{"id":12738,"date":"2018-10-09T15:21:56","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T07:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=12738"},"modified":"2018-10-09T15:21:56","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T07:21:56","slug":"mansplaining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2018\/10\/09\/mansplaining\/","title":{"rendered":"mansplaining is sometimes (but not always) innocuous"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">My favorite example of mansplaining <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/yrE6ZJhgeZ\">pic.twitter.com\/yrE6ZJhgeZ<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/963406812300025856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 13, 2018<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If I had to do a \u201cthe difference between men and women\u201d type of standup set, I think I would focus on the phenomenon of mansplaining, which to me is significantly (but not completely!) an eg of big misunderstanding + language\/communication breakdown<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first thing to appreciate about mansplaining is that to some degree it\u2019s the way that lots of men talk, period. It\u2019s the way they talk to each other, &amp; themselves. It\u2019s the way they go through the world. It\u2019s the way they talk to birds on the Internet<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, it isn\u2019t entirely innocuous. I\u2019ve spent years observing, querying, listening, etc and I think it\u2019s definitely true that women get mansplained to more than men. And men seldom realize that this is the case (and will often find a way to deny it if you suggest that it is)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Explaining why that is would probably take like a dozen really careful, surgically-nuanced tweets and I haven\u2019t had any coffee yet so I\u2019m gonna skip that for now<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But my point is that there is a \u201cdifferent languages \/ communication styles\u201d mismatch here going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A female writer friend was asking for suggestions on how to write a group of jocks discussing a girl, and I <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/1040149175206260736\">came up with this<\/a>, which I think is both accurate and revealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>it\u2019s a two-way communication mismatch<\/li><li>that said, it\u2019s not as simple as \u201cboth sides are equally to blame\u201d because of a long laundry list of things that disadvantage women<\/li><li>even if it WERE equal blame (it isn\u2019t), the rewards for men who make the effort are so outsized<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Loosely I think of mansplaining as a sort of adversarial horseplay &#8211; it can be fun between consenting peers with a shared understanding of the norms, and it can also be a way to maliciously knock someone\u2019s teeth out with the pretext of \u201cjust playing\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some men question women\u2019s credentials because they think it\u2019s fun flirty horseplay<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some men question everybody they\u2019re interested in, and don\u2019t consciously realise they\u2019re extra interested in women \u201cbecause girl\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some men just hate women &amp; want to cause them pain and distress<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In my experience, adversarial horseplay with strangers is generally a bad idea. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/975928154073133058\">Here\u2019s an example I think about a lot<\/a>, where an interesting conversation ended because two dudes needed to insult each other<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Don\u2019t wanna single out this particular person, but this would probably be considered an example of mansplaining if the OP was a woman:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/mansplaining-to-neil-strauss.jpg?w=770\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12740\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Like, you think Neil doesn\u2019t know that it\u2019s good? He\u2019s a published author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then you restate his point in a lengthier way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is just bad reply game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/forum.bodybuilding.com\/showthread.php?t=107926751&amp;page=1\">hilarious example of an argument<\/a> on bodybuilding.com where two guys can&#8217;t see eye-to-eye on how many days there are in a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If I had to do a \u201cthe difference between men and women\u201d type of standup set, I think I would focus on the phenomenon of mansplaining, which to me is significantly (but not completely!) an eg of big misunderstanding + language\/communication breakdown The first thing to appreciate about mansplaining is&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[581,583,577],"tags":[657],"class_list":["post-12738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","category-peopling","category-perception","tag-mansplaining"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-3js","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}