Quote:
Originally Posted by Vicky.
What do you think mansplaining is?
My understanding of the phrase is men talking down to women about something that women already know. Like in the article, the actual mansplaining part..when she answered what je ne sais quoi meant...the guy didn't even know himself but continued to explain even though she had already bloody answered.
Mansplaining is not just a man explaining...many think it is  It does get overused though sometimes. When I first explained what it meant to my husband, he said a lot of men will 'mansplain' to him too. Just seems to be much more common for men to do it to women. Some women may also may do it to men, I accept that. But noone in that article is 'womansplaining'  |
Even if your understanding of the phrase is correct, the phrase itself is needlessly and deliberately aggressive and inflammatory. Also there's the fact that it is often not used in this context at all and is, in fact, used as a catch-all jibe against any male who dares openly disagree with a female's interpretation of anything. It IS used to shoot down "a man explaining" - any man, explaining anything.
The example used sounds like an arrogant arsehole, a know-it-all perhaps, but I 100% guarantee he speaks in the same way to other males when he thinks he knows best. Also the idea that it's an exclusively male phenomenon is nonsense... either that, or whoever wrote it has never been on TiBB
.
There's also the sort of problematic fact that
they are both right and wrong - she gave him the literal translation of the phrase but that doesn't explain what the phrase actually translates to at all - his "mansplaination" of what it means is a less literal translation but actually a more accurate description of what the phrase means.