men who explain things, and other hazards
posted by clara Feb 5, 2010 @ 1:06 AM • 4 comments
in being heard job postings kate beaton mansplaining men who explain things rebecca solnit rosalind franklin taking credit
As women in technical fields, we’re probably more likely than most to run into the phenomenon of “mansplaining” — when a man presumes he has more expertise in a particular field than the woman he’s talking to, either ignoring the facts of her qualifications or not bothering to find them out, and holds forth confidently, while unbeknownst to him the woman already understands the concept perfectly — perhaps better than him!
Rebecca Solnit called this “men who explain things” in this classic Los Angeles Times article, where she describes a man condescendingly explaining to her the existence of a book she wrote.
It’s particularly prevalent in technical fields because men are socialized to assume that their gender automatically grants them greater knowledge of technical things. Since in reality there are fewer women in these fields, it becomes a vicious circle, because if you meet a man you know nothing about and a woman you know nothing about, just statistically, the man is more likely to know how to fix your computer — even though that’s often not true in the specific case. So men act confident when talking to women about technology, and then women, “caught up [in their] assigned role of ingenue” as Solnit says, assume there’s a reason for this confidence and don’t assert their knowledge, thus perpetuating the cycle in which they’re assumed to have less knowledge.
It’s also part of the culture at least of computer nerds (I don’t have personal experience with other technical fields — those who do, is it similar there?) to puff up your knowledge as much as possible, which, as I discovered when I first entered the field, gives men an advantage since they’ve already been socialized to do this. This comes up in things like job postings, too: postings for programmers often exaggerate the qualifications needed (e.g. “5 years of Java experience” when 3 will do). Since men are used to rounding up their accomplishments, the man with 3 years of Java experience applies for this posting — and gets the job, since he’s the most qualified person who applied. On the other hand, since women are used to rounding down their accomplishments (or placing more emphasis on accuracy), the woman with 4 years of Java experience doesn’t apply for the job, since she takes the posting at face value — and then she’s frustrated when she realizes she’s actually more qualified than the man who got the position and that she probably would have gotten it had she applied.
Zuska at ScienceBlogs, Shapely Prose, and Shakesville all have recent threads about mansplaining — complete with several hilarious examples and some intersectional analysis of the issue (you can also have things like whitesplaining or ablesplaining — anytime when someone’s privilege artificially inflates their perceived credibility on an issue).
I’m lucky that most of the men in my life aren’t usually guilty of mansplaining to me — they tend to be aware of, and respect, my strengths. But I do sometimes see a related issue — when people don’t acknowledge a comment made by a woman, but respond strongly to the same comment made by a man. Occasionally I’ll notice that I make a point or a joke in a group setting, and my boyfriend will repeat it and get a bigger response/laugh (even though he’s not consciously trying to upstage me).
This cartoon perfectly encapsulates this phenomenon (“I can’t take it seriously until a man says it”). (This happens a lot in discussions about general feminist issues, too — women will insist that there’s a problem in a particular area, but not get taken seriously until a feminist man steps up and says the same thing.)
Even worse, this has happened on a grander scale many times in history: men have often directly taken work that women have done and presented it as their own. (Kate Beaton has a great cartoon about how this happened to Rosalind Franklin.)
Do you find that you get “mansplained” to a lot? What are some of the most egregious examples of mansplaining you’ve encountered? Do men (consciously or unconsciously) try to take credit for your work? Do they get better responses than you do to the same ideas? Weigh in in the comments!
Log In
Join Us
Search Us
Promote & Share
Follow us on Facebook
about • contact • terms of use + privacy • stemming's code is free software — email clara for a copy of the code
Comments
Create a free account to comment on this post!
at 7:12AM 02/05/10 rhdaly said:
Back when I worked at UPS (an environment with no shortage of sexism both individual and institutional), I didn’t notice much mansplaining.* Men would assume that they were stronger and faster than women, but very rarely would they assume they were more attentive or better at memorizing a complicated routing list. A chauvinist might insist on moving all heavy packages himself, but if a woman had all of New York’s zipcodes memorized by geographic region, that was no threat to him.
But goodness me have I’ve seen a lot of mansplaining in professional and technical situations: graphic design, database work, accounting courses, you name it. Whenever knowledge is valuable, time and time again I’ve seen men act like their status and privilege is at stake if a woman knows anything.
I’d guess that mansplaining gets more common as education levels improve, even as I might hope that other forms of sexism would be negatively correlated. Competency seems second only to virility as a perceived asset in the competition for masculinity. And when a man’s competency depends on his brain and not his back, some men get strange ideas about who they have to pretend to be.
Also, it occurs to me that the absolute best remedy for mansplaining is for men to listen to women instead of just talking. Stemming.org is new, but I’m sure there are several women reading now with valuable knowledge to share. I’ve written a fair bit here at stemming.org, and I would be honored to hear from you, too.
I’m listening.
*I’ve tried to present myself with a gender neutral face on stemming.org (e.g. emu avatar, initials for my username) but I guess this is the post where I “come out” as a man (not that it’s been hidden on my profile). It seems important to disclose this publicly since we’re talking about mansplaining, and I’m obviously going to notice the phenominon less than might others who are more directly effected. Also, I may, myself, have mansplained here or elsewhere: that’s the thing about privilege, it empowers men to miss or ignore what they should not. When that has been so, mea culpa.
at 10:57AM 02/05/10 ryochiji said:
It’s also part of the culture at least of computer nerds … to puff up your knowledge as much as possible
There’s a rant about this at: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/01/a-rant-about-women/
at 9:00PM 02/16/10 Lola said:
The LA Times article is awesome! I haven’t faced anything nearly that extreme, but I definitely encounter “mansplaining” on a frequent basis. In my experience, “mansplaining” has taken the form of “helping a poor damsel in distress.” I approach some of my colleagues with an honest intention to collaborate and instead find that they view it as a plea for help. Rather than becoming partners in a project, I wind up playing the role of the “novice” who learns from the “guru” (even though the so-called “guru” has roughly the same knowledge about the topic that I have).
I honestly don’t think that most of the men in my life mean to be disrespectful. Perhaps I just delude myself into thinking this because I have to deal with them on a daily basis.
at 3:19PM 02/17/10 Chasmosaur said:
“Mansplaining” – I love it.
Last week, I had to have a con call with my client and another 3rd party vendor – a company that integrates with your site for marketing tracking. It is, without doubt, one of the most bass ackwards, least usable interfaces I’ve ever seen, hence the con call.
The rep – a guy – detailed how I could “easily” fix their forms to work by copying and pasting code from a given page. Got to the page, and it was obvious there was much built in and proprietary code – and a lot of tenuous HTML and inline CSS. Knowing how easy it is to screw up someone’s third party system and trying to be a responsible contractor, I told him it might ultimately be better if they did it so I didn’t disrupt anything – I could easily mock up the form according to brand and they could insert their necessary code – everyone wins.
He then said in the most condescending tone possible “Well, Chas, I have 10 years of experience in this field and I can tell you you can do this – it’s just not as daunting as you think it is.”
I counted to three and said, “Well, dude, I have 15 years of experience in this field and I can tell you this is one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever seen.”
My client jumped in at that point to prevent electronic bloodshed ;)