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Is Mansplaining Really So Bad? Reasons for Mansplaining and How to Handle It
And why mansplaining doesn’t bother me
Where I work, I’m the newbie because I’ve been in this workplace for less time than all of my co-workers. In a recent meeting, my co-workers spent a lot of time explaining things to me, things I already knew.
For me, it was the equivalent of someone trying to teach me how to add and subtract when I can already do calculus.
Just because I’m new here doesn’t mean I’m clueless and incompetent. I’ve worked other places.
But here’s the kicker: These co-workers were women.
If these co-workers had been men, they might have been accused of mansplaining.
Men catch flak for trying to explain stuff to women who are already sufficiently qualified to know that stuff, but in my experiences, women do it too.
It seems to me that when women are in a position where they have quite a bit of knowledge, or think they have more knowledge than another person, they are just as prone to ‘mansplain’ as men.
To understand what mansplaining is really about, and to decide whether mansplaining truly is — or isn’t — an awful thing to do, it may help to know the two reasons why these women were trying to…
