Do not ever mansplain to me. In fact, don't talk to me. No one talk to me.
I talk about empathy in response to distress, and I see feminist articles circulating around addressing this topic, and I cannot emphasize how important it is. Men, in general, do not care to show empathy, when a lot of the world’s problems could be solved if they did. Terrorism, racism, sexual assault, pollution, child slavery, poorly written Disney movies, everything.
Men don’t have to show experienced-nurse-level or new-mother-levels of empathy, they just have to show basic human decency levels of empathy. That is, to treat others who are “not like” them with equality, the same consideration and decency they would want to receive as a human being, and more so. And they can’t even do that! Apparently not even the “nicest” guys or the most sensitive men with years of happy marriage do this with any regularity that I would chalk up to innate decency. It is not engrained in society for men to practice empathy, women don’t ever call men out on this when they are unempathetic, and the most empathetic men are looked down on as I dunno, gay or whatever. It’s a shameful way of thinking and it needs to be corrected like 150 years ago.
Here, let me write an example of a thing that men do that makes me want to force-choke them. A woman makes a statement that is clearly generalized venting and obviously not about the male acquaintance present, and immediately, before she even finishes perhaps, the male acquaintance makes it about himself. The moment he spouts out a story in his experience or tries to mansplain the injustice away or expresses any statement that is not acknowledging the woman’s opinion, he is dismissing her as an equal with a valid perspective, flaunting his “superior logic and wisdom” to downplay her “emotional and silly” outburst, to deny her right to speak about something in her own experience, when she wasn’t even referring to him in the first place and knows better.
Let me write an even more concrete example that doesn’t differentiate between men and women. Some person, a regular guy, sighs and says, “Man it’s raining cats and dogs out there, this is insane!” And then his douchebag coworker says, “Well, we could really use this rain on my California ranch house, so count your blessings, man.” Then the first guy chokes the second guy, and he would have every right to. See how stupid and uncalled for the douchebag’s comment was? It was completely dismissing the first guy’s concern that his low-lying house might be flooded or his teenage daughter might hydroplane into a raging river and drown. It was making it all about himself and something completely unrelated geographically. And it tried to shame the first guy for not accepting this gift of rain.
The appropriate answer from the douchebag coworker should be, “Yeah, it isn’t usually like this for April in Texas. I bet it’s because of El Nino.” Or something. Then after the first dude continues the conversation, the second guy could sneak in a “I wish I could somehow telepathically move this rain to California, give ourselves a break from the gloom for a few days.” There, isn’t that… decent? Oh my God. It’s not like the second guy had to be a freaking psychologist to think of such responses!
I don’t claim that being empathetic is an intrinsic part of being a woman, I know insensitive douchebag women are out there. I was one, and I may still be one. But the way things are, most men are apparently not even a fraction as empathetic as the biggest asswipe of a woman out there. Because if men were empathetic, why would 1 out of 6 women (possibly more) be sexually assaulted (presumably by a man and not say some sex fiend robot) at least once in their lifetime? It takes only a few seconds for any decent human to figure out this young woman is terrified of you and wants you to go away and never talk to her again, so men are basically seeing the truth and then denying it in place of their own perceived sense of rightness.
The moment a guy tries to mansplain something, could be the sweetest friend ever, could be a complete stranger on the internet, I promptly think to myself, “here’s a guy who doesn’t actually look at or listen to a woman and try to understand her emotions and intentions, here’s a guy refusing to acknowledge a woman’s right to express an opinion by trying to drown her voice out with his righteousness, here is a potential rapist, terrorist and/or animal abuser, I need to get out of here and maybe alert the police, not that they’ll listen because they’ll probably be mansplaining to me, too.”
The moment a guy tries to make something about himself when it clearly wasn’t about him, I turn to him slowly and say, “I wasn’t talking about you, but now I can.” Then crack my knuckles.
Men don’t have to show experienced-nurse-level or new-mother-levels of empathy, they just have to show basic human decency levels of empathy. That is, to treat others who are “not like” them with equality, the same consideration and decency they would want to receive as a human being, and more so. And they can’t even do that! Apparently not even the “nicest” guys or the most sensitive men with years of happy marriage do this with any regularity that I would chalk up to innate decency. It is not engrained in society for men to practice empathy, women don’t ever call men out on this when they are unempathetic, and the most empathetic men are looked down on as I dunno, gay or whatever. It’s a shameful way of thinking and it needs to be corrected like 150 years ago.
Here, let me write an example of a thing that men do that makes me want to force-choke them. A woman makes a statement that is clearly generalized venting and obviously not about the male acquaintance present, and immediately, before she even finishes perhaps, the male acquaintance makes it about himself. The moment he spouts out a story in his experience or tries to mansplain the injustice away or expresses any statement that is not acknowledging the woman’s opinion, he is dismissing her as an equal with a valid perspective, flaunting his “superior logic and wisdom” to downplay her “emotional and silly” outburst, to deny her right to speak about something in her own experience, when she wasn’t even referring to him in the first place and knows better.
Let me write an even more concrete example that doesn’t differentiate between men and women. Some person, a regular guy, sighs and says, “Man it’s raining cats and dogs out there, this is insane!” And then his douchebag coworker says, “Well, we could really use this rain on my California ranch house, so count your blessings, man.” Then the first guy chokes the second guy, and he would have every right to. See how stupid and uncalled for the douchebag’s comment was? It was completely dismissing the first guy’s concern that his low-lying house might be flooded or his teenage daughter might hydroplane into a raging river and drown. It was making it all about himself and something completely unrelated geographically. And it tried to shame the first guy for not accepting this gift of rain.
The appropriate answer from the douchebag coworker should be, “Yeah, it isn’t usually like this for April in Texas. I bet it’s because of El Nino.” Or something. Then after the first dude continues the conversation, the second guy could sneak in a “I wish I could somehow telepathically move this rain to California, give ourselves a break from the gloom for a few days.” There, isn’t that… decent? Oh my God. It’s not like the second guy had to be a freaking psychologist to think of such responses!
I don’t claim that being empathetic is an intrinsic part of being a woman, I know insensitive douchebag women are out there. I was one, and I may still be one. But the way things are, most men are apparently not even a fraction as empathetic as the biggest asswipe of a woman out there. Because if men were empathetic, why would 1 out of 6 women (possibly more) be sexually assaulted (presumably by a man and not say some sex fiend robot) at least once in their lifetime? It takes only a few seconds for any decent human to figure out this young woman is terrified of you and wants you to go away and never talk to her again, so men are basically seeing the truth and then denying it in place of their own perceived sense of rightness.
The moment a guy tries to mansplain something, could be the sweetest friend ever, could be a complete stranger on the internet, I promptly think to myself, “here’s a guy who doesn’t actually look at or listen to a woman and try to understand her emotions and intentions, here’s a guy refusing to acknowledge a woman’s right to express an opinion by trying to drown her voice out with his righteousness, here is a potential rapist, terrorist and/or animal abuser, I need to get out of here and maybe alert the police, not that they’ll listen because they’ll probably be mansplaining to me, too.”
The moment a guy tries to make something about himself when it clearly wasn’t about him, I turn to him slowly and say, “I wasn’t talking about you, but now I can.” Then crack my knuckles.