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Mansplaining

January 07, 2023

Mansplaining (a blend word of man and the informal form splaining of the gerund explaining) is a pejorative term meaning (of a man) "to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner".[3][4][5][6] Author Rebecca Solnit ascribed the phenomenon to a combination of "overconfidence and cluelessness".[7] Lily Rothman, of The Atlantic, defined it as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman".[8]

Gender and Disarmament Platform meeting, 14 September 2017. On the slide: a photograph of the sculpture Classmates by Paul Tadlock, which is often used to illustrate 'mansplaining'.[1][2]

In its original use, mansplaining differed from other forms of condescension in that it was said to be rooted in the assumption that a man is likely to be more knowledgeable than a woman.[9] However, it has come to be used more broadly, often applied when a man takes a condescending tone in an explanation to anyone, regardless of the age or gender of the intended recipients: a "man 'splaining" can be delivered to any audience.[4] In 2010, it was named by the New York Times as one of its "Words of the Year".[10] American Dialect Society nominated Mansplaining as the “most creative” new word in 2012.[11]

Origins

The verb splain has been in use for more than 200 years, originally as a colloquial pronunciation of the Late Middle English word explain. It came increasingly to refer to condescending or verbose explanations.[3][12] The term mansplaining was inspired by an essay, "Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn't Get in Their Way", written by Rebecca Solnit and published on TomDispatch.com on 13 April 2008. In the essay, Solnit told an anecdote about a man at a party who said he had heard she had written some books. She began to talk about her most recent, on Eadweard Muybridge, whereupon the man cut her off and asked if she had "heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year"—not considering that it might be (as, in fact, it was) Solnit's book. Solnit did not use the word mansplaining in the essay, but she described the phenomenon as "something every woman knows".[13][14]

A month later the word appeared in a comment on the social network LiveJournal.[8] It became popular among feminist bloggers before entering mainstream commentary.[8][15] The word was included in 2010 by the New York Times as one of its words of the year,[10] nominated in 2012 for the American Dialect Society's "most creative word of the year" honor,[6] and added in 2014 to the online Oxford Dictionaries.[16]

Solnit later published Men Explain Things to Me (2014), a collection of seven essays on similar themes. Women, including professionals and experts, are routinely seen or treated as less credible than men, she wrote in the title essay, and their insights, or even legal testimony are dismissed unless validated by a man in some countries.[17][18] She argued that this was one symptom of a widespread phenomenon that "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence."[19]

In 2018, during a lecture at Moe's Books in Berkeley, California, Solnit said, "I'm falsely credited with coining the term 'mansplaining'. It was a 2010 New York Times word of the year. I did not actually coin it. I was a bit ambivalent about the word because it seems a little bit more condemnatory of the male of the species than I ever wanted it to be."[20]

Usage

Journalists have used the word to describe the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney;[21] President Donald Trump;[22] Governor of Texas Rick Perry;[23] MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell;[24] various characters on the HBO drama series The Newsroom;[25][26][27] music executive Jimmy Iovine;[28] Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull;[29] actor Matt Damon;[30] and consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader.[31] In February 2016 the term sparked an argument between two members of a committee of the Australian Senate, when Labor senator Katy Gallagher told Communications Minister Mitch Fifield: "I love the mansplaining. I'm enjoying it."[32]

In 2013 Dictionary.com said it was adding both mansplain and the suffix (libfix) -splain to its dictionary.[33] Its announcement read in part: "In addition to being creative, this term, particularly the -splaining part, has proven to be incredibly robust and useful as a combining form in 2013." Dictionary.com noted that the meaning of mansplain had changed somewhat since 2009, from "intense and serious to casual and jocular", while older -splain words still have "heavy cultural and political connotations and are often added to the names of politicians".[33]

Mansplaining has also engendered parallel constructions such as womansplaining, whitesplaining, rightsplaining,[34] goysplaining,[35] and Damonsplaining.[36][37]

Criticism

MPR News Staff disputed the usefulness of the term.[38] Given its gender-specific nature and negative connotation, Lesley Kinzel described it as inherently biased, essentialist, dismissive, and a double standard.[39] In a 2016 Washington Post article, Cathy Young wrote that it is just one of a number of terms using "man" as a derogatory prefix, and that this convention is part of a "current cycle of misandry".[40] Meghan Daum, in a 2015 Los Angeles Times article, wrote that "To suggest that men are more qualified for the designation than women is not only sexist but almost as tone deaf as categorizing everything that a man says as mansplaining."[41] In 2014 Solnit herself said she had doubts about it: "[I]t seems to me to go a little heavy on the idea that men are inherently flawed this way, rather than that some men explain things they shouldn't and don't hear things they should."[42] As the word became more popular, several commentators complained that misappropriation had diluted its original meaning.[43] Joshua Sealy-Harrington and Tom McLaughlin wrote in newspaper The Globe and Mail that the term has been used as an ad hominem to silence debate.[44]

See also

References

  1. ^ Salazar, Albert (28 May 2015). "UIW Statue Gets National Attention Thanks To Feminism And Twitter". San Antonio Current. Retrieved 27 June 2021.
  2. ^ "Classmates, San Antonio, Texas". Atlas Obscura. 2 July 2018. Retrieved 27 June 2021.
  3. ^ a b 'Definition' Dictionary.com
  4. ^ a b Mansplaining, Merriam-Webster.com
  5. ^ Steinmetz, Katy (18 November 2014). "Clickbait, Normcore, Mansplain: Runners-Up for Oxford's Word of the Year". Time. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
  6. ^ a b Zimmer, Ben (5 January 2013). "Tag, You're It! "Hashtag" Wins as 2012 Word of the Year". Visual Thesaurus. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  7. ^ Solnit, Rebecca (20 August 2012). "Men still explain things to me". In These Times. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  8. ^ a b c Rothman, Lily (1 November 2012). "A Cultural History of Mansplaining". The Atlantic. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
  9. ^ Jaschik, Scott (16 October 2012). "Calling Out Academic 'Mansplaining'". Inside Higher Ed.
  10. ^ a b Sifton, Sam; Barrett, Grant (18 December 2010). "The Words of the Year". The New York Times.
  11. ^ "American Dialect Society 2012 Words of the Year" (PDF). americandialect.org. 4 January 2013.
  12. ^ Peters, Mark. "'Mansplaining' Spawns a New Suffix". Vocabulary.com.
  13. ^ Solnit, Rebecca (13 April 2008). "Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn't Get in Their Way". TomDispatch, The Nation Institute.
  14. ^ Solnit, Rebecca (13 April 2008). "Men who explain things". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  15. ^ Doyle, Sady (1 May 2014). "Mansplaining, Explained". In These Times. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  16. ^ . Oxforddictionaries.com. August 2014. Archived from the original on 18 August 2014. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  17. ^ Lewis, Helen (4 July 2014). "The Essay That Launched the Term "Mansplaining"". The New Republic.
  18. ^ Solnit, Rebecca (20 August 2012). "Men Explain Things to Me -- Facts Didn't Get in the Way". HuffPost. Retrieved 24 September 2021.
  19. ^ Sonksen, Mike (11 June 2014). "On Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me". Cultural Weekly.
  20. ^ Solnit did not coin the term 'mansplaining' Financial Times
  21. ^ Cogan, Marin (1 August 2012). "The Mittsplainer: An Alternate Theory of Mitt Romney's Gaffes". GQ. Retrieved 20 August 2012.
  22. ^ Kaplan, Ilana (20 October 2018). "Stephen Colbert accuses Trump of trying to 'mansplain the Midterms' to female voters". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  23. ^ Weigel, David (27 June 2013). "Mansplaining the Mansplainer: Rick Perry's Accidental Abortion Honesty". Slate. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
  24. ^ Ioffe, Julia (8 August 2013). "Dear Lawrence O'Donnell, Don't Mansplain to Me About Russia". The New Republic. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
  25. ^ Stuever, Hank (11 July 2013). "'The Newsroom' vs. 'Honey Boo Boo': Which one really gives us more to think about?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
  26. ^ Weigel, David (5 August 2013). "Trying to Tolerate The Newsroom, Week Four". Slate. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
  27. ^ Greenwald, Andy (16 July 2013). "Death by Newsroom". Grantland. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
  28. ^ "Dear Jimmy Iovine: Women Don't Need You to Mansplain Music to Them". Observer. 19 November 2015. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
  29. ^ "PM accused of 'mansplaining' ... but what does it mean?". The Sydney Morning Herald. 16 September 2015. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
  30. ^ "Matt Damon Mansplaining Diversity On 'Project Greenlight' Is Frustrating, But There Is A Silver Lining". www.bustle.com. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
  31. ^ "Ralph Nader Mansplains Monetary Policy to Janet Yellen". Daily Intelligencer. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
  32. ^ Ireland, Judith (11 February 2016). "'What?': Katy Gallagher explains mansplaining to Mitch Fifield during fiery estimates showdown". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  33. ^ a b Solomon, Jane (6 December 2013). "Word Watch 2013: -splain". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 24 November 2014. The possibilities are seeming endless on the -splain front. This gives Dictionary.com reason to believe that -splain is not just a temporary fad, but rather a stable new addition to English along with its libfix cousins like -gate, -pocalypse, and -zilla.
  34. ^ Zimmer, Benjamin; Carson, Charles C. (2013). "Among The New Words". American Speech. 88 (2): 196–214. doi:10.1215/00031283-2346771.(subscription required)
  35. ^ Marcus, Marcus (30 March 2015). "The Art of Goysplaining". The Forward.
  36. ^ "'Damonsplaining': Matt Damon accused of insensitivity". BBC News. 16 September 2015.
  37. ^ Moyer, Justin Wm. (29 September 2015). "Matt Damon has more 'Damonsplaining' to do — this time about alleged anti-gay comments". The Washington Post.
  38. ^ "Do we need a different word for 'mansplaining'?". MPR News. 19 December 2016. Retrieved 11 August 2017.
  39. ^ Kinzel, Lesley (16 August 2012). . XoJane. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
  40. ^ Young, Cathy (30 June 2016). "Feminists treat men badly. It's bad for feminism". The Washington Post. Whatever the reasons for the current cycle of misandry — yes, that’s a word, derided but also adopted for ironic use by many feminists — its existence is quite real. Consider, for example, the number of neologisms that use “man” as a derogatory prefix and that have entered everyday media language: “mansplaining,” “manspreading” and “manterrupting."
  41. ^ Daum, Meghan (8 January 2015). "Mansplaining? Windbags come in both genders". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
  42. ^ Solnit, Rebecca (2014). Men Explain Things to Me. Chicago: Haymarket Books. p. 14.
  43. ^ Hart, Benjamin (20 October 2014). "RIP "mansplaining": How the Internet killed one of our most useful words". Salon. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  44. ^ McLaughlin, Tom; Sealy-Harrington, Joshua (15 April 2014). "Arguments should not be silenced because of their author's race or sex". The Globe and Mail.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mansplaining.
 
Look up mansplaining in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Mansplaining.
  • Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me; Facts Didn't Get in Their Way, 13 April 2008
  • Lara Rutherford-Morrison (Bustle), 6 Subtle Forms Of Mansplaining That Women Encounter Each Day, 19 Jan 2016

January 07, 2023
mansplaining, blend, word, informal, form, splaining, gerund, explaining, pejorative, term, meaning, comment, explain, something, woman, condescending, overconfident, often, inaccurate, oversimplified, manner, author, rebecca, solnit, ascribed, phenomenon, com. Mansplaining a blend word of man and the informal form splaining of the gerund explaining is a pejorative term meaning of a man to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending overconfident and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner 3 4 5 6 Author Rebecca Solnit ascribed the phenomenon to a combination of overconfidence and cluelessness 7 Lily Rothman of The Atlantic defined it as explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer often done by a man to a woman 8 Gender and Disarmament Platform meeting 14 September 2017 On the slide a photograph of the sculpture Classmates by Paul Tadlock which is often used to illustrate mansplaining 1 2 In its original use mansplaining differed from other forms of condescension in that it was said to be rooted in the assumption that a man is likely to be more knowledgeable than a woman 9 However it has come to be used more broadly often applied when a man takes a condescending tone in an explanation to anyone regardless of the age or gender of the intended recipients a man splaining can be delivered to any audience 4 In 2010 it was named by the New York Times as one of its Words of the Year 10 American Dialect Society nominated Mansplaining as the most creative new word in 2012 11 Contents 1 Origins 2 Usage 3 Criticism 4 See also 5 References 6 External linksOrigins EditThe verb splain has been in use for more than 200 years originally as a colloquial pronunciation of the Late Middle English word explain It came increasingly to refer to condescending or verbose explanations 3 12 The term mansplaining was inspired by an essay Men Explain Things to Me Facts Didn t Get in Their Way written by Rebecca Solnit and published on TomDispatch com on 13 April 2008 In the essay Solnit told an anecdote about a man at a party who said he had heard she had written some books She began to talk about her most recent on Eadweard Muybridge whereupon the man cut her off and asked if she had heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year not considering that it might be as in fact it was Solnit s book Solnit did not use the word mansplaining in the essay but she described the phenomenon as something every woman knows 13 14 A month later the word appeared in a comment on the social network LiveJournal 8 It became popular among feminist bloggers before entering mainstream commentary 8 15 The word was included in 2010 by the New York Times as one of its words of the year 10 nominated in 2012 for the American Dialect Society s most creative word of the year honor 6 and added in 2014 to the online Oxford Dictionaries 16 Solnit later published Men Explain Things to Me 2014 a collection of seven essays on similar themes Women including professionals and experts are routinely seen or treated as less credible than men she wrote in the title essay and their insights or even legal testimony are dismissed unless validated by a man in some countries 17 18 She argued that this was one symptom of a widespread phenomenon that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare that crushes young women into silence by indicating the way harassment on the street does that this is not their world It trains us in self doubt and self limitation just as it exercises men s unsupported overconfidence 19 In 2018 during a lecture at Moe s Books in Berkeley California Solnit said I m falsely credited with coining the term mansplaining It was a 2010 New York Times word of the year I did not actually coin it I was a bit ambivalent about the word because it seems a little bit more condemnatory of the male of the species than I ever wanted it to be 20 Usage EditJournalists have used the word to describe the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney 21 President Donald Trump 22 Governor of Texas Rick Perry 23 MSNBC host Lawrence O Donnell 24 various characters on the HBO drama series The Newsroom 25 26 27 music executive Jimmy Iovine 28 Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull 29 actor Matt Damon 30 and consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader 31 In February 2016 the term sparked an argument between two members of a committee of the Australian Senate when Labor senator Katy Gallagher told Communications Minister Mitch Fifield I love the mansplaining I m enjoying it 32 In 2013 Dictionary com said it was adding both mansplain and the suffix libfix splain to its dictionary 33 Its announcement read in part In addition to being creative this term particularly the splaining part has proven to be incredibly robust and useful as a combining form in 2013 Dictionary com noted that the meaning of mansplain had changed somewhat since 2009 from intense and serious to casual and jocular while older splain words still have heavy cultural and political connotations and are often added to the names of politicians 33 Mansplaining has also engendered parallel constructions such as womansplaining whitesplaining rightsplaining 34 goysplaining 35 and Damonsplaining 36 37 Criticism EditMPR News Staff disputed the usefulness of the term 38 Given its gender specific nature and negative connotation Lesley Kinzel described it as inherently biased essentialist dismissive and a double standard 39 In a 2016 Washington Post article Cathy Young wrote that it is just one of a number of terms using man as a derogatory prefix and that this convention is part of a current cycle of misandry 40 Meghan Daum in a 2015 Los Angeles Times article wrote that To suggest that men are more qualified for the designation than women is not only sexist but almost as tone deaf as categorizing everything that a man says as mansplaining 41 In 2014 Solnit herself said she had doubts about it I t seems to me to go a little heavy on the idea that men are inherently flawed this way rather than that some men explain things they shouldn t and don t hear things they should 42 As the word became more popular several commentators complained that misappropriation had diluted its original meaning 43 Joshua Sealy Harrington and Tom McLaughlin wrote in newspaper The Globe and Mail that the term has been used as an ad hominem to silence debate 44 See also EditHimpathy Ad Hominem Circumstantial Manosphere Manspreading Manterrupting Sociolinguistics Tone policing Teaching grandmother to suck eggs a gender neutral idiom for a similar phenomenon WestsplainingReferences Edit Salazar Albert 28 May 2015 UIW Statue Gets National Attention Thanks To Feminism And Twitter San Antonio Current Retrieved 27 June 2021 Classmates San Antonio Texas Atlas Obscura 2 July 2018 Retrieved 27 June 2021 a b Definition Dictionary com a b Mansplaining Merriam Webster com Steinmetz Katy 18 November 2014 Clickbait Normcore Mansplain Runners Up for Oxford s Word of the Year Time Retrieved 24 November 2014 a b Zimmer Ben 5 January 2013 Tag You re It Hashtag Wins as 2012 Word of the Year Visual Thesaurus Retrieved 30 October 2014 Solnit Rebecca 20 August 2012 Men still explain things to me In These Times Retrieved 30 October 2014 a b c Rothman Lily 1 November 2012 A Cultural History of Mansplaining The Atlantic Retrieved 20 August 2013 Jaschik Scott 16 October 2012 Calling Out Academic Mansplaining Inside Higher Ed a b Sifton Sam Barrett Grant 18 December 2010 The Words of the Year The New York Times American Dialect Society 2012 Words of the Year PDF americandialect org 4 January 2013 Peters Mark Mansplaining Spawns a New Suffix Vocabulary com Solnit Rebecca 13 April 2008 Men Explain Things to Me Facts Didn t Get in Their Way TomDispatch The Nation Institute Solnit Rebecca 13 April 2008 Men who explain things Los Angeles Times Retrieved 30 October 2014 Doyle Sady 1 May 2014 Mansplaining Explained In These Times Retrieved 30 October 2014 New words added to OxfordDictionaries com today include binge watch cray and vape Oxforddictionaries com August 2014 Archived from the original on 18 August 2014 Retrieved 30 October 2014 Lewis Helen 4 July 2014 The Essay That Launched the Term Mansplaining The New Republic Solnit Rebecca 20 August 2012 Men Explain Things to Me Facts Didn t Get in the Way HuffPost Retrieved 24 September 2021 Sonksen Mike 11 June 2014 On Rebecca Solnit s Men Explain Things to Me Cultural Weekly Solnit did not coin the term mansplaining Financial Times Cogan Marin 1 August 2012 The Mittsplainer An Alternate Theory of Mitt Romney s Gaffes GQ Retrieved 20 August 2012 Kaplan Ilana 20 October 2018 Stephen Colbert accuses Trump of trying to mansplain the Midterms to female voters Rolling Stone Retrieved 23 August 2019 Weigel David 27 June 2013 Mansplaining the Mansplainer Rick Perry s Accidental Abortion Honesty Slate Retrieved 20 August 2013 Ioffe Julia 8 August 2013 Dear Lawrence O Donnell Don t Mansplain to Me About Russia The New Republic Retrieved 20 August 2013 Stuever Hank 11 July 2013 The Newsroom vs Honey Boo Boo Which one really gives us more to think about The Washington Post Retrieved 20 August 2013 Weigel David 5 August 2013 Trying to Tolerate The Newsroom Week Four Slate Retrieved 20 August 2013 Greenwald Andy 16 July 2013 Death by Newsroom Grantland Retrieved 20 August 2013 Dear Jimmy Iovine Women Don t Need You to Mansplain Music to Them Observer 19 November 2015 Retrieved 20 December 2015 PM accused of mansplaining but what does it mean The Sydney Morning Herald 16 September 2015 Retrieved 20 December 2015 Matt Damon Mansplaining Diversity On Project Greenlight Is Frustrating But There Is A Silver Lining www bustle com Retrieved 20 December 2015 Ralph Nader Mansplains Monetary Policy to Janet Yellen Daily Intelligencer Retrieved 20 December 2015 Ireland Judith 11 February 2016 What Katy Gallagher explains mansplaining to Mitch Fifield during fiery estimates showdown The Sydney Morning Herald a b Solomon Jane 6 December 2013 Word Watch 2013 splain Dictionary com Retrieved 24 November 2014 The possibilities are seeming endless on the splain front This gives Dictionary com reason to believe that splain is not just a temporary fad but rather a stable new addition to English along with its libfix cousins like gate pocalypse and zilla Zimmer Benjamin Carson Charles C 2013 Among The New Words American Speech 88 2 196 214 doi 10 1215 00031283 2346771 subscription required Marcus Marcus 30 March 2015 The Art of Goysplaining The Forward Damonsplaining Matt Damon accused of insensitivity BBC News 16 September 2015 Moyer Justin Wm 29 September 2015 Matt Damon has more Damonsplaining to do this time about alleged anti gay comments The Washington Post Do we need a different word for mansplaining MPR News 19 December 2016 Retrieved 11 August 2017 Kinzel Lesley 16 August 2012 Why You ll Never Hear Me Use the Term Mansplain XoJane Archived from the original on 13 June 2018 Retrieved 22 August 2013 Young Cathy 30 June 2016 Feminists treat men badly It s bad for feminism The Washington Post Whatever the reasons for the current cycle of misandry yes that s a word derided but also adopted for ironic use by many feminists its existence is quite real Consider for example the number of neologisms that use man as a derogatory prefix and that have entered everyday media language mansplaining manspreading and manterrupting Daum Meghan 8 January 2015 Mansplaining Windbags come in both genders Los Angeles Times Retrieved 20 August 2018 Solnit Rebecca 2014 Men Explain Things to Me Chicago Haymarket Books p 14 Hart Benjamin 20 October 2014 RIP mansplaining How the Internet killed one of our most useful words Salon Retrieved 30 October 2014 McLaughlin Tom Sealy Harrington Joshua 15 April 2014 Arguments should not be silenced because of their author s race or sex The Globe and Mail External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mansplaining Look up mansplaining in Wiktionary the free dictionary Wikiquote has quotations related to Mansplaining Rebecca Solnit Men Explain Things to Me Facts Didn t Get in Their Way 13 April 2008 Lara Rutherford Morrison Bustle 6 Subtle Forms Of Mansplaining That Women Encounter Each Day 19 Jan 2016 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Mansplaining amp oldid 1131670609, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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