Imagine that you are in a business meeting and you are going to present a well-researched idea to others. You took the time to study this particular subject so that you are competent when you introduce it to others. You begin to explain to the audience there, when suddenly a male colleague, without apology, interrupts you and tells you that he can explain the concept better himself.
You don’t stop talking and politely tell him that you can continue, but he doesn’t stop either, and in the end you are silent again, because the other person decided to raise his voice and drown out your speech. Accordingly, the attention of the surrounding people shifted to him. You’re very angry, but you know it’s not a good tone to cover up and keep talking like that, so you don’t say anything. The anger is also aggravated by the fact that in a few minutes it becomes clear that your male colleague’s knowledge on this subject is at most average, when you could have explained it in much more detail. Does this scenario sound familiar to you? It is not a foreign environment where mansplaining is an established practice! If you are a woman, you have probably witnessed a similar situation at least once. And if you are a man, you may be engaging in such practices intentionally or accidentally, without realizing that they are harmful and unethical.
What Is Mansplaining?
Mansplaining is an attempt by a man to explain a specific issue. It is mainly expressed towards women and people with a non-binary gender identity, although the main identifying mark is still men’s overconfident attempts to explain various issues that can apply to any gender. As a rule, men involved in mansplaining speak from the position of knowing more than the interlocutor.
Such an action is accompanied by an over-explanation of a specific issue, or vice versa (which is less common, although there are similar ones).
Furthermore, we need to understand that this phenomenon is not just the trivial act of covering someone up in social situations — it’s another echo of a patriarchal world that exists in terms of gender bias and power dynamics in favor of men. In the historically male-dominated structures that exist in the vast majority of cultures, male authority is highly valued. Even when specific knowledge is identical to women, society is more confident in the competence of men and trusts them more than women.
Mansplaining is used by men sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally, which is related to the world view full of stereotypes of the explainer, that women should talk a lot about specific issues, because they will not understand it; Or vice versa — you should talk less, because it’s not even worth making an effort to explain this or that issue, because women simply don’t understand it. Attempts at such explanations are saturated with the views of a man standing on a pedestal, who believes that he knows better about this or that issue because he is a man.
Perhaps specific phrases and situations are more likely to give you the right names for mansplaining. If you have heard the following phrases, that is, you have encountered such a situation in which men explain things to women endlessly:
“Actually, this is quite a complex issue, but I will try to explain it to you.”
“You may not understand this issue, but I will explain it to you later.”
“Wait, wait, who told you that this is so? In fact…”
“Your experience may be like this, but it’s not really happening – I’ll explain.”
Mansplaining is among the harmful list of sexist and misogynistic practices, which means it is a gender-based discriminatory behavior that is motivated by prejudice and prejudice and that originates on the basis of gender.
Since sexism is based on the belief that physical innate differences between men and women should lead to different treatment for each gender, typically this difference is manifested in privileging men and limiting or denying access to opportunities for women.
The “bad actors” involved in mansplaining can often be sexist and objectify and dehumanize women.
The practice of dehumanization deprives people of their humanity and denies that each of them has autonomy, the right to political involvement, and desires. People are considered as dehumanized passive beings who have neither rights and freedoms nor intrinsic values.
Men involved in mansplaining may be hostile, benevolent, or ambivalent sexists, depending on the categorization of sexism. Accordingly, they were either aggressive towards women and openly interrupted their conversation, or they used mansplaining without hostile intentions, just because they were brought up that way and think they are not hurting anyone. Ambivalent sexists may also use aggression, however, in some cases, without premeditation, by accident, out of habit, they explain something that the speaker already knows well.
Dunning-Kruger Effect in Mansplaining
Mansplaining is sometimes associated with the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive tendency in which unskilled individuals feel an apparent advantage over others, regardless of how competent they are. According to this tendency, unskilled people completely inappropriately estimate their abilities and put themselves at a higher level than they really are, which is related to the lack of metacognitive skills – to be able to notice and admit their mistakes. On the other hand, highly competent people may have a false self-esteem, and they put their own skills much lower than they actually are, because they think that others around them have the same skills.
“Misjudgments by incompetents are related to false self-views, while misjudgments by competent people are related to misjudgments of others,” David Dunning and Justin Krueger report.
Therefore, the Dunning-Kruger effect may contribute to mansplaining by giving incompetent men who are taught to speak out loud from childhood and nurtured throughout their lives extra confidence to explain things in which their knowledge is at most equivalent to that of the average person. However, at the same time, they were overconfident and, in some cases, condescending and ironic towards those around them.
Etymology and History of Establishing the Term
The term mansplaining was first used by Rebecca Solnit in 2008 in her essay “Men explain things to me“. Her criticism was aimed at men’s arrogance and overconfidence.
Solnit talked about such experiences when a man believed that the woman he was talking to had never heard of a particular concept from one of the books published by the same woman. This experience shows how humiliating, demeaning and detached from reality men’s preconceptions about women can be.
“The fight for women to be treated as human beings with life, liberty, and the desire to be included in the cultural and political arena continues, and it’s a pretty scary fight at times. “When I wrote the essay, I was surprised to see that what starts as a minor social problem can turn into violent suppression and even death,” Solnit later wrote.
The Impact of Mansplaining
Men talking loudly and trying to explain is not new, however, as society is used to such behavior, at the same time, we should understand how much impact this seemingly imperceptible behavior can have, which we constantly encounter.
“There is a general tendency for men to talk longer. It meant both the length of a conversation and talking at work without being interrupted by others,” says Dr. Tessa West, a professor of psychology at New York University.
Additionally, a study published in the multidisciplinary medical journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that women speak less at university colloquiums, while another study published on ScienceDirect, a scientific literature platform, found that men who speak more, are considered to be leaders.
Caitlin Briggs, a graduate student researcher in the College of Social Sciences at Michigan State University, and her colleagues sought to learn more about manslaughter. They asked 128 volunteers to pretend they were members of a committee tasked with allocating bonuses to employees. After reviewing the candidates, the volunteers met with two hired actors: either a man or a woman. In both scenarios, the actor asked them if they fully understood the task; Then they applied mansplaining and once again explained to the participants.
“We found that women were mostly negatively affected by mansplaining, while men were not,” says Briggs, whose research was published in Business and Psychology.
“Female volunteers were more likely to have their competence questioned than male volunteers. “Women attributed it to gender bias,” says Briggs.
By his own explanation, men sometimes thought that the additional explanation was rudeness rather than gender bias.
Undermining the Authority of Women
When talking about the impact of this practice, first of all, we should focus on the decline of women’s authority. It doesn’t matter whether a man thinks about the causality of mansplaining or not, what matters is that the practice produces that effect. In particular, when men use mansplaining against women and non-binary people, the knowledge, experience and authority of these people are called into question.
Such constant undermining can undermine women’s self-confidence and make them think they know or are capable of less than they actually are, which can hinder professional growth as well. It depends not only on your lack of self-perception, but also on your evaluation by the people around you – when people constantly interrupt you and explain this or that subject, naturally, your professional credibility is undermined. You come across as less knowledgeable and perceived as lacking in authority, which may limit your ability to get promoted or fit into leadership roles.
Another study conducted at Carleton University in Ottawa confirms the problematic nature of mansplaining. Elsie Smith and her colleagues surveyed 499 American and Canadian adults about their recent experiences in the workplace. The questions were directed to mansplaining, in particular: did they have similar experiences, how often, what gender were the people involved in mansplaining, whether the part of the word mansplaining corresponded to reality.
It turns out that mansplaining is a widespread practice, and almost everyone, regardless of gender, has experienced it at least once in the previous year. Sometimes women are also “guilty”, but men use mansplaining almost twice as often as women.
“Research shows that mansplaining does happen in the workplace and has a real impact on the target,” says Smith. According to him, the experiences of mansplaining targets are related to disappointment, frustration and also, in the long term, dissatisfaction with the workplace and even the desire to leave the job.
Suppression of Women’s Voices
As a result of mansplaining, society loses many voices that may be backed by knowledge and experience more than a man’s opinion. Since childhood, women are used to having to “find” a place to say something; Have a valuable idea that deserves public attention. Obviously, this depends on the individual and their nature, but this tendency stems in part from social norms that encourage women to make sure that they have something of value to contribute before starting a conversation and then engage.
In particular, a study published in the American Political Science Review by Talley Mendelberg and Christopher F. by Karpowitz, emphasizes that women are less likely to speak in group settings unless members of that group encourage women to engage in conversation.
With voices silenced by mansplaining, the unique and distinct perspectives that women have as a minority and as individuals are lost. In addition, the nuanced knowledge and experiences that women have are irreplaceable, and men can never speak “better” about them, although there are ironic cases of this. For example, in promotional or educational videos and texts celebrating Women’s Day globally, instead of women, mostly men appear and, as comical and unbelievable as it may sound, they explain to women what it means to be a woman and what kind of experiences they have in various issues. Also, it is a common practice for various companies representing the public and private sectors to try to brand themselves as progressive, to hold gender awareness panels, which for some reason are mainly staffed by men. This does not prevent them from talking about the critical importance of gender balance and even about the experience of women employed in the same company.
Emotional Labor
Emotional labor refers to the “work process” of managing feelings and expressions in social interaction. It is not new that the burden of emotional labor in any type of relationship, including domestic work, falls mainly on women. The cases when we face mansplaining are no exception. Women bear a disproportionate share of this burden in most cases. A similar burden may be the difficulty of responding to demeaning behavior and remaining calm and professional in situations where men attempt to diminish women’s knowledge.
Emotional labor is exhausting and can have long-term effects on a person’s mental health and well-being. The constant need to manage reactions when men try to take their place can lead to increased stress, frustration, resentment, and feelings of injustice.
For example, if you are in a business meeting where a male colleague refers to women as “female colleagues” because for him the employment of women in this particular field is “out of the norm”; Also, I will often interrupt you and explain basic concepts that you understand very well because it is part of your profession. Instead of directly pointing out the tactlessness of your colleague, you have to approach the situation diplomatically, adapt to the role of an emotionally mature person and bring the whole weight of what happened to you. Otherwise, if you decide to confront, you will again have to worry about whether you will be called “too emotional” or “inappropriately expressive for the situation” because you are a woman.
As a result, you are forced to choose your words carefully and maintain balance, although this only exacerbates the existing irritation. Also, if the same person interrupts someone else, you still have to provide support, which people don’t always have the emotional resources to do.
How to Deal with Mansplaining
In the system existing in the heteropatriarchal society, we often encounter such harmful practices as mansplaining. It is ubiquitous—in workplaces, in family and friendship circles, in personal relationships, and in various social gatherings. Despite the high level of its spread, we, as individual members of society, should try to prevent and not facilitate its normalization.
Since the nature of sexist and misogynistic practices is mostly systemic, taking this into account, the fight against mansplaining also requires a concerted effort to make society anti-discriminatory and prone to creating equal opportunities.
Strategies related to the fight against mansplaining should be both personal and systemic, organizational. Personal strategies may include:
Speak up about injustices you face — it can help if you set personal boundaries that you ask those around you to respect. If they consistently violate these boundaries, point out their disrespect and be their advocate. Speaking up for yourself will give you more confidence and respect, and it will make it easier to advocate for yourself the next time someone rudely interrupts you. For example, you can tell a tactless person directly that you know the topic well and can complete the thought yourself; And those people who are constantly observed in mansplaining, are encouraged to distance themselves from the situation and become observers. Ask if they would like their behavior if the roles were reversed. Being in the role of an observer will allow them to self-reflect and see problems;
Use humor – Humor may be the last thing on the mind of an upset person when interrupting a conversation, but on the other hand, humor can be an effective way to diffuse tension. You can use the humor of the speaker, however, at the same time to emphasize how absurd it is when adults interrupt each other and the one with the loudest voice speaks last;
Look for support and be supportive yourself when someone else needs it — when you find yourself in a similar situation, look or speak to people who are safe for you and indicate what is going on. Chances are, they will choose to listen to you, especially if they are women and have been through similar situations many times and have experience dealing with it. And in those situations when mansplaining is not about you, but about someone around you, be supportive and act as you would want people around you to act in a similar situation;
Try to raise awareness —knowledge is responsibility. Your circle of friends and family may not know about mansplaining at all, but they are involved in the practice. First, let people know when this happens; Be honest about why the behavior is happening and why it can be harmful to the people involved.
Organizational and systemic coping strategies may include:
Education and awareness-raising at the organizational level – in order to decide to fight mansplaining in your commune, work or social circle, you need to know why we need to fight it as a harmful practice. Seeing the problem from a feminist point of view and analyzing the situation in such a way that we make decisions devoid of gender, will involve us in the struggle with the origin of mansplaining, sexism and misogyny, and we will not have to fight in vain with only one of the symptoms, mansplaining;
Advocacy and policy change — Create and implement policies that promote diversity and respect and celebrate each other’s differences, not use them to suppress the voices of others. Such a healthy environment will significantly increase the feeling of security, which will help female employees to talk openly about what worries them;
Encourage talking about problems – Talking about problems or challenges in the work environment is the only way to understand what is problematic and disruptive for whom. Open communication and readiness for change will also give you the opportunity to improve the environment.