If you’re a man below the age of, say, 50, you’ve likely been called out before for “mansplaining.” Or you’ve at least heard of it.
The famous example comes from a 2008 essay by the author Rebecca Solnit. Solnit tells the story of a man at a party who asked her about the books she’d written. As she told him about her most recent, on the 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, he cut her off and asked if she’d "heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year.” That very important book was Solnit’s. He went on to explain her own book to her—based solely on a review he’d read—even as her friend tried to tell him multiple times that Solnit was the author.
Let me mansplain “mansplaining” to you
Mansplaining is when a man, often (but not always) in conversation with a woman, pretends to be an expert about something when he actually isn’t. I used the word “often” because men do it to other men too. I hate when men mansplain to me. It happens all the time.
I’d say most of the time, when I’m talking to a man I’ve just met, he mansplains something to me. Whether it’s how some engine works or the way the National Football League seeds playoffs (which I’ve known since starting to watch football religiously at 5 years old). It makes me feel like I don’t exist. Like I’m a kid among giant adults who don’t understand me at all but think they know what’s best for me. Like I’m completely alone.
But I mansplain too. You’d think, as a therapist, I’d be really good at asking questions. I’m not. I have to push myself to stay curious.
When a client is telling me about a stressful situation, part of me is trying to find solutions to their problems. I make assumptions about what they truly want. I project my life experience onto theirs. I try to think of clever things to say to fix their stress. Mostly, I try to give off an image of knowing all the answers.
At least that’s one part of me. Other parts of me are feeling sadness, anger, worry, and all kinds of emotions. It’s a struggle to let these parts be seen by others. And it’s really a struggle to allow the curious part of me to step out front and run the show. My cool-calm-and-collected-I’ve-got-all-the-answers part—I’ll call it my little inner “mansplainer”—is always getting in the way.
So, I want to explore where mansplaining comes from, why men do it, and how we can stop and be more curious.
It’s not about pleasing women
First off, we shouldn’t stop mansplaining just to please women. I totally get why women tend to mock men when calling us out. Odds are they’ve been mansplained to so many times they’re fed up, like this:
Here’s the thing: When I mansplain, I feel just as alone as when I’m the one being mansplained to. There’s no emotional connection. There’s no acknowledging the other person’s experience. There’s no learning. There’s no curiosity.
Curiosity is the magical ingredient to emotional connection—which is the magical ingredient to deeper, more satisfying relationships and friendships. It’s also the foundation of therapy, which is why I have a personal stake in learning how to be more curious.
Why do men mansplain? Because we’re afraid not to. We’re scared to appear as though we don’t have the answer—to be curious. As author of Remaking Manhood Mark Greene explains:
“We’ve been shamed and conditioned into believing we must pretend we already know every damn thing ... Even in infancy, little boys are expected to begin modeling emotional stoicism, confidence, physical toughness and independence. The strong and silent type remains a central American symbol of ‘real manhood.’”
Every cisgender man has a little mansplainer inside of him. It was created early on in interactions with our parents and other caregivers. They—along with TV shows, movies, and other media—sent us messages that we needed to always know the answer. That winning or at least being good at something like math or sports mattered more than experiencing joy and connecting with others. That appearing certain and confident was better than speaking from personal experience and asking “naïve” questions.
Then, the little mansplainer was reinforced by interactions with other boys in class, on sports teams, and in clubs. Greene continues:
“Boys form their friendships amidst a relentless barrage of microaggressions, bullying, call outs, and sarcasm designed to weed out any atypical performances of manhood, force social conformity, and slot boys into the pecking orders that make up their social world.”
Sidenote about capitalism
This is a story for another post, but my hunch is boys are socialized this way because it serves capitalism and the rich and powerful people who dominate it. When capitalism began in late medieval and early modern English agrarian society, millions of peasants were violently kicked off their land and forced to work for the emerging class of big business owners. Men were forced into grueling labor in fields and factories, while women were forced into caretaking in the home.
A certain type of masculinity was created—focused on competence rather than emotional connection. Femininity became about nurturing relationships. That’s how it’s been for 300-400 years, but it wasn’t that way for tens of thousands of years before. Men aren’t naturally less emotional and relational. We’re forced into being that way because the economy we have today was built by creating and enforcing strict gender roles.
I mansplain all the time
Even as I’ve become more aware of him, my little inner mansplainer shows up all the time. Here’s an example I’ve written about before:
A while back, I was driving my partner to the grocery store when she pointed up ahead and said, “Turn here.” It made sense—she knew the neighborhood we were in much better than I did. Yet, my mind spiraled into anxious thoughts: Why doesn’t she trust me? What would my friends think of me if they saw this? What would my dad think?
“No, this way,” I said, taking a left instead of a right, even though I didn’t know for sure. Her eyebrows furrowed. I could tell she knew I was wrong. For the rest of the drive, I tried hard to make sure I didn’t look as lost as I actually was. We arrived at the store 10 minutes later than we should have.
As Greene writes: “[Mansplaining is] not the result of men believing we know everything, it’s our collective fear that we will fail to give that impression and be shamed or lose status.”
Here’s what we can do: Get to know our little inner mansplainer. Meditate to connect with him and journal from his perspective.
I’ve learned that my little inner mansplainer shows up as a stiffness in my back and neck. He tries to get me to project an image of being a “real man”—cool, calm, and collected. I’ve started noticing him in conversations with my partner and during sessions with therapy clients. He really gets activated when I’m around unfamiliar men.
Now that I can recognize him in the moment, I’ve started experimenting with trying something different, being curious and asking questions. It’s scary, for sure. But I’m having fun with it. And I’m connecting more.
I’ve been surprised by how people—even other men—accept my curiosity. They not only accept it, but also appreciate it. Sometimes, they return the favor by asking me questions. My curiosity seems to help them be more curious.
Baby steps, ya’ll. We’re doing some hard ass work. As therapist and author Terry Real writes, “The reclamation of wholeness is a process even more fraught for men than it has been for women, more difficult and more profoundly threatening to the culture at large.”
Here’s a question for the comments below (or email me: jeremy@jeremymohler.blog): How do you feel about mansplaining? Where do you think it comes from?
I wonder if a part of mansplaining can be tied to a desire to memorize and show off knowledge of trivia? Sometimes the more esoteric the better
While there are plenty of professional mechanics or other trade workers who are more than happy to discuss things related to their work, past times like bar trivia, sports trivia, watching Jeopardy or World War II documentaries on the History Channel come to mind
When the big Marvel movies started coming out, I unfortunately mansplained a bunch about the comics. It took me years until I finally realized how little utility memorizing that had for even before all that trivia was accessible on every smartphone