Men who explain things to women II

Qualitymark

Drat, thread closed; was trying a little experiment there. I'll put on the poll now (unfortunately, only 9 had replied when it was closed).

Men who explain things to women
Just found this fascinating article about men who explain things to women:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecc...b_1811096.html

1ZRed

It's so fecking long, can't you just sum it up instead of linking a whole article?



Edit: sees poll now. Well played OP

ejmaztec

Is lightning going to strike twice in the same place I wonder?:P

Myrddin

Qualitymark wrote: »

Just found this fascinating article about men who explain things to women:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecc...b_1811096.html

You said fascinating, I think you must have linked to the wrong article...

HondaSami

Are you saying women never need explain anything to a man? if you are I disagree.

phasers

I don't get that article, can someone explain it to me?

ejmaztec

HondaSami wrote: »

Are you saying women never need explain anything to a man? if you are I disagree.

He's having difficulty in explaining it to anyone, male or female.:pac:

Qualitymark

Well, I was just posting it for fun, to see if there would be interesting reactive answers.

But if you'd like a quick precis of the article, the writer, author of 20 or so books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit, is talking about the common experience of women who are experts in their fields, and who are lectured by men who have no expertise.

Here's an extract (it's a bit long, sorry):

I still don't know why Sallie and I bothered to go to that party in the forest slope above Aspen. The people were all older than us and dull in a distinguished way, old enough that we, at forty-ish, passed as the occasion's young ladies. The house was great -- if you like Ralph Lauren-style chalets -- a rugged luxury cabin at 9,000 feet complete with elk antlers, lots of kilims, and a wood-burning stove. We were preparing to leave, when our host said, "No, stay a little longer so I can talk to you." He was an imposing man who'd made a lot of money.

He kept us waiting while the other guests drifted out into the summer night, and then sat us down at his authentically grainy wood table and said to me, "So? I hear you've written a couple of books."

I replied, "Several, actually."

He said, in the way you encourage your friend's seven-year-old to describe flute practice, "And what are they about?"

They were actually about quite a few different things, the six or seven out by then, but I began to speak only of the most recent on that summer day in 2003, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, my book on the annihilation of time and space and the industrialization of everyday life.

He cut me off soon after I mentioned Muybridge. "And have you heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year?"

So caught up was I in my assigned role as ingénue that I was perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that another book on the same subject had come out simultaneously and I'd somehow missed it. He was already telling me about the very important book -- with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority.

Here, let me just say that my life is well-sprinkled with lovely men, with a long succession of editors who have, since I was young, listened and encouraged and published me, with my infinitely generous younger brother, with splendid friends of whom it could be said -- like the Clerk in The Canterbury Tales I still remember from Mr. Pelen's class on Chaucer -- "gladly would he learn and gladly teach." Still, there are these other men, too. So, Mr. Very Important was going on smugly about this book I should have known when Sallie interrupted him to say, "That's her book." Or tried to interrupt him anyway.

But he just continued on his way. She had to say, "That's her book" three or four times before he finally took it in. And then, as if in a nineteenth-century novel, he went ashen. That I was indeed the author of the very important book it turned out he hadn't read, just read about in the New York Times Book Review a few months earlier, so confused the neat categories into which his world was sorted that he was stunned speechless -- for a moment, before he began holding forth again. Being women, we were politely out of earshot before we started laughing, and we've never really stopped.

The article is good fun, but really I was posting purely to see what the instant reactions would be :evilgrin:

Myrddin

Qualitymark wrote: »

the writer, author of 20 or so books

So, what are they about

4zn76tysfajdxp

phasers wrote: »

I don't get that article, can someone explain it to me?

You wouldn't understand.

HondaSami

ejmaztec wrote: »

He's having difficulty in explaining it to anyone, male or female.:pac:

I have to confess opening the link and closing it again straight away, load a rubbish.

Chuck Stone

Got about 4 sentences in and thought '**** this'.





Why was the model staring at the orange juice?

Because it said 'concentrate' on the carton.

Shenshen

I read the article, and I found it highly amusing.

Back when I was still living in Germany,a few friends and myself loved to play a certain card game called "Schafskopf".
We'd play it in pubs, which is what a lot of Germans will do.
However, we soon found that we had to relocate to the Irish pubs in town, as in any Germany pub we played in a male guest would soon show up at our table to help the poor girls out, or explain the rules to us.

We were really grateful for the Irish pubs, as they would mostly be full of Americans who hadn't the first idea about the game.
They would only try and get us to play Poker instead, but got confused because the decks of cards are different.

strobe

1ZRed wrote: »

It's so fecking long, can't you just sum it up instead of linking a whole article?



Edit: sees poll now. Well played OP

A female author wrote a book about a guy that made technological improvements in photographic technology. Some people made criticisms that she felt were uninformed. Some of these people were men.... (...)... If a man tries to explain something to a woman about any topic it is only ever because he is using his mind penis to oppress women in Saudi Arabia who want equal rights, this is called 'mansplaining', skibadiblopglibchupsnarp!

Irish_wolf

Okay I read the first part, then skimmed down to see how long it was and decided it wasnt worth it.

But what I gather from my short read is that the author thinks that when a man is explaining something to a woman. He is doing so because the man thinks the woman needs an explanation just because she is a woman.

To further the point she discusses a point where a 'man' begins to talk about her own book without realising she was the author. Of course the author thinks was obviously because she was just some woman and he was an ignorant sexist man. Instead perhaps that he was admiring the book and its author and simply didnt know what the author looked like and occurrences like this happen all the time, hence their popularity in fiction.

This about sums up the aritcle

Yes, guys like this pick on other men's books too, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men.

So basically, men like to prattle on about random stuff even when they dont know what they are talking about. Amazing right? Who'd have thought it.

The article has merit, and it would have been an interesting look into the human psyche if she hadnt harped on about men putting women down when she herself explains that we do it to everyone.


tl;dr Sexist woman meets with sexist men. Misunderstandings occur. Writes a book about it.

p.s. according to the author I have just done what she explained. Do I give a toss? No.

Fizman

Misleading thread title disappoints.

I thought this was a discussion on the sequel to the thought-provoking, powerful film "Men who explain things to women 10".

Qualitymark

Er, I think you're missing the point, posters. It wouldn't matter what the article was about (except that I chose one likely to push the buttons of AfterHoursers) - I wanted to see whether people would post replies without reading the article, from the purity of their own opinions.

I could just have easily have posted an article on Irish history, say, or on the bank bailout, or on immigrants, or scumbags.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

I stopped reading when i saw "mansplaining"

Dravokivich

I skimmed over the start of it. All it that stood out to me was, "I'm a writer, every now and then I think of things, but store'em away to write about later, so one day I was talking to this WOMAN friend of mine and she didn't really like the way MEN felt like they had to explain things to WOMEN, believe it or not, this is one of the very topics I stored away earlier, so now after conferring with my friend we both feel that WOMEN everywhere should not be told things by MEN."

I'm pretty sure she'd be giving herself a pat on the back as well.

Pretty lame article to be honest

HondaSami

Qualitymark wrote: »

Er, I think you're missing the point, posters. It wouldn't matter what the article was about (except that I chose one likely to push the buttons of AfterHoursers) - I wanted to see whether people would post replies without reading the article, from the purity of their own opinions.

I could just have easily have posted an article on Irish history, say, or on the bank bailout, or on immigrants, or scumbags.

It would want to be a very interesting article for me to read it.

You posted a link to see how many posters you could piss off?

I wonder if this is why male lecturers are different when it's mainly girls in a class. Oh wait, they aren't.

Myrddin

Irish_wolf wrote: »

p.s. according to the author I have just done what she explained. Do I give a toss? No.

Thank god you did, you've probably saved most people wasting their time reading it

Where To

Shenshen wrote: »

I read the article, and I found it highly amusing.

Back when I was still living in Germany,a few friends and myself loved to play a certain card game called "Schafskopf".
We'd play it in pubs, which is what a lot of Germans will do.
However, we soon found that we had to relocate to the Irish pubs in town, as in any Germany pub we played in a male guest would soon show up at our table to help the poor girls out, or explain the rules to us.

We were really grateful for the Irish pubs, as they would mostly be full of Americans who hadn't the first idea about the game.
They would only try and get us to play Poker instead, but got confused because the decks of cards are different.

Are you suggesting that Germans are smarter than Americans, or that women are smarter than Americans?

Shenshen

Where To wrote: »

Are you suggesting that Germans are smarter than Americans, or that women are smarter than Americans?

Neither.
Just that German men saw women playing a popular card game as an invitation to explain the rule to them, whereas American men weren't familiar with the game or the cards, so they shut up quicker.

Feathers

Qualitymark wrote: »

But if you'd like a quick precis of the article, the writer, author of 20 or so books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit, is talking about the common experience of women who are experts in their fields, and who are lectured by men who have no expertise.

She's not really. That's what she says she's talking about — actually she got a bit of uninformed criticism of her book (from men) & then waffles on about every topic she could think of to do with sexism: women being taken seriously in the workplace, sexual assault in the Middle East, etc. — but doesn't actually talk about men explaining things to women.

Qualitymark wrote: »

Er, I think you're missing the point, posters. It wouldn't matter what the article was about (except that I chose one likely to push the buttons of AfterHoursers) - I wanted to see whether people would post replies without reading the article, from the purity of their own opinions.

I could just have easily have posted an article on Irish history, say, or on the bank bailout, or on immigrants, or scumbags.

Well, except that you picked one that was hugely long-winded, which is definitely going to make people not read it.

Where To

Where To wrote: »

Are you suggesting that Germans are smarter than Americans, or that women are smarter than Americans?

Oh my god I'm writing an article about GERMANS TAKING OVER OUR PUBS AGHH

Dravokivich

bluewolf wrote: »

Oh my god I'm writing an article about GERMANS TAKING OVER OUR PUBS AGHH

It's one I was saving for later

dr.bollocko

Facepalm.

Post this thread again = get banned.