Mansplaining: How Men Try To Prove Their Superiority Over Women

Mansplaining: How Men Try To Prove Their Superiority Over Women
Mansplaining: How Men Try To Prove Their Superiority Over Women

Video: Mansplaining: How Men Try To Prove Their Superiority Over Women

Video: Mansplaining: How Men Try To Prove Their Superiority Over Women
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Almost every woman has met a situation where a man does not pay attention to her intelligence and education, and condescendingly tries to explain elementary things to her. Nowadays, a separate term has appeared for this - mansplaining (from the English man - man and explain - to explain).

Mansplaining Cases

Men have been doing mansplaining for years, but it wasn't until a couple of years ago that this style of communication got its name. Usually a man explains something to a woman in a mocking tone, even when she clearly knows much more about the topic than he does.

And this happens very often. So often that women have tweeted the most egregious cases. For instance:

“We assembled furniture with him, and he was constantly trying to explain to me how to use a screwdriver when I was almost finished using it”

“A colleague told me how to pronounce my name correctly”

“A visitor explained to me how to search for books in a library catalog by author. I am a librarian"

And the most absurd case:

“He told and almost showed me how to properly breastfeed a baby. Which is what I was doing at that moment."

Such situations not only annoy, but even anger women. Who likes it when you are treated like an unintelligent child? It seems that men are people too, and it should not be difficult to understand that it is not great to do this. But statistics say something else - so let's try to figure out the actual reasons for this behavior.

The psychology of mansplaining

Compared to men, women are statistically interrupted more often - even by women themselves. And they, having got used to this situation, most likely will not ask the interlocutor not to interrupt, but smile, nod, and continue their thought later. But the topic of interruption is important in a sociological context. In the interaction of two people, the second will most likely be interrupted by the more “strong” and self-confident. But such behavior reinforces gender inequality and supports stereotypes about women's inability to stand up for themselves, as well as their stupidity.

There is a very interesting opinion on the topic of mansplaining from a linguistic point of view - it is believed that men and women support different styles of speech. Men are trying to prove their superiority, to establish a hierarchy. And when a man and a woman participate in a conversation, an imbalance results - a man explains some understandable things for the sake of maintaining the hierarchy, and a woman most often nods and does not mind for the sake of establishing a connection - simply because she was taught to be "empathetic and polite" from childhood. And a man already understands such a gesture as agreement with his "power" - and continues to engage in mensplacing. Of course, such a situation does not always occur during an ordinary conversation, but now, at least, it is clear why this happens.

What's also interesting is that mansplacing is more likely in a discussion involving more than two people, when there are more men in the conversation.

Do I have to fight this

Statistics are more than coincidence. Some sociologists suggest that another reason may be the habit of men to overestimate, and women - to underestimate their abilities. In the experiment, it was found that men, for example, agreed with a vacancy, meeting only 60% of its requirements, and women tried to meet the criteria completely.

Mansplacing is undoubtedly a huge problem. In modern society, whether in the workplace or in an informal setting, men should not interrupt women - especially if the woman knows much more about the topic of conversation. Differences of opinion must exist. Unfortunately, if, statistically, only 25% of the conversation is occupied by a woman, facts that are important for this discussion may even be lost.

Of course, you also shouldn't always shut up men, explaining this by mansplaining. But the reality is that men are better off accepting the current state of affairs. Instead of getting angry when a woman asks her not to interrupt, you should think about 75% in statistics and understand that you need to start getting rid of this bad habit.

Mansplaining's post: How men try to prove their superiority over women first appeared on Clever.

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