The concept of “mansplaining,” in which a man feels it his duty to explain, often condescendingly, an idea to a woman, has garnered a lot of traction on social media over the past year or so, despite the term’s origination on a message board in 2008 in response to an Los Angeles Times essay on the subject. Despite the term’s recent rise to prevalence, many are unclear on just where the act of helpful explanation stops and misogynistic condescension begins.
The line may not be clearly marked as a result of a recent Twitter thread, but the response to the post below will certainly show you which instances fall on the wrong side of it. Earlier this week, a Twitter user crowdsourced the following request to the women of Twitter:
It didn’t take long for some truly glaring instances of mansplaining to circulate.
When the stars align, women are subject to mansplanations that aren’t just dismissive, but are objectively incorrect:
Of course, it’s always a possibility that gender doesn’t inform a man’s desire to intrusively explain something. Surely, men can be subjected to patronizing explanations as well, but the patterns we see suggest that gender sure has a lot to do with the sharing of uninvited advice.
