Recently, I had the pleasure of being mansplained to for a good hour of my life.
From being told I shouldn’t be paying for a gym membership because I don’t make enough money (not sure when my salary was discussed?), to saying he could see that I’m the kind of girl that must twirl her hair and play dumb to get what she wants, I finally told the masplainer he was painfully condescending.
His reply? To tell me that’s not what condescending is, condescending is when you talk down to someone…
Mansplaining is so ubiquitous it’s not only in the dictionary, but was chosen as Macquarie Dictionary’s 2014 word of the year.
At the G20 summit over the weekend, Angela Merkel was filmed rolling her eyes while talking to Vladimir Putin and I don’t know what was said, but let’s just say I feel her pain. It looked, to me, like she was getting a classic case of the mansplain.
It will go down in iconic mansplaining moments. Here are a few more that are so relatable you’ll feel your eye start to twitch as you do that pained, humourless laugh you’ve perfected throughout the years.
1. Guy mansplains that actually, women like being catcalled
We all remember the viral video when a woman was harassed incessantly as she walked down a busy New York street.
Little did we know that the whole point of that video was actually to prove that women like being told men want to have sex with us and we should smile – it’s a compliment.
Luckily we had “feminist-ally” Steve Santagati to enlighten us.
“I am more of an expert and I’ll tell you why — because I’m a guy and I know how we think more than you guys,” he said. No, like those word actually left his mouth.
“The bottom line is this ladies: You would not care if all these guys were hot. They would be bolstering your self-esteem and bolstering your ego.”
“There’s nothing more a woman loves to hear than how beautiful she is.”
^ Amanda Seales’ face says it all.
2. Matt Damon mansplains diversity to a black woman
Watching a white male actor literally talk over the only black woman in the room to tell her how diversity works is so cringe worthy you’ll want to curl up into a ball and never use the internet again.
Producer Effie Brown, known for her work on Dear White People, raised concerns about the only black person in the film being a prostitute and old boy Damon let her know that’s not how Hollywood does diversity.
“I think on the surface, they might look like one thing, but they might end up giving us something that we don’t want.
“And when we’re talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not in the casting of the show.”
In Brown’s own words: Wow.
3. When a guy mansplained space… to an astronaut
Last year, Jessica Meir, NASA astronaut and comparative physiologist, tweeted a video of herself inside a space equivalent zone.
I kid you not, a random guy on Twitter replied explaining space to a literal astronaut.
What’s that line again about women needing to be twice as qualified to get half the credit?
4. Talkshow co-host mansplains to feminist icon her reasons for voting
When Robin Morgan, co-founder of the Women’s Media Center, was asked how she deals with men interrupting her, she didn’t mince her words.
“I say, excuse me, I’m talking. And if they continue, I say I’m talking, and I wish that you didn’t. And if they continue, I say shut the f*ck up.
“Yesterday morning … on Good Day New York, Rosanna Scotto’s co-host, Greg Kelly, began by explaining to [Gloria Steinem] and me that he knew we were for Hillary, because we were feminists.
“I immediately said I’m not voting for her because she is a woman, but because I am. He went on and on, and I said, ‘Just a minute Greg, I’m talking here.’
“Afterward he said, ‘You are quite feisty.’ And I said, ‘Feisty is not a word you use anymore, particularly for older women, because you could lose parts of your anatomy, Greg.’”
5. When our own Tanya Plibersek brought mansplaining to parliament
On Malcolm Turnbull’s second day as Prime Minister, he was awarded with a stunning smack down from Plibersek after some impressive double talk in response to her question.
The then-Opposition’s foreign affairs spokeswoman asked how much money Turnbull would give back to the foreign aid budget after his predecessor Tony Abbott cut it by $11 billion.
His response, which took over a minute, proved you truly can talk without saying anything at all.
“If all she’s interested in is making an allegation, making a political argument across the dispatch box, that is fine.
“But it’s a complete waste of question time and now the honourable member is asking more questions by way of interjection. Ask the substantive question about foreign policy, about foreign aid,” he rambled.
Plibersek stood to raise a point of order.
“The point of the order being?” the speaker asked.
“I’d rather have an answer than the mansplaining I’m getting,” Plibersek shot back.
6. When some people were legitimately confused by this cartoon
“Well, actually…”
Reading the responses to this tweet might result in a hernia so, in the interest of not being sued, just trust me when I say that some men apparently don’t respond well to being told that they “just don’t get the joke”… interesting.
7. When a Republican senator said women can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape”
Women being told what to do with their bodies is hardly a new phenomenon, and the debate around birth control and abortion is a mansplaining minefield, but Senator Todd Akin might just take the cake.
In 2012, the then-Missouri representative was (of course) discussing women’s reproductive rights when he classified some rapes as “legitimate” and explained you couldn’t get pregnant in that scenario.
“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV.
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
I… I just…
Everyone is welcome to opinions obviously, but unsolicited advice or condescending explanations we never asked for? Not so much.
Print off this handy chart so you have it at the ready for the next time – and there will be a next time – you cop some mansplaining.
