Feminism

[Dewar]

There's a problem of terminology that has really unfortunate history/associations.

Person A forcibly assaults someone, physically overpowering them or threatens them to comply despite clear unwillingness.

Person B misunderstands consent and causes the victim to feel uncomfortable/violated before deciding to stop and leave the situation of their own volition.

Both of these people have done something wrong, clearly. But they are not the same. They have hugely different implications as to their plausible future behavior and potential rehabilitation. Person B didn't know they were doing something wrong and just needs to be convinced of how consent works and will plausibly stop doing it wrong. Person A is a clear and present danger to society and needs to be sequestered from the general population to prevent further harm. Conflating these two seems at best unfair, and at worst dangerously irresponsible.

 

 

You're basically talking about the difference between Murder and Manslaughter here, and I think it's a reasonable distinction to make, even if it ends up being uncomfortable having to grade the different levels of horrible.

[SecretAsianMan]

I've only ever played Cards at PAX while waiting in line for panels and that's only because they give away small packs all over the place.  I never really got it as a commercial product because surely you and your friends could come up with better, more personally hilarious stuff if you wanted instead.

 

I haven't actually read Temkin's statement, but my current uninformed opinion based on what I've read here is that it seems like a veiled threat.  It's like owning a gun but wanting to be congratulated for not shooting someone when you had the opportunity (which Temkin maybe doesn't even have).

[JonCole]

Total side note: I like Cards Against Humanity because a lot of my friends are people who speak English as a second language, so we have a house rule where if anyone gets a card they don't understand the others have to try to explain what it means. The whole ESL thing also obviates the whole personal hilarious alternative, because most humor between us tends to be visual or highly referential to a moment so inside jokes between us are minimal.

[James]

Before I get too serious, a Cards Against Humanity aside: A problem I have with it is that the options available to the player are limited enough that it doesn't really feel like the players themselves are being funny so much as finding funny things. Perhaps that's the point, but it leaves me feeling a bit awkward about it. Ryan Davis used to say that it was all about playing to the card czar's sense of humour, which is more involved and interesting, but I think I generally prefer verbal comedy to come from creativity than random chance.

 

Now, back to this whole miserable affair.

 

Earlier I was going to respond to the notion that the lawyer segment being a reassurance. I was going to say that a much better way to offer such reassurance would be to be brief and to the point: "I won't be pursuing legal action" (or "have no intention to" if he felt it necessary to leave himself an out, I suppose). Anything more seems like fishing for credit at best, or threatening at worst. Anyway, I'd assumed that I was merely rephrasing what he said minus the bullshit, but when I actually went to check I realized that he doesn't actually make any statement about the likelihood of his pursuing legal action; only how he would feel about it. To cynical eyes, that's Max absolving himself of blame for a court case without actually making any commitment to avoiding one. I wouldn't like to be that cynical, but at the very least it's an extremely poorly-judged way of putting things.

 

Reading what others have posted, and thinking more about this, I'm finding that the simple question of "did this happen or not" is being replaced by the notion that probably neither of them are lying as such, and Max is right about it being a matter of miscommunication, but very wrong in how he's dealing with it. On the one hand, while the outcome for the victim is still devastating and must never be forgotten, this scenario would speak less poorly of Temkin's character – it would be a disastrous mistake that must be atoned for, but better that than a cold-hearted predatory act – but on the other, his response to the situation (one of the few things we have direct access to and aren't relying on anyone else's account) is pretty damning in itself. As has already been said, even given the most charitable reading of his post, he's much more concerned with absolving himself than confronting the possibility that he might have seriously hurt someone without even realizing it. But now I'm just parroting others' posts. My point is that I'm feeling less like I need to know exactly what happened, and more like what I do know (i.e. how he responded to the accusation) will inform how I think of Max in future. That said, my thoughts and feelings on the matter are still in flux and I do hold out some hope for a much more constructive response from him in the coming days. I don't know if it's at all likely; I just hope for it.

 

You're basically talking about the difference between Murder and Manslaughter here, and I think it's a reasonable distinction to make, even if it ends up being uncomfortable having to grade the different levels of horrible.

I was going to say something along those lines; I think you could even carry over the idea of murder in the first and second degrees, too: premeditated and deliberate rape, deliberate but unplanned rape ("the heat of the moment" sort of thing), and rape through negligence (failing to confirm consent, etc.). I'm always cautious to chime in on this sort of thing, and am fully open to the prospect of my being completely wrong about it, but it seems to me to be a reasonable way of thinking about it. Without making any excuses for the perpetrators of any of these acts (following the analogy, manslaughter is a huge deal that people are held accountable for), it makes a meaningful distinction (while the outcome for the victim is the same: murder and manslaughter result in people just as dead, and different forms of rape result in people just as hurt), it matters to society what the circumstance and motive was. The risk is that in making such a distinction an implicit distinction is made between the experiences of the victims, or that people understand one form to be "less real" or "less serious" than the other; it's crucial that this is avoided.

 

(I hope I'm not mansplaining or whatever. I have so much self-doubt whenever I post in this thread.)

[Bjorn]

I'm not actually a big fan of CAH.  It was amusing the first couple of times I played it, I'm with SAM on it.  My friends can be as funny, or funnier, than anything in CAH.  More often then not, it's mildly amusing rather than hilarious. 

 

Here's another piece worth reading, less for his commentary on the case, and more for his personal reflections on his own young experiences and reflections on young men's place in rape culture.  I don't think it's mansplainery, more like he's trying to speak to other men to get them to get it.  It's more about the conversation about consent than it is Temkin, which like Argobot and others said earlier, is one of the things that ought to come from this.

 

Part of it is the sex ed we give our kids.  People talk about saying no, but not really about consent.  We certainly don't talk about enthusiastic consent.  We don't talk enough about the fact that the fast majority of sex is had for fun.  We talk about disease and pregnancy.  It's going to take a long time, but fixing how we talk to kids (like, starting at age 12 or younger) is the solution to a ton of rape culture. 

 

 

I was going to say something along those lines; I think you could even carry over the idea of murder in the first and second degrees, too: premeditated and deliberate rape, deliberate but unplanned rape ("the heat of the moment" sort of thing), and rape through negligence (failing to confirm consent, etc.). I'm always cautious to chime in on this sort of thing, and am fully open to the prospect of my being completely wrong about it, but it seems to me to be a reasonable way of thinking about it. Without making any excuses for the perpetrators of any of these acts (following the analogy, manslaughter is a huge deal that people are held accountable for), it makes a meaningful distinction (while the outcome for the victim is the same: murder and manslaughter result in people just as dead, and different forms of rape result in people just as hurt), it matters to society what the circumstance and motive was. The risk is that in making such a distinction an implicit distinction is made between the experiences of the victims, or that people understand one form to be "less real" or "less serious" than the other; it's crucial that this is avoided.

 

(I hope I'm not mansplaining or whatever. I have so much self-doubt whenever I post in this thread.)

 

First, please feel free to post in here if you have thoughts on anything.  A lot of what you'll see is people talking themselves through understanding these things, and sometimes figuring out your own words/way through a post is a great way to do that. 

 

I don't honestly know enough about the legal distinctions in the States to know whether or not there are already different categories of crime for assaults.  It seems like that ought to be the case already, but maybe not?

[Dewar]

(I hope I'm not mansplaining or whatever. I have so much self-doubt whenever I post in this thread.)

 

Believe me, you're not the only one.

[Gormongous]

Great post, James. You don't need to worry about posting in this thread if everything you write is half as thoughtful as this. We all have self-doubt, I just happen to have a lot of anger along with it.

 

I was going to say something along those lines; I think you could even carry over the idea of murder in the first and second degrees, too: premeditated and deliberate rape, deliberate but unplanned rape ("the heat of the moment" sort of thing), and rape through negligence (failing to confirm consent, etc.). I'm always cautious to chime in on this sort of thing, and am fully open to the prospect of my being completely wrong about it, but it seems to me to be a reasonable way of thinking about it. Without making any excuses for the perpetrators of any of these acts (following the analogy, manslaughter is a huge deal that people are held accountable for), it makes a meaningful distinction (while the outcome for the victim is the same: murder and manslaughter result in people just as dead, and different forms of rape result in people just as hurt), it matters to society what the circumstance and motive was. The risk is that in making such a distinction an implicit distinction is made between the experiences of the victims, or that people understand one form to be "less real" or "less serious" than the other; it's crucial that this is avoided.

 

I wish society were that way, but we already have different tiers of rape, at least in the public consciousness, and they're a huge stumbling block to the successful prosecution of rape cases. Just two weeks ago, a British judge gave a lighter sentence to a man who raped a sleeping woman because he wasn't a "classic rapist" and just "lost control". And I don't need to mention all the nonsense about "legitimate rape" floating around Todd Akin and his ilk. There can be a difference of circumstance and motive in rape cases, but most people are only starting to recognize something other than being nabbed in the street at night as rape anyway, so I despair of something so subtle as what you suggest. All it would do at this juncture is put the burden of proof even more in the hands of the victim.

 

I don't know, you can't really argue in court that killing someone was neither murder nor manslaughter, but almost all alleged rapists argue that it was just sex and not rape. I mean, that's fundamentally what Temkin's doing, rightly or wrongly, and it's effective enough not only to defend him from the charges, were the accuser to bring them to a court of law, but also to support a potential libel case and restraining order against that accuser. The problem here isn't that "manslaughter" rape isn't an available option, it's that Temkin doesn't know or doesn't understand or doesn't care or that unwanted and hurtful sexual contact resulting from miscommunication is rape... nor do most other people, either.

[Dewar]

I'm not actually a big fan of CAH.  It was amusing the first couple of times I played it, I'm with SAM on it.  My friends can be as funny, or funnier, than anything in CAH.  More often then not, it's mildly amusing rather than hilarious. 

 

Here's another piece worth reading, less for his commentary on the case, and more for his personal reflections on his own young experiences and reflections on young men's place in rape culture.  I don't think it's mansplainery, more like he's trying to speak to other men to get them to get it.  It's more about the conversation about consent than it is Temkin, which like Argobot and others said earlier, is one of the things that ought to come from this.

 

Part of it is the sex ed we give our kids.  People talk about saying no, but not really about consent.  We certainly don't talk about enthusiastic consent.  We don't talk enough about the fact that the fast majority of sex is had for fun.  We talk about disease and pregnancy.  It's going to take a long time, but fixing how we talk to kids (like, starting at age 12 or younger) is the solution to a ton of rape culture. 

 

 

 

First, please feel free to post in here if you have thoughts on anything.  A lot of what you'll see is people talking themselves through understanding these things, and sometimes figuring out your own words/way through a post is a great way to do that. 

 

I don't honestly know enough about the legal distinctions in the States to know whether or not there are already different categories of crime for assaults.  It seems like that ought to be the case already, but maybe not?

 

Answering from the bottom up, there are a few different categories of assaults (assault and battery and assault with a deady weapon come to mind immediately) but often the crime transitions to a different type of crime (attempted murder if severe, drunk and disorderly if minor.)

 

Regarding sex-ed and rape culture, I'm not sure if it was my parents, my particular sex-ed class, or religious hang-ups, but I was pretty much terrified of being alone with girls for fear of being accused of sexual assault for most of my college years, let alone engaging in any sexual activity. The theme of "you never really know if she's consented" rattled around in my head for quite a while, and is still difficult for me to deal with sometimes even after dating my wife for almost a decade and being married for two years. It's taken me a long time to get over the victim blaming that is all too prevalent in our society, yet I still wonder in incidents like this what a fair notice of consent/non-consent really consists of.   

[James]

My anxiety is that I haven't properly examined my own thought and am revealing myself to be monstrous, or worse still saying something hurtful or damaging. Is that paranoid of me?

 

I wish society were that way, but we already have different tiers of rape, at least in the public consciousness, and they're a huge stumbling block to the successful prosecution of rape cases. Just two weeks ago, a British judge gave a lighter sentence to a man who raped a sleeping woman because he wasn't a "classic rapist" and just "lost control". And I don't need to mention all the nonsense about "legitimate rape" floating around Todd Akin and his ilk. There can be a difference of circumstance and motive in rape cases, but most people are only starting to recognize something other than being nabbed in the street at night as rape anyway, so I despair of something so subtle as what you suggest. All it would do at this juncture is put the burden of proof even more in the hands of the victim.

 

I don't know, you can't really argue in court that killing someone was neither murder nor manslaughter, but almost all alleged rapists argue that it was just sex and not rape. I mean, that's fundamentally what Temkin's doing, rightly or wrongly, and it's effective enough not only to defend him from the charges, were the accuser to bring them to a court of law, but also to support a potential libel case and restraining order against that accuser. The problem here isn't that "manslaughter" rape isn't an available option, it's that Temkin doesn't know or doesn't understand or doesn't care or that unwanted and hurtful sexual contact resulting from miscommunication is rape... nor do most other people, either.

I suppose I'm probably thinking of things too academically, having the luxury of not much experience of how this stuff is in the real world.

 

To be clear about a few things: While I was using legal (ish) terminology, what I was really hoping to address is how people think about rape and sexual assault. For all I know, the law already addresses these distinctions in its own presumably arcane way, as Bjorn wondered and Dewar confirmed. But when people hear "rape", they think of nighttime and kidnapping and all that, as you said. While there are efforts to demystify the idea of what a rapist can be, I don't think people are going to lose the idea of the predatory rapist, not least because they do exist, albeit not necessarily as evidently and cartoonishly evil as you might expect. Furthermore, a man can look at himself and know, "I'm not that monster, I don't stalk and kidnap", and from this conclude: "I could never be involved in sexual assault". Barring cases of severe delusion, people know whether or not they're anthonyRichard's "Person A", but probably don't even consider the possibility of being "Person B". Rather than wanting to muddle thinking on the matter, the idea was that perhaps more nuanced terminology might open men up to the idea that they might have done something terrible without conforming to any of those stereotypes of the "classic rapist", such as they might imagine it. But artificially introducing terminology like that into general discourse (rather than it being specialist jargon) is likely a doomed enterprise, and there's no guarantee it wouldn't get caught up in the "not real rape" mindset, and it's probably just an all-around absurdly naïve notion. But the idea isn't to excuse people; it's to give them a framework in which they can even conceive of their own guilt. For what it's worth.

 

Your mention of the "classic rape" judge definitely gave me pause. I wouldn't for a second want to sleepwalk into making excuses for and even apologising to people guilty of rape and sexual assault, by any definition. And that's a very real risk with making those sorts of distinctions. But another way of looking at it is this: people are already making the distinction, and currently it's between "real rape" and "not really rape", with the latter implicitly not being of real consequence. Perhaps if we had different language for it we could conform better to people's thinking while still being very clear on the severity and impact of the different forms.

 

You are right about where the analogy with murder falls down, though: in almost all cases of murder or manslaughter, it's pretty clear that the victim is dead, and it gets no less clear with the passage of time. With sexual assault, there might never be any evidence beyond testimony, and the nature of the impact it has on the victim is such that a great deal of time may pass before they choose or are able to speak about it.

[Stuart]

Concerning "mansplaining":

 

The smartest thing to do if you feel you are mansplaining on issues not related to you (since you're a dude) is just let those who are most likely connected to the problem (i.e, women, LGBQT people, minorities overall) talk instead of you. Problem is, this community, though quite progressive, is mostly made up of straight, white men, so it becomes hard to quiet down and let those people talk because...there aren't many of those people around in the community. In that case, I suggest reading stuff by those people (like the stuff I linked) on the issue at hand, and then internalize what they say and understand their side on the issue rationally. Overall, this is all about being a decent human being.

 

I apologize for my bad grammar, correcting this atm.

[Gormongous]

My anxiety is that I haven't properly examined my own thought and am revealing myself to be monstrous, or worse still saying something hurtful or damaging. Is that paranoid of me?

 

It's a little paranoid, but I'm sure in the past dozen pages you can find me saying unexamined or inane things and then walk them back later when I or others realize what I'm saying.

 

And yeah, I feel it's a bit naive to hope that we could legislate into an existence a societal understanding of unintentional rape. I wish it were possible, too, but I know from my own work that laws are useful more for showing how we want society to be than for how it is or even could be. I don't really know much about it, but I understand that a lot of feminists have been pushing back against the preexisting legal distinction between sexual assault and rape, because the idea that invasive and chronic molestation is less of a violation than rape is... problematic.

 

I think the big problem is that we have language to negotiate failures of consent, but we don't have the societal concepts to make such negotiations effective. People know rape only as a supremely intentional act, so there's no room to understand that you could accidentally rape someone just like you could accidentally kill or rob or slander someone, not that any of those acts are equivalent to each other. It's almost as though the fear of being accused of rape unwittingly has a mirror image in the conviction that rape is only committed wittingly, which feeds into the ridiculous myth, disproven over and over at every level, that most rape accusations are false (and even sour grapes for otherwise justified behavior).

 

I guess what I'm saying is, we don't want to be a society that rapes, which means that we don't want to acknowledge the existence of rape in order to do anything about it. In such a society, it's no surprise that Temkin can admit he had short and ultimately acrimonious series of sexual encounters with a young woman and yet state categorically that there is no way she was raped by him.

 

See? You can watch me making statements and then walking them back several times in just that post. I'm probably monstrous, too.

[Bjorn]

Answering from the bottom up, there are a few different categories of assaults (assault and battery and assault with a deady weapon come to mind immediately) but often the crime transitions to a different type of crime (attempted murder if severe, drunk and disorderly if minor.)

 

Regarding sex-ed and rape culture, I'm not sure if it was my parents, my particular sex-ed class, or religious hang-ups, but I was pretty much terrified of being alone with girls for fear of being accused of sexual assault for most of my college years, let alone engaging in any sexual activity. The theme of "you never really know if she's consented" rattled around in my head for quite a while, and is still difficult for me to deal with sometimes even after dating my wife for almost a decade and being married for two years. It's taken me a long time to get over the victim blaming that is all too prevalent in our society, yet I still wonder in incidents like this what a fair notice of consent/non-consent really consists of.   

 

The culture around sex is so fucked up, I can see how you ended up feeling that way.  Consent shouldn't be difficult, and it's actually really easy if we didn't have a history of being taught wrong things about what consent is, about women's desire for sex, about slut shaming, etc, etc, etc.

 

I think the conversation about consent really needs to be divided into two separate, but related, camps.  One is for singles or new relationships, particularly younger people.  For them, we need to teach them that the standard is enthusiastic consent, or at a minimum affirmative consent (a clear and definite yes, no ambiguity).  Some guys probably think that means they'll never get laid.  But the funny thing is, if you can get to the point where you can prioritize that and talk about sex with someone you're interested in, you'll probably have more sex.  And the sex you have will sure as hell be better, without the risk of not knowing if you raped someone or not.  It's absurd that it's even controversial to say that affirmative consent ought to be the standard we expect. 

 

I'm with that linked Nerdlove article on established couples though.  It's great when both people are horny and ready at the same time, but 10+ years into a relationship, jobs, kids, etc., sometimes you get the sex in when you can, even if one or both people aren't necessarily feeling super into it.  Consent still matters in a LTR, no question.  You can say no to a partner, and that must be respected.  But the dynamics and needs of two people over the long haul, particularly if they are strictly monogamous, means that consent can be quite a bit more bendy than the kind of behavior that a 19-year-old college kid should be engaging in.  It still needs to be affirmative, but not necessarily enthusiastic.

[Dewar]

Part of the problem is also this wierd idea that you should always know what your partner wants, evidenced by the trope of a person saying "No, it's fine" when it is in fact not fine and they're expecting the other party to just know that there's a problem (a thing that I'm guilty of often.) There's this strange idea, especially for beginning relationships, that people should mind read rather than communicate.

[Problem Machine]

Something that I've heard a number of times is the idea that "I was on the fence, until I realized how shitty Max Temkin's response was and now he looks pretty bad to me." The thing is, that response was the first thing I read about this situation, and though a couple of bits in there made me slightly uncomfortable (the libel section, mostly), for the most part I thought it was a pretty decent response. It wasn't until the critiques came out the next day and pointed out the many problematic parts of it that I realized it was full of shittiness. This is why I want to see him respond to these criticisms: I've been made aware, through my woefully insufficient reading of his response, that I might not do any better under the same circumstances.

 

In writing, as in life, it is hard to avoid being an accidentally shitty person.

[Argobot]

If have a hard time believing that anyone would respond perfectly to a public rape allegation. There's just no way.

[anthonyRichard]

It may be clumsy, but part of the problem with what he wrote (and that's all we have from him right now) is that he didn't explicitly take legal action off the table.  He said he didn't want to do that, but not that he wouldn't.  Which is one of the things that makes it a threat.

 

In Non-Fiction, just because something could be legitimately interpreted in some way, it doesn't necessarily mean that thing, or reflect on the authors intentions at all, except on their failure to write clearly and unambiguously. It of-course still matters how it can be interpreted, especially if a misinterpretation can hurt someone. But the authors intentions are of primary importance. They are sort of the whole point (as opposed to Fiction, where this kind of analysis is totally fine and encouraged).

I'm saying that the passage was ambiguous and there is nothing to favor one interpretation over another (yet) that couldn't be more easily explained as a person who is panicking about his life being ruined and not using the best language, and that letting it affect our feelings about his intentions is ill-considered (for now). This is why it's important to wait for a follow up response. If he still uses weird language that is easily interpreted as being shitty, well then we'll have another data-point and we can extrapolate from there with slightly more confidence.

[Argobot]

I strongly disagree with that. If an author (fiction or non) has a specific intention that does not come across, it's her failure, just like it would be failure for not understanding what that intention was. Both parties are culpable, sometimes equally and sometimes not.

I'm willing to believe that MT had the best intentions. He failed in some ways and many people have written smart pieces on those failures. Drilling further down into this doesn't benefit anyone.

[anthonyRichard]

Not saying it's not a failure. I explicitly called it a failure. I'm saying that the failure shouldn't be used to infer the intent of the author if you can see that it could plausibly be a failure. If we can see that a phrase is ambiguous then it doesn't seem ok to decide to go with one interpretation over another (threat vs ill-conceived attempt to be considerate), with all the implications of that interpretation, at least not until there's a little more to go on than what we have.

I don't know, your disagreement with what I said contains nothing that I disagree with or I can see that is in conflict what what I said, so if I am unable to explain what I mean here then I don't think I have the writing ability to clarify further. :/
 

[Jason Bakker]

This more relates to the use/misuse of "mansplain", but I thought this article by the writer who game up with the phrase "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" was interesting and is kinda related. I guess an inherent weakness of language is that as new terms are introduced, the meanings attached to that term will warp and multiply out, particularly because most of the time people will attempt to learn what a new word or phrase means by the context in which it is used, instead of attempting to find a canonical description or attempting to respect the progenitor's interpretation. (Not that this is what would happen in an ideal world - it's just that this could potentially reduce the amount of permutations of meaning that a term inherits.)

 

For my part, "mansplaining" has meant men speaking about issues in a way that is biased by their experience being a man, usually without realising that they're speaking from a perspective that is biased due to the way that they are treated because of their gender. And avoiding* it is fairly straightforward - let other people speak as the authority on issues that affect them more than they affect you, and realise that the opinions that you've formed and even the way that you think are inherently biased, and that even after having that realisation you can't "un-bias" it. But you can make an effort to try to see things from other people's perspectives, and try not to speak (or think) as if your experience is the default, standard or most important experience.

 

* Ed: I should have said "attempting to avoid" - as you may still do it without meaning to. But if you are receptive to criticism, you can hopefully feel safer expressing yourself.

[seasleepy]

I got linked to the origin of "mansplain" recently and it's basically exactly what Gormongous mentioned -- a column by an author who kept going to parties where men who didn't know who she was would argue that she didn't really understand a topic and then recommend her own book (having not read it) to her.

 

It gets used poorly often enough but that's understandable since most of the times it is getting used, people are somewhat angry or upset or tired, which are all situations where people aren't at their best.

[Griddlelol]

Obviously I'm missing a whole area here - being a man and all, but after reading that I feel as though I've been in or seen situations like that plenty of times. Not quite as exaggerated - I've never written a book, but still...To me it seems like a thing shitty people do (well, overconfident people who feel they have to prove their worth despite ignorance in the subject area), rather than specifically shitty men do to women (although in my experience it's only been males that have done that to me or around me). 

 

Is it exceptionally common for men to do this to women? Or is it more like people (less so the author as she describes the so called intersection of gender politics and confidence) just like to say it when someone's been an asshole? The reason I ask is because it's quite easy to not notice things like this as being a trend, and whether that trend is based on sexism (accidental or not) I also find hard to spot.

[Problem Machine]

Well just like men also get death threats from randos for daring to have an opinion, men also get condescended to by blowhards. It's just, I believe, a more overwhelmingly common and notably awful experience for women in both cases. Not being a woman, I can't say that with authority, but I take their word for it.

[Gormongous]

Obviously I'm missing a whole area here - being a man and all, but after reading that I feel as though I've been in or seen situations like that plenty of times. Not quite as exaggerated - I've never written a book, but still...To me it seems like a thing shitty people do (well, overconfident people who feel they have to prove their worth despite ignorance in the subject area), rather than specifically shitty men do to women (although in my experience it's only been males that have done that to me or around me). 

 

Is it exceptionally common for men to do this to women? Or is it more like people (less so the author as she describes the so called intersection of gender politics and confidence) just like to say it when someone's been an asshole? The reason I ask is because it's quite easy to not notice things like this as being a trend, and whether that trend is based on sexism (accidental or not) I also find hard to spot.

 

Like most things feminism fights against, "mansplaining" is something that can happen to men but overwhelmingly and frequently happens to women. Here is a good primer on the evidence for it.

[Griddlelol]

I guess my point isn't that it doesn't happen (and those articles weren't really about any sort of explanation, more interruption and confidence, which is something I'm not disputing), but a rather more general point. If something is happening to everyone, can't you apply Occam's razor to suggest that it's less likely to be sexism/racism/homophobia, and more likely that it's just people being jerks in general?

 

The fact that it happens to women more than men doesn't imply sexism on the part of the perpetrator in my mind, it rather implies that men are generally more confident (which is due to a sexist society but that's a separate issue). I hope I'm not coming across as though I don't believe this is a thing: I do, what I'm finding hard to understand is if it's sexist behaviour or not. It doesn't seem like it is directly, but is caused by indirect sexism and/or overconfidence. I guess it sounds like more of a symptom of a sexist world coinciding with arrogant people, rather than an action done out of maliciousness? Does that make any sense? However does that make it less excusable... sorry ma'am, I wasn't meaning to be sexist, it's everyone else's fault.

 

Sorry, I'm really finding it difficult to get my thoughts down in a coherent manner, it's coming out in a bit of a mess. Probably because I don't really know what I'm talking about. 

[Argobot]

I'd say that mansplaining is less an issue of blatant sexism (men acting this way because they believe women are inferior) and more a product of society conferring so much more weight to a man's opinion. That would explain why it's usually men who engage in this kind of behavior and why men AND women can be at the receiving end of it. I'm fully willing to concede that the word 'mansplain' may be applied to broadly to have any real meaning for some people, but as a woman I personally feel that my reaction when men explain things to me is different than it would be if I were a man. I find that I am much more sensitive to it, which is why that word still means something to me.