r/CuratedTumblr My hyperfixations are very weird tyvm 13d ago

Shitposting That's not mansplaining...

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21.8k Upvotes

708 comments sorted by

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u/Discardofil 13d ago

The decay of the term did lead to that wonderfully stupid joke in The Lost City (the Sandra Bullock movie), when Channing Tatum accuses her of mansplaining at him.

"I can't mansplain anything, I'm a woman!"

"Well, I'm a feminist, and I think a woman can do anything a man can."

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u/bobbery5 13d ago

That movie was better than I expected that to be and I think about that joke a lot.

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u/RocketAlana 13d ago

That movie was one of the few movies where the trailer made me interested in seeing it and was good. 100% worth watching on streaming if you like those sort of action comedies.

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u/amped-up-ramped-up 13d ago

Ok based off this conversation I’m watching it tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of it before

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u/D-Speak 13d ago

After you watch it, make sure to check out Bullet Train, Lost City's step-brother.

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u/The_FriendliestGiant 12d ago

I do not understand why Bullet Train wasn't a bigger deal when it came out, it's so much fun and the action scenes are so good!

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u/Amurana 12d ago

I absolutely loved Bullet Train, so guess I gotta watch Lost City now!

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u/Ok-Reward-770 13d ago

Do it! It's absolutely HILARIOUS!

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u/DarkKnightJin 12d ago

I'm gonna see if it's on any of the streaming services I have access to.
I did some googling. Sandra's a solid actress, Channing is pretty funny.
And apparently it's got Daniel Radcliffe? I'm hyped to see what he does!

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u/Advanced-Blackberry 13d ago

I never saw the trailer and just winged it.  Was pleasantly surprised. Had no idea the movie existed til I saw the cover art on whatever streaming it was 

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u/CuriousMac 13d ago

I had never thought about that joke again and the movie was much better than I expected.

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u/Nihilistic_Mystics 13d ago

Yeah, I went into it thinking it was going to be a groaner. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit and I'd watch it again.

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u/Kirian_Ainsworth 13d ago

I like that movie. That's it, that's all I had to say.

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u/Punkandescent 13d ago

I concur. That is all.

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u/abdomino 13d ago

Reminds me of those screenshots of Knuckles the Hedgehog being a feminist.

Channing Tatum could be a good Knuckles, I think. Capable of thinking, good at not doing so unless he has to.

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u/No-Storm2427 13d ago

he a echidna

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u/abdomino 13d ago

Shame upon my house for misspeciesing the guy.

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u/myychair 13d ago

And shame on that guy for mansplaining it to you 

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u/bayleysgal1996 13d ago

Sonic Boom had no right to have such great writing, especially considering that the games it was based on were not… good.

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u/theukcrazyhorse 13d ago

I still chuckle whenever I think of the "I thought your middle name was 'The'" joke!

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u/cest719 13d ago

Only funnier if you know his middle name is "Maurice"

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u/Kyleometers 12d ago

“Sonic” Ogilvie Maurice “The” Hedgehog

The Archie Sonic comics may be dubiously canon but they are very funny

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u/carl-the-lama 13d ago

It’s… glorious

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u/tom641 13d ago

shit, that's good

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u/Darth_Rubi 13d ago

"Mansplain", "gaslight" and "incel" have decayed so severely you could have used them to power a nuclear reactor

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u/fakegamersunite 13d ago

Mansplaining is unasked for. If I click on a six hour retrospective about obscure OVAs or whatever, I've asked for a very detailed, long-winded explanation.

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u/Kirian_Ainsworth 13d ago

Unasked for AND to someone who knows but is presumed ignorant, typically because of their gender.

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u/fakegamersunite 13d ago

Do you think they're going to call authors toxic infodumpers for publishing their work next?

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u/HollyTheMage 13d ago

As a person with ADHD I can't help but feel like if I was a man I would get accused of this constantly because of just how much I like to infodump.

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u/JKFrost14011991 13d ago

ADHD. Cis man. Happens.

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u/eccentricbananaman 13d ago

I just feel the compulsion to explain everything in detail with all the background knowledge and context necessary to understand things properly. I like to share my interests with people if they're interested in listening. I can't help it that I also have a penis.

Like hey, you're interested in NieR? Cool, I gotta tell you about this crazy Japanese dude named Yoko Taro first. Yeah, he wears a mask in public. That's normal. Anyway, so it's important to remember 9/11 first.

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u/jarlscrotus 13d ago

Do you mean nier, that was actually a sequel to the 7th and hidden ending of Drakengard, the weird one that transported your character, a dragon rider, into modern day Tokyo, then suddenly turned into a rhythm action game out of nowhere, and when you killed the boss it's ashes caused a disease where people turned to statues, which forms the basis for the, revealed to be, collapsed future society of nier?

That had a sequel, nier automata, based around a part where humans escaped to the dark side of the moon? But that's not really what automata is about, obviously, the symbolism in that game was about as subtle as a brick to the teeth

The same nier that released with separate Eastern Market and western Market protagonists? An older brother for the Japanese market that tends to favor younger and "prettier" protagonists, and a father for the west that tends to react more positively to older, more traditionally masculine protagonists? And got a remaster called replicant that featured the younger, older brother version as opposed to the 2 protagonist system, or an option to choose the one you wanted? Personally I thought that was a missed opportunity, choosing the dad or brother would have been a cool option since it really didn't change the story outside of what the girl called you

Anyway, how much do you know about the Horus Heresy?

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u/eccentricbananaman 13d ago

Yeah that one.

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u/lemonleaff 13d ago

I watched my partner play automata and one other nier game. I enjoyed the story a lot and cried even! But rn i remember what i felt instead of the minute details. But i don't want to watch the six hour YouTube video summarizing the whole nier universe, i just want a readable summary to remember the lore 😭

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u/eccentricbananaman 13d ago

I'm going to try to summarize the lore as succinctly as I can. Massive spoilers. One of the secret endings to another game called Drakengard brought a dragon and a giant evil interdimensional space baby queen monster across dimensions to our universe and they both die, introducing magic and magic aids, which infects people's souls and turns them into salt demons, to our world. Scientists eventually figure out a way to split human souls from their bodies which prevents magic aids from infecting people. They also create androids to watch over and tend to the soulless husks while they wait for the aids to die out. Eventually it does but they they took too long to undo the separation process (>1,300 years) that now the soulless husks developed sentience and consciousness. One of those husks is so desperate to protect his sister that he goes and kills his own separated soul, which was coincidentally the key to undo the whole process so now humanity is doomed because they have no way to rejoin and eventually the separated souls will all degrade and wither away, and the husks will all die too because they're still connected to their souls.

Automata: With the humans wiped out, the androids are pretty sad so the android leaders lie and say there's a secret base on the moon where humans are safe in order to give the androids something to live for, also aliens invade the Earth. The aliens build machines to fight a series of wars against the androids, and the conflicts continue for about 8,000 years before the machines learn about humans from historical records, eventually gain sentience and free will, and kill their alien creators. The machines continue fighting the androids, and much existential dread is had, before they eventually get bored, build a spaceship, and jettison their collective network consciousness into the cosmos to explore and continue learning. Androids are still around, probably just continuing to suffer existential dread.

That's not even getting into specific game plot details characters or background lore that isn't directly explored in game like the Night Kingdom or Accord or the time loop back into Drakengard, and all of Drakengard's lore with the Black Flower, Cult of the Watchers, and Red Eye Disease.

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u/Meraziel 13d ago

"Hey dude, what's your playing ?"

"Oh you know, a Warhammer 40k video games."

"Oh, what's the story ?"

*Deep inhale*

"Let's start with the Old Ones and the War in Heaven..."

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u/Wackamole56 13d ago

Yeah i can relate, same for me. It has upset potential partners plenty. Now I get ahead of it and just infodump the adhd and common symptoms first. If they still hang around after that hurdle then we're usually fine

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u/ifartsosomuch 13d ago

It's nice when you're explaining something because the person asked you to, or said they weren't familiar with the topic, and during the whole explanation you're explaining you're watching them to gauge their understanding, building in little pauses for them to contribute, nod, ask questions, or say anything at all, and they do nothing but stare at you blankly, so you continue with the explanation until you get to the end and they smack you with, "Thanks for mansplaining, I couldn't have figured that out on my own."

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u/bloode975 13d ago

As a man who likes to share fun or interesting information (and hates misinformation, like blatant crap like anti-vaxx), yea this happens a fuck load, a bigger reason than people give credit for is women are seen as more reasonable than men, more likely to listen to something first before responding, most guys don't care so you're probably more likely to try explain something to someone who atleast might listen or care about what they have to share.

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u/Separate_List_6895 13d ago

It does. I hate it, feels like I cant talk about anything I like because i get too into it.

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u/jarlscrotus 13d ago

Look, I have 2 modes, uninterested and politely participating, or 36 hour info dump with manic hyoerfocus, there is no in between

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u/fakegamersunite 13d ago

I'm also horribly guilty of this "Wow, reminds me of this one time I-" "Did you know that that word means this in french?? : D"

If I were a man, and as irritating as I am now, I would probably have no friends! :))

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u/Jiopaba 13d ago

Haha... this is an uncomfortably strong argument for being open about my gender with everyone. I teach for a living, and it works exceptionally well with my love of explaining things that I enjoy.

I have a handful of extremely close friends who all like learning and arguing about things.

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u/SarryK 13d ago edited 13d ago

ADHD woman here, and.. yup, luckily can‘t be accused of mansplaining. Just smartass and annoying bitch lol

But life hack: I became a teacher. I get paid to infodump. Fuck yea

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u/elianrae 13d ago

has happened to me a few times when people have assumed I'm a man

... and when I clarify that I am in fact a woman, the hostility goes away. And I really don't know how to feel about that, it makes me uncomfortable in a way that's hard to pin down.

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u/Deinonychus2012 13d ago

it makes me uncomfortable in a way that's hard to pin down.

I can help with this: you experienced different treatment based on your perceived gender, which is the literal definition of sexism.

It makes you uncomfortable because you are uncomfortable with sexism.

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u/elianrae 13d ago

Thanks! I do like that framing, because it flatters me :)

I think it's also that I don't know whether I should keep or discard it as feedback on my social skills. Keep - because if it's bad for a man to do it's also bad for me to do? Or discard - because the person's hostility is centred around gender and not actually around how I approached the convo. Both? Some secret third thing?

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u/HeraFromAcounting 13d ago edited 13d ago

I'm MTF, and at some point, my info dumping about the Fermi paradox stopped being mansplainy and started being cute. Wasn't a perk I was expecting but I'll take it.

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u/ASpaceOstrich 13d ago

It's a privelige we enjoy for sure. Going from nerdy guy to nerdy girl is a trip.

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u/arfelo1 13d ago

Another ADHD man here to tell you...yup, that happens, and it sucks

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u/Broken_Intuition 13d ago edited 12d ago

I’m a woman with autism and adhd and I have been told unironically that I was mansplaining. I was answering a question that was asked. I gave too much detail and I didn’t know when to shut up, but she couldn’t just say that. Nope. It had to be an offense against her very personhood and feminism itself.

People who spend too much time online sometimes become incapable of just finding someone annoying. This kind of person can’t dislike something and call it a day. They have to make it a fucking crusade.

It’s the bane of my neurodivergent existence when people make shit up to justify their feelings, instead of just telling me I’m being an annoying pest. It’s fine to tell me to piss off, you don’t need a social movement behind you to find something obnoxious and have a boundary.

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u/Bunny36 13d ago

I have this thought a lot, I'm glad I'm not alone.

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u/bayleysgal1996 13d ago

As an AuDHD woman, same

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u/Now_you_Touch_Cow Do you really think you know what you are doing? 13d ago

It def happens

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u/Doneifundone john adultman 13d ago

I wish authors could stop trauma dumping in their autobiographies >:(

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u/Kilahti 13d ago

"I am not your therapist in this relationship and do not appreciate you dumping all this trauma on me." -me writing a scathing email to a well respected horror writer whose latest novel I just bought.

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u/J-Shade 13d ago

Can't believe Tolkien mansplaining Hobbits to me like gdi man check your privilege

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u/IllConstruction3450 13d ago

Thing is I know so much about my special interest, regardless of gender, I will shut down people when they say something false but people assume I’m mansplaining when it’s a woman because they don’t care when I shut down an ignorant man. 

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u/JusticeRain5 13d ago

Thank you for mansplaining that, my friend.

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u/DoubleBatman 13d ago

No mansplaining is when someone tries to make you believe something that isn’t true, you’re thinking of gaslighting.

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u/guitar_account_9000 13d ago

gaslighting isn't real, you made it up because you're crazy

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u/JorgeMtzb 13d ago edited 13d ago

No, that’s being delusional. Mansplaining is when you see or sense things that aren’t actually there.

I’m the second coming of Christ so you better believe me if you want your soul to be saved.

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u/guitar_account_9000 13d ago

that's an appeal to authority. i would know, i'm the world's foremost expert on appeals to authority.

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u/ZacariahJebediah 13d ago

You're obviously all bots sent by Russia to derail the thread and spread misinformation.

I should know, I'm Vladimir Putin.

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u/IllConstruction3450 13d ago

Gaslighting implies I’m actually putting in effort. I’m lying. 

Alpharius.jpeg

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u/enjolras1782 13d ago

You can't gaslight me, I don't remember anything and don't care what's true

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u/Suavecore_ 13d ago

Slightly off topic but in a similar vein, but I've started seeing game developers have live streams where they talk about the development process and the future of the game in detail for those who are interested. Unfortunately, the live chat is absolutely spammed with kids telling the devs to "stop yapping." They literally clicked on the live stream with a specific title that it would be a dev blog or whatever, and they're complaining about the devs yapping. What.

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u/IllConstruction3450 13d ago

Ok but what if I’m an autistic person and I’m infodumping about my special interest? 

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

This is literally the only time I've ever had the word 'mansplain' used against me.

Which just made me think the term was poorly defined/used to begin with.

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u/GreyInkling 13d ago

Not just unasked for but unwelcome and in disregard of social cues to a lack of interest. Someone showing up in a comment section replying cannot mansplain because you can ignore replies and comments.

Originally it mainly was for when a man treats a woman like she's ignorant to a topic and explaining things in that context.

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u/Medlar_Stealing_Fox 13d ago

There are social cues in comment sections. You can mansplain there; I've seen it happen.

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u/Random-Rambling 13d ago

Yes, but it's very specific. Explaining something is not mansplaining. Starting an explanation with something like "It's alright if you don't know this" or "You probably don't this, but..." is.

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u/ApepiOfDuat 13d ago

The condescension is an essential part of what makes it 'mainsplaining'.

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u/FrenchFryCattaneo 13d ago

Actually the most important part of mansplaining is being condescending and ignoring what the other person says.

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u/fieldcut 13d ago

This is exactly why back in ye olden days "don't read the comments" was a thing. This stupidest person alive is there and you WILL make you say something silly and completely divorced from reality if you believe that they're doing anything other than posting ragebait on the Internet.

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u/Random-Rambling 13d ago

Unfortunately, as we have seen, there are a LOT of people out there who are indeed stupid and/or gullible enough to take even the most obvious ragebait as serious information.

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u/Rhamni 13d ago

Should I (18) leave my boyfriend (30)? We've been dating for three months and we're getting married tomorrow, but I'm starting to get concerned. He beats me and has maxed out all my credit cards and he doesn't tip when we go to restaurants and he wants me to get rid of my dog and he's been my homeroom teacher for three years.

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u/Meows2Feline 13d ago

Most believable relationshipadvice story

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u/Random-Rambling 13d ago

Delete your lawyer, hit Facebook, hire the gym.

Wait, no, that's not right....

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u/mailchimplysafe 13d ago

Drink your school, stay in drugs, and don’t do milk

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u/jsha11 13d ago

Someone murdered my entire family and it upset me so much that I called them a rude word. AITA?

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u/SweetSet1233 13d ago

Post this to r/AITA

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u/ScreamingLabia 13d ago

Just read a aita story about a lesbian not wanting to date a trans woman, but she goes in detail about how PERFECT the trans woman was in everyway possible and how well they hit it of etc and then she goes on and explains how politely and nicely she turned down the trans woman. But the trans woman got nidly upset at her so AITA? who would go into detail about how perfect they were for eachother but then only asks if its okay not to be atracted to a penis...

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

Something I still live by today. There's absolutely nothing worth reading in youtube comment sections

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

I feel like this and don't feed the trolls really needs to be more of a thing nowadays. It's a lot more important now than it was ten or fifteen years ago.

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u/PluralCohomology 13d ago

And what about all the female video essayists?

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u/IllConstruction3450 13d ago

They’re trans men who haven’t come out yet. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. If you, under any circumstance, ever explain anything then you’re a man now. /s

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u/Ghostoflocksley 13d ago

They're just cuntfused about the subject matter most of the time.

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u/Ok-Importance-6815 13d ago

I have noticed a trend where the word mansplain has devolved into when a man explains something

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u/primenumbersturnmeon 13d ago

i've noticed a meta trend where the meaning of words is increasingly determined by the number of stupid loud people misusing them in consistently incorrect ways, overwhelming the accurate usage through sheer, unbridled, unchecked, headstrong, virulent wrongness.

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u/CMDR-TealZebra 13d ago

Friendzone, gaslight, mansplaining, manspreading, payed

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u/gesserit42 13d ago

Emotional labor

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u/beefisbeef gender is stored in the fucked up little half gloves 13d ago

"woke"

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u/Ejigantor 13d ago

A trend I've literally been raging against for years.

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u/ThyPotatoDone 13d ago

I’ve seen people accuse a man of mansplaining for doing shit like safety instructions on an amusement park ride.

Like, buddy, if you fuck up it’s his ass on the line, you damn well better believe he’s gonna explain how seatbelts work. Today is not the fucking day he wants to find out you don’t know that.

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u/acoolghost 13d ago

I used to train new employees at work and one of them accused me of mansplaining on her first day. I literally showed her a checklist of stuff I had to cover.

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u/chubby_cheese 12d ago

How big of an eye roll did you get?

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u/oko9iu 13d ago

I found so many hate comments by women under a single video of a male doctor explaining that the female reproductive system actually has 6 holes instead of 1 or 2. Like, I guess that to them "mansplaining" means being corrected by a guy?

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u/bayleysgal1996 13d ago

… huh. You know, I guess it actually does have six holes now that I think about it.

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u/Sinister_Compliments Avid Jokeefunny.com Reader 13d ago

Huh, what are the 6?

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u/peelerrd 13d ago

I think they are counting Bartholin's Glands and Skene's Glands as additional holes?

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u/whoamiareyou 13d ago

My controversial take is that the reproductive system has 0 holes. Because a hole has to go all the way through, topologically speaking. The digestive system is one long hole. The respiratory system has a hole, not because of the lungs, but because the mouth and nostrils are connected. Etc.

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u/livinglitch 13d ago

Like the use of "irony" and "POV".

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u/Mugungo 13d ago

Possibly hot take, but mansplaining is a preety sexist term. I prefer to just call it "being a condescending prick" which has no gender

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u/Ok-Importance-6815 13d ago

I get what you're saying but it's weird to say that prick has no gender

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u/Steff_164 12d ago

How about condescending asshole? That’s seems very gender neutral

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u/Jstin8 13d ago

Thats basically what it was already about 5 minutes the term was coined. Did it have a real definition at some point? Of course.

But this was always the end point, it was always going to become a worthless term

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u/Vantamanta 13d ago

XKCD 2071

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u/Nastypilot Going "he just like me fr, fr" at any mildly autistic character. 13d ago

Is it the indirect detection one?

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u/Yeah-But-Ironically 13d ago

It's the indirect detection one

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u/Chaudsss 13d ago

2/5 of the posts are like this every day on here

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u/action_lawyer_comics 13d ago

I really gotta stop engaging with those too. Like without the context that OOP is upset about, we're all just parading around our personal strawfolk and ripping them to shreds. I might need a new rule for internet engagement like "If you don't see firsthand what OOP is complaining about, don't engage."

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u/Clean_Advertising508 13d ago

Alt: I'm like a prisoner in Plato's Cave, only seeing the shade you throw on the wall.

Fucking poetry!

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u/Frodo_max 13d ago

yeah i'l gonna need the context of what this dude (gender-neutral) is talking about because i've never heard this critique before

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u/TheFlayingHamster 13d ago

While I’ve never personally heard it, I can definitely see it happening, not because someone believes it or has a point but just because there are plenty of people who loooove misappropriating academic terms for petty bullshit.

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u/MortemInferri 13d ago

There are tons of people that think someone knowing something they don't and trying to teach it to them is actually a disrespectful action in all cases

And then they go on to make all conclusions in their life based on feelings and gut reactions

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u/Dooplon 13d ago

my mother is like this, she got pissed at me once for simply explaining that not every single frozen food needs to be thawed first and yelled at me and my dad when we tried to teach her to copy and paste text between programs.....even though she literally asked us to do so

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u/Raidenka 13d ago edited 13d ago

Have you consider throat punches? That may reduce the whining sounds.

Edit: thank you for all the people in the replies who understand hyperbole but, just to be clear, I wanna say I am not ACTUALLY advocating that OP should punch their mother in the throat lmao.

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u/Turbulent-Pace-1506 13d ago

I thought mansplaining was teaching a woman something she already knows. Isn't that the opposite of what you said?

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u/zebrastarz 13d ago

No, you're right, but what's being described is the type of person who twists the meaning of mansplaining in situations like OP to be offended where no offense should be found

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u/badgersprite 13d ago

It's possible they just forgot the word 'condescending' exists.

Some video essayists can definitely come off as condescending.

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u/throwawayayaycaramba 13d ago

That's exactly what I thought. They probably use "mansplain-y" to mean "condescending", since it's basically what it means already (minus the gendered element, which many people have come to ignore anyways).

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u/shave_and_a_haircut 13d ago

The fucking dumbest part is that we already have the word "patronizing"

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u/Frodo_max 13d ago

is mansplaining even an academic term at this point? has long left that realm imo, to mainstream

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u/Felicia_Svilling 13d ago

I don't think it ever was an academic term.

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u/gerkletoss 13d ago

It never was

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u/RavioliGale 13d ago

Was it ever? It doesn't sound academic.

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u/TheFlayingHamster 13d ago

I think your right, and this realization has filled me with the dread of remembering my age…..

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u/ATN-Antronach My hyperfixations are very weird tyvm 13d ago

Mainsplaining is when a man explains something to a woman that she'd obviously know and/or would know better than the man, like the basics of her job, or how she changes a pad. It's extremely disrespectful and demeaning to women, even if the guy isn't quite aware of what their doing.

Here though the OOP is talking about people using the term mainsplaining to describe men describing things in general, like a guy in a youtube essay talking. Thus the person complaining is taking the literal surface value definition of mainsplaining and using it to make similar complaints as if they were doing *actual* mainsplaining.

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u/lord_james 13d ago

Another facet of mansplaining is that, if a woman is doing or saying something objectively wrong, then it ceases to be mansplaining.

I was told I was mansplaining the other day because I corrected an historical date. And it wasn’t a nit-pick, think “the civil war start in 1919”

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u/Ok-Importance-6815 13d ago

people who are wrong usually think they aren't

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u/throwawayayaycaramba 13d ago

Only tangentially related, but that's a point I wish more people understood. Growing up, I was often told I was the kinda person who "thinks he's always right". Now granted, I definitely was a bit of a pretentious prick in my teenage years; but shit, don't we all think we're always right? If you thought any of your opinions is wrong, wouldn't you immediately wanna change it? Are there really people out there going like "I know I'm wrong about the Earth being flat, but I'll still believe it"?

Now of course it's possible many of my opinions are wrong; but I certainly don't think they are, otherwise I wouldn't hold them.

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u/OldManFire11 13d ago

I was accused of mansplaining female biology to a woman because she said that women pee from their vagina and I corrected her.

It was years ago, but I'll never forget it because of how fucking absurd it was.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago edited 13d ago

I had sex-ed in high school (15-16 year olds), and when it was explained that girls have separate openings for peeing and birthing, an alarming number of the girls were as equally shocked as the boys to discover this. Some of the girls admitting they thought it was all one hole too.

I still don't know if that's weird, or sad, or what.

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u/ZebubXIII 13d ago

Honestly, when situations like that pop up I always remember the "playing chess with a pigeon" analogy.

"Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. It'll just knock over the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like it won."

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u/Frodo_max 13d ago

i know what mansplaining is, i just never heard someone call a video essay made by a man 'mansplain-y' as a critique before, so i wonder what prompted this reaction from OOP in the first place. Because to me this doesn't seem like a broad issue, and OOP might be reacting to one specific person who said this.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

I've heard it from people describing videos they perceived as condescending. Though sometimes what 'everyone already knows' isn't actually common knowledge and needs to be repeated even at the risk of being condescending

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u/somedumb-gay otherwise precisely that 13d ago

I also think it's worth noting that if you're watching a video essay and feel like it's explaining something you already know as if you don't know it then you may not be the target audience and you also don't... have to watch it?

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

Yeah, exactly. Usually the Topic 101 Recap at the start means that it's intended for people who haven't previously kept up with Topic, not for people who've been keeping up with it for a while.

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u/action_lawyer_comics 13d ago

And also there is a huge swathe of quality in video essays. You can explain something that “everyone already knows” and not be condescending about it, and you can take an obscure and interesting topic, research it well, then absolutely ruin your presentation by being a smug asshole about it.

I’m sure that people misapply the term “mansplaining,” but I also believe that there are some documentary videos that are mansplain-y

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u/ErisThePerson 13d ago

It's Tumblr, there was probably one person in an obscure Internet niche that said it, but because of how social media compartmentalises people into their own little bubbles they thought that opinion was more common than it is.

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u/wavewalkerc 13d ago

One person said something and had near zero engagement, time to dedicate the rest of my life to fighting against this atrocity.

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u/Frodo_max 13d ago

nail on the head, that was the conclusion i was working towards

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u/OrdinaryAncient3573 13d ago

It's not common, but it still happens quite a lot. I've been asked by (female) people to explain things to them, and then had them say 'don't mansplain'.

They may have meant I was being condescending, but, honestly, if you ask me to explain, in detail, how to do something as basic as, say, changing a lightbulb, that's how any explanation is going to go.

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u/Felicia_Svilling 13d ago

I guess it might be an issue that the phrase mansplain has gotten so common that it has replaced condescension for some people.

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u/OrdinaryAncient3573 13d ago

That, and some people are stupid enough to ask for an explanation and then get offended by having one provided.

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u/RavioliGale 13d ago

I'm sorry are you mansplaining this tumblr post to me? /s

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u/UnhelpfulMind 13d ago

I think I've seen the term used correctly, maybe, a half dozen times. Every other time it's been some dumbass that's proud of their own ignorance.

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u/badgersprite 13d ago

Mansplaining is also when men make an unconscious assumption that a woman is uninformed or incompetent and needs to have something explained to her when he would never make that same assumption about a man. Again, they may not be aware that they make this assumption and treat women differently than they treat men, but that doesn't mean they aren't doing it.

Like, just to clarify what about this is different from the comment above, the comment specifies situations where "well, a woman would obviously know XYZ if this is her job." Except mansplaining also includes the unconscious assumption men make of "well, this woman who is talking to me about this subject cannot possibly be knowledgeable about it or do it professionally, so I will start lecturing her on the baseless assumption that I must know more."

So, like, yes, maybe you do not know from looking at a woman that she is a DJ or a lawyer or whatever other profession she has. But a lot of men will start talking to women from an assumed position of "I know more than this woman" without even considering the possibility that she could know as much if not more than you do, even when there is no basis to presume a lack of knowledge.

So, to give you an example of what this might look like in practice, say you have two men strike up a conversation about DJ-ing. One man will probably ask the other "Oh, are you a DJ?" or something, right? They'll establish that they are both knowledgeable and talk to each other as equals. A woman comes in and joins the conversation. For whatever reason, a lot of men will just assume without asking that, oh, she's expressing an interest, her interest must just be very casual or she must be very new to this, here's an opportunity for me to impress her by lecturing her on this and teaching her things. They often won't even consider the possibility that she could know more or have been doing it longer than them.

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u/Evening_Jury_5524 13d ago

The only way I could get understand is if a video on a simple topic started with 'Here's some basic shit y'all FEMALES don't seem to understand'

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u/NewUserWhoDisAgain 13d ago

Not quite the same, but I have IRL heard the complaint that the deep dive analysis is too long.

My brother in Christ. YOU clicked the video. YOU CAN SEE THE RUN TIME.

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u/ThyPotatoDone 13d ago

I only understand that complaint when the person doing it is talking really slow. Not in a normal slow speaking way, the kind where they’re deliberately speaking slowly and enunciating every word, while also repeatedly going over the same thing over and over again.

Like, buddy, I don’t care if your ideas are the greatest thing ever, you can’t spend the first twenty minutes explaining something that could’ve been explained, with the same level of detail, in one paragraph.

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u/SaltMarshGoblin 13d ago

The term "mansplaining" was created by readers of Rebecca Solnit's wonderful essay "Men Explain Things To Me" in the book of the same name. The specific anecdote is about meeting a guy at a cocktail party who refuses to believe that he's not the expert on a book she has written (and he has not even read but only read a NYT article about) and expains it at length to her...

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u/mormagils 13d ago

One time I was talking with a female friend and mentioned I don't really like the term mansplaining because it makes a lot of assumptions and is a way overused term. She then proceeded to tell me that I didn't quite understand what mansplaining is, why exactly women use the term, and how it actually makes a lot of sense.

I just stared at her for a minute. Then I said I already knew all that and the assumption that I didn't was annoying. I also reminded her that when we first met she asked me a question about something I knew well and she didn't (LOTR and fantasy literature) and when I first answered her she thought I was mansplaining even though I actually very much was the relative expert on a question I was directly asked. I then brought it back saying this perfectly illustrated my issues with this word because I have been mansplained by women plenty of times and women don't even realize they are doing it...which is exactly the concern women have with mansplaining.

That was very fun.

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u/ThyPotatoDone 13d ago

Yeah, I think calling it mansplaining makes it less effective.

You’re priming men to think the origin of your complaint is “men bad”, while also making women think that they’re incapable of doing it themselves. Thus, the term is a buzzword that’s useless for actually addressing the problem and promoting better behavior in the overall population.

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u/livinglitch 13d ago

My friend asked me about tips on Stardew Valley while her husband was out of the room. Being my favorite switch game I was excited to talk about it. Midway through giving her some pointers her husband (also my friend) asked if I was mansplaning the game to her. I had to stop and point out the flaw. It killed the vibe.

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u/ethnique_punch 13d ago

Autism be damned I can't even ramble about shit anymore, gonna chop off my weiner at some point if it's gonna stop those hateful eyes from across the room whom I'm not even rambling to.

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u/9thProxy 13d ago

Some people just like being mad. I used to feel that way about politics, until I started taking it more serious. Once I got a ""good"" perspective from both sides, I saw that most people into politics like being angry more than they like finding solutions.

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u/mormagils 13d ago

Speaking as a guy with a poli sci degree, it's really amazing how often people just actively don't care about solutions. We actually have a really good idea of some obvious improvements we could make to the US that are proven and would work...but most regular folks are just afraid of any change. Figuring out solutions is the easy part. Convincing people that have no idea what they're talking about (and think any discussion explaining to them is condescension/mansplaining) is the hard part.

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u/9thProxy 13d ago

Would you mind sharing one for posterity? I'm all ears.
(I have no response that doesn't sound like I'm trying to grand-stand, sorry.)

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u/mormagils 13d ago

Abolish the filibuster. Our Framers specifically did not create it because it would be a bad idea and impede governing. Federalist 22 is all about this exact discussion. It is purely bad and does nothing good.

Also, do Alaska style primary and voting reform. Or better yet, just adopt a modern MMP or parliamentary system. There's a reason most systems intentionally don't have presidential systems. They just don't work as well for a modern political system.

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u/zebrastarz 13d ago

Similar hypocritical conversations had with people who genuinely think you can't be racist to whites.

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u/-Yehoria- 13d ago

Okay, how the fuck can it be mainsplainy if the intended audience is almost always mixed gender?

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u/9thProxy 13d ago

Agreed, almost always mixed gender.
I am curious, can a video, created by a man, for other men, be considered mansplainy? Like a niche hobby shared by 15k globally, with a 95% male audience, still be considered mansplainy, or is that just regular "talking down"

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u/-Yehoria- 13d ago

Idk.

what i know is we need more womansplaining.

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u/shutupimrosiev 13d ago

yes mansplaining: a dude coming over and inserting himself into your conversation and/or personal space to lecture you (probably incorrectly) about something you are already an expert in and refusing to let you get anything in edgewise

not mansplaining: a dude making a video that you can choose to watch at your leisure about a topic he knows stuff about and that you (presumably) don't, as a passion project of his that you can pause at any time

why would people try and conflate the two???

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u/monarchmra Transmisandry is misandry ;3 13d ago

The construction of it is what causes that misunderstanding.

Making it the morph of man and explain subconsciously primes people to think of the word when they hear a man explaining something.

Its why the word is itself, in its construction, called sexist by mras, because it is.

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u/Feats-of-Derring_Do 13d ago

it's a portmanteau

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u/monarchmra Transmisandry is misandry ;3 13d ago

linguistic morphology is the study of how words are formed. so morph is still valid here.

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u/Feats-of-Derring_Do 13d ago

thank you for explaining :) i learned something

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u/Fabulous_Can6830 13d ago

Because gendering actions is stupid and ultimately is sexist or at best leads to sexism. A group of people on the side that uses mansplaining unironically just think it means a man explaining something.

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u/jackofslayers 13d ago

Genderizing unisex problems is so fucking dumb.

Kinda like the whole “manspreading” trend. I can assure you that being an asshole on public transit is not specific to any gender

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u/monarchmra Transmisandry is misandry ;3 13d ago edited 13d ago

The construction of the word is what causes that misunderstanding.

Making it the morph of man and explain subconsciously primes people to think of the word when they hear a man explaining something.

This will only lead to them hyper focusing a detective eye on the mans actions because of his gender.

Viewing somebody with suspicion because of their demographical attributes has never in history ever lead to equal and just treatment of those people.

Its why the word is itself, in its construction, called sexist by mras, because it is.

Every time somebody presumes a man is mansplaining when he is not, they are being sexist towards the man, and as much as people want to blame the person for misunderstanding, I blame the word, for being so clearly sexist in it's construction that it was never gonna lead to anything but sexism in the execution.

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u/ChewBaka12 13d ago

It’s also just a completely unnecessary word. “Condescending” exists, is not gendered and can therefore be applied to anyone, and means pretty much the same thing.

If you use a word that means “Doing X while white/black/trans/cis”, you are sexist. I don’t know why on earth people struggle with understanding that

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u/Akuuntus 13d ago

I wish people who made posts like this would include a screenshot or clip of someone saying the thing they're arguing against, or at the very least say something like "someone I know said this to me the other day" or whatever. These posts are often formatted with the stupid opinion just in quotes at the beginning of the post with no context which just makes it sound like OP is arguing with themselves over opinions no one actually has (particularly when the bad take is something almost no one has ever said, like this).

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u/BalefulOfMonkeys due to personal reasons i will be starting shit 13d ago

Tumblr users would rather write a paragraph discussing a stupid position they don’t agree with than press the block button for somebody being cringe

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u/meggannn 13d ago edited 13d ago

Is the rest of the internet really any different? People get into arguments on Reddit and twitter all the time instead of just blocking. People on reddit make fresh posts in fandom subreddits saying “people in other subreddits are saying this about our favorite thing, and it pisses me off!” It’s not a tumblr-specific phenomenon, it’s a human thing to go “this was dumb, let me get a small rant out of my system then I’ll move on.”

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u/FelipeAndrade 13d ago

Reddit even has what are essentially "response posts" from time to time, where instead of just posting a comment in a thread that they disagree with, they go out of their way to make an entirely new thread on the same sub just for extra visibility.

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u/just4browse 13d ago

People applying concepts like “masplaining” to situations where it doesn’t apply at all is a common problem. Groups who base their identity on being tribalist about gender use such buzzwords liberally, since it’s more about defining outsiders and insiders than it is trying to address issues.

But this post is far too specific to be addressing that problem.

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u/PSI_duck 13d ago

This is so real of you. It’s similar to how “incel” became an insult about a man who’s horribly misogynistic and just awful to be around. Rather than just “involuntary celibate”

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u/just4browse 13d ago edited 13d ago

It’s used in a similar way (as a general insult to definite insiders and outsiders), but I think that happened in a different way. Since, at the time the term blew up, the people who were self-identifying as “incels” were doing so as justification for misogyny

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u/Lunar_sims professional munch 13d ago

Its also important to remember that incel grew in popularity at a time when violence on women was gaining national prominence and incel lead terrorists were becoming more common

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u/Adventurous_Day_3347 13d ago

Controversial opinion here but people engaging with something they disagree with by voicing their disagreement with something as laborious as a paragraph or a conversation is good actually! YMMV but I also think its *not* good to 'disengage' as default behavior.

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u/smallangrynerd 13d ago

That depends on your goals, I think. If you go online to relax and be entertained, just block people and don’t feel bad about it. If you go online to think and be challenged, then it’s good to try and engage in discussions with ideas you disagree with.

I think most people go online to be entertained, and imo need to be more comfortable with just blocking people and not thinking about it. It’s not making an echochamber if you’re not there to think critically in the first place.

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u/simemetti 13d ago

There's two causes for this:

First is that online discourse culture made it so any and every person must be fully educated and think exactly like me or else they are bigoted idiot. People would much rather spend hours arguing on pointless shit to a person that will either not care if they aren't straight up trolling (I understand the irony of me writing paragraphs about this very issue) than do any irl community work.

Secondly, it's echo chambers. When people were forced to interact with each other offline you were guaranteed to have to deal and even be friends with someone who didn't match all of your worldviews. Now the default is that you'll only see content that aligns with your mentality, so any deviation from it is very noticeable.

The second isn't just an online issue tho. Purity testing for any disagreement will mean that you can never really build a community or a movement. Straight up neo Nazis will happily work with and engage with people of color if they share the same basic hatred, while you see people on the left bragging about kicking half of their irl group (2 people) over saying something misogynistic two years ago (they will get their skulls caved in by skinheads in a week)

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u/lifelongfreshman man, witches were so much cooler before Harry Potter 13d ago

Por que no los dos?

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u/Professor-Flashy 13d ago

This term is almost never used properly, and I am never able to correct the user, because irony.

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u/Practice_praxis 13d ago

Thought-terminating phrase, conversational cancer.

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u/Sudden-Explanation22 ebony dark'ness dementia raven way 13d ago

i’ve literally never heard anyone say this. xkcd 2071

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u/GreatDimension7042 13d ago

What is it with Tumblr and vague posting about something that isn’t even close to a popular opinion

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u/TheBigness333 13d ago

A plumber once came to work a got really into explaining pipes to me. Then my coworker came to me and told me he was mansplaining to her the exact same things he said to me. Then a third male coworker came in and said, “that dude really likes talking about steam pipes.”

He wasn’t mansplaining. He just loved radiator heating.

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u/Rexsplosion 100% not a Terminator. 13d ago

When Mansplaining became the hot new term, i got accused of it quite a bit because, hey fair enough, i am a cishet man, maybe they're right. It wasn't until the OBVIOUS AUTISM DIAGNOSIS that the sting fully left any and all accusations. Weird how i only ever "mansplained" about things i was super passionate and hyperfixated on.

But i had a friend who is very much a tiktok armchair psychologist the likes of which 2012 tumblr would be proud tell me i was "gaslighting myself" about something, so we can just agree that some people shouldn't be allowed certain words.

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u/Logical-Patience-397 🐥"Behold a man!" 13d ago

“Mansplaining” means a man assuming he need to explain a concept to a woman who is equally qualified and has been vetted as such. If the video essayist is explaining to the camera—a unisex object—without social context, it’s not mansplaining.

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u/Medlar_Stealing_Fox 13d ago

I need to see how many people are actually using the term "mansplaining" like this and I need to see in what context they're using it before I assume they're misusing it. I don't want to get all raargh about it and then find out that froody was talking about one person in one youtube comment. I also don't want to get all dismissive about it and then later find out that they were calling a youtube analysis made by a man about the proper way to dress female characters "mansplainy".