Of late, a lot of debate has revolved around the use of the word ‘mansplaining’. It implies a situation where a man belittles the standpoint of a woman by asserting his viewpoint vehemently or explaining it in a patronising manner.
It doesn’t matter if he is wrong or if the other party is a much more respected authority on the subject, the simple male ‘need to educate’ the woman (or women) is what mansplaining is all about.
And maybe I just did it too, right back there, explaining a term that I perhaps didn’t need to. And so it is with mansplaining, it is all around us and we never realise it. Well, we men surely never realise it even when we are doing it.
Now, some of you may wonder how mansplaining can even exist since few are brave enough to speak in front of a woman, let alone interrupt her monologue. So what smart man could ever manage to barge right in and then try and hold fort over the conversation?
You’re right, it takes a very despicable lot to manage such a feat. Politicians are primary culprits for nothing is beyond their levels of crassness. Then there are the corporate types who believe that a woman’s place is anywhere but in the board room, which might explain why these men need to pay for sexual gratification. Mansplaining is rife in these quarters.
Young boys don’t do it to little girls. Okay, maybe Dennis the Menace did it a bit. And Calvin did it to his mum. But those are isolated (cartoon strip) cases. During courtship too, the lads know better than to correct the mademoiselle.
It’s that lull of permanency called marriage that somehow strips men of their last drop of decency, turning them into self-righteous pricks. Well, not all men, but if you need a term to describe a behavioural trait then it’s clearly more than an anomalous aberration.
But there are other terms that involve ‘men’ and could be considered just insulting. Manscaping, man-handling, manacled (okay, not the best fit, that last one) all convey a negative or jocular notion at the cost of men-kind. I wish these words be changed to something more neutral. In today’s times it shouldn’t be that difficult to find people who’ll see eye to eye with my nonsense petition, considering we are all so easily offended.
The point of the day is nothing at all. I merely wished to draw attention to the issue of mansplaining and how it is wrong; and now, since morning I can think of nothing but words with ‘man’ in them. Maybe, no, I am sure, it’s women who came up with these words hence the derogatory allusions. We men clearly need to work on our marketing. Also, we should associate man-kind with better words, like management and man-oeuvre, and then we can perhaps aspire to be mantastic.
The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine
