In this article I am going to explain why I feel the accusation of "mansplaining" is complete rubbish.
If someone dumbs down an explanation for something highly specialized and technical, I never ever felt that this was aimed at me personally and was condescending specifically to me. I usually assumed, because it is a correct assumption, that everyone else this person was talking to was rather stupid, and that the person dumbing it down has to do so in order to do their job properly. The explainer has to make sure everyone more or less gets the concept before they can move on to the next concept.
This had been the case pretty much my entire life. I'm pretty good with comprehending complex ideas such as oxidative phosphorylation at the substrate level, or proton-gradient driven assembly of ATP inside the mitochondrial membrane. That doesn't mean everybody is good at it. A lot of people might need a second or third or fourth go-round, and the explainer must accommodate them accordingly.
I don't know why so many females are actively expending energy and effort, and going out of their way to feel offended and insulted by this. Stop it. If you understood the concept quickly and easily, then great. Zoom past it and move on. Comprehend it. Absorb it. Then get over it and move on. Be proud of yourself that you understood the concept quickly. Don't sit there pouting about it.
All educators have to contend with making a concept absorbable and retainable for laypersons, i.e., for students. People in specialized jobs have to be able to do this also.
I went to get air put in my car tires recently. The mechanic guy who did this took the time to explain to me why tires tend to decrease in pressure more quickly in cold weather than in warm weather. Now, I already know why. But I did not fault the mechanic guy for explaining this to me. He doesn't know that I have a PhD in Biochemistry. There is no way he would know that air pressure is a very elementary concept for me.
I did not feel the least bit offended or insulted that the guy took the time to explain this to me. On the contrary, I felt taken care of because the mechanic explained this to me. It was a nice feeling. I thought it was really sweet that he took the time to do that. All the mechanics there have to explain this to their customers, because that is a vital part of their job. It is a matter of safety and well-being -- that of cars functioning properly. They care about their customers enough to explain this, in the hopes that customers will continue to take good care of their cars in the future.
People in that kind of work cannot just assume that everybody that comes through has a working knowledge of air pressure, gas laws, etc. Mechanics cannot assume that everyone is well-versed in these concepts. And why the hell would they? The vast, vast majority of people do not have the knowledge.
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You know what is almost as bad as mansplaining? Chicksplaining. I cannot stand how too many females are horrible at communication. They beat around the bush, they hint, they send "signals" (whatever the hell that means)...
They do everything *except* come right out and say straightforwardly what is on their minds. I have already covered this in a previous article.
There was also an article on cracked-dot-com where a female wrote a weird-ass, illogical, mind-numbing article where she was using all sorts of twisted gibberish to excuse away females' piss-poor communication flaws. I don't feel like linking to it because I don't want to give cracked-dot-com a goddamn free backlink.
I see that liberal females use all sorts of twisted, skewed, convoluted non-logic as to why their lack of responsibility, lack of accountability, lack of owning up to their mistakes is somehow better than males' lack of responsibility, lack of accountability, lack of owning up to their mistakes.
Or in another version of this, females lecture males on their "insensitivity," why can't he see things from her point of view, why can't he put himself in her shoes, oh men are just horrible jerks, men just don't understand how hard life is for women, men are so insensitive to women's feelings, women work so much harder than men do, etc.
--An example: ____ Okay, fair enough. But these same females then turn around and say that if a guy does not want to have sex but a girl is pressuring him into it, then this makes the guy a wimp, he is hindering her from being a strong capable woman in charge of her own life, he is preventing her from having body confidence, he is not allowing her to know and explore her body. These females think there should be no such thing as a guy who has respect for his body and does not just want to jump in the sack with a girl.
And of course, too many self-proclaimed "liberated, empowered" females do not want to take any responsibility for consciously choosing to create a fetus with their own bodies. They opt instead to blame the male for not piling on the birth control. They blame the male for the fact the female chose to be lazy and slack and careless about birth control. I've also talked about this at length. Liberal females are such massive hypocrites it's ridiculous.
If someone dumbs down an explanation for something highly specialized and technical, I never ever felt that this was aimed at me personally and was condescending specifically to me. I usually assumed, because it is a correct assumption, that everyone else this person was talking to was rather stupid, and that the person dumbing it down has to do so in order to do their job properly. The explainer has to make sure everyone more or less gets the concept before they can move on to the next concept.
This had been the case pretty much my entire life. I'm pretty good with comprehending complex ideas such as oxidative phosphorylation at the substrate level, or proton-gradient driven assembly of ATP inside the mitochondrial membrane. That doesn't mean everybody is good at it. A lot of people might need a second or third or fourth go-round, and the explainer must accommodate them accordingly.
I don't know why so many females are actively expending energy and effort, and going out of their way to feel offended and insulted by this. Stop it. If you understood the concept quickly and easily, then great. Zoom past it and move on. Comprehend it. Absorb it. Then get over it and move on. Be proud of yourself that you understood the concept quickly. Don't sit there pouting about it.
All educators have to contend with making a concept absorbable and retainable for laypersons, i.e., for students. People in specialized jobs have to be able to do this also.
I went to get air put in my car tires recently. The mechanic guy who did this took the time to explain to me why tires tend to decrease in pressure more quickly in cold weather than in warm weather. Now, I already know why. But I did not fault the mechanic guy for explaining this to me. He doesn't know that I have a PhD in Biochemistry. There is no way he would know that air pressure is a very elementary concept for me.
I did not feel the least bit offended or insulted that the guy took the time to explain this to me. On the contrary, I felt taken care of because the mechanic explained this to me. It was a nice feeling. I thought it was really sweet that he took the time to do that. All the mechanics there have to explain this to their customers, because that is a vital part of their job. It is a matter of safety and well-being -- that of cars functioning properly. They care about their customers enough to explain this, in the hopes that customers will continue to take good care of their cars in the future.
People in that kind of work cannot just assume that everybody that comes through has a working knowledge of air pressure, gas laws, etc. Mechanics cannot assume that everyone is well-versed in these concepts. And why the hell would they? The vast, vast majority of people do not have the knowledge.
--
You know what is almost as bad as mansplaining? Chicksplaining. I cannot stand how too many females are horrible at communication. They beat around the bush, they hint, they send "signals" (whatever the hell that means)...
They do everything *except* come right out and say straightforwardly what is on their minds. I have already covered this in a previous article.
There was also an article on cracked-dot-com where a female wrote a weird-ass, illogical, mind-numbing article where she was using all sorts of twisted gibberish to excuse away females' piss-poor communication flaws. I don't feel like linking to it because I don't want to give cracked-dot-com a goddamn free backlink.
I see that liberal females use all sorts of twisted, skewed, convoluted non-logic as to why their lack of responsibility, lack of accountability, lack of owning up to their mistakes is somehow better than males' lack of responsibility, lack of accountability, lack of owning up to their mistakes.
Or in another version of this, females lecture males on their "insensitivity," why can't he see things from her point of view, why can't he put himself in her shoes, oh men are just horrible jerks, men just don't understand how hard life is for women, men are so insensitive to women's feelings, women work so much harder than men do, etc.
--An example: ____ Okay, fair enough. But these same females then turn around and say that if a guy does not want to have sex but a girl is pressuring him into it, then this makes the guy a wimp, he is hindering her from being a strong capable woman in charge of her own life, he is preventing her from having body confidence, he is not allowing her to know and explore her body. These females think there should be no such thing as a guy who has respect for his body and does not just want to jump in the sack with a girl.
And of course, too many self-proclaimed "liberated, empowered" females do not want to take any responsibility for consciously choosing to create a fetus with their own bodies. They opt instead to blame the male for not piling on the birth control. They blame the male for the fact the female chose to be lazy and slack and careless about birth control. I've also talked about this at length. Liberal females are such massive hypocrites it's ridiculous.