
Is she explaining a basic thing herself?
I catch myself doing this all the damn time, and that’s precisely what it is for me.
I suspect that’s what it is for many of us. Most of us don’t intend condescension, but I expect that doesn’t make it any better ;)
