When my wife and I adopted our kids, I was the one who took leave from work and did the baby thing. I changed the diapers. I went to speech and physical therapy. I went on the playdates and to the parties at Build-A-Bear and what have you. Neither my wife nor I have ever felt comfortable with society’s proscribed gender roles for us, and having me be the stay-at-home while she was the breadwinner felt more natural to us.

But let me tell you that in a group of mothers at Gymboree, my observations and experiences were worth less than nothing. Let me tell you that in settings where I was not a “regular,” the mothers that were present tended to assume I would not be comfortable changing a diaper and offered to do it for me–an offer that was not made for other mothers. I had women give me information that was either obvious or sometimes wrong about nutrition, fashion, bath rituals, you name it.

Society reinforces this. There is a local parenting website with some name like iMom. Commercials tell us what products are Mother Approved, what medicine is tested by Doctor Mom, what peanut butter chosen by Choosy Moms, and so on and so on and so on.

And the thing is, this is sexism against women*. Because if we buy into the notion that only women are equipped to parent, then it naturally follows that men’s skills leave them better equipped in some other realm, doesn’t it? It reinforces that whole phony dichotomy where women are the nurturers and men are the go-getters.

Anyway, I don’t want to take anything away from your point, because I think it’s spot on. But you suggested in a couple of places that women were capable of rudeness, but not of rudeness springing from privilege because they don’t have any privilege by virtue of being women. I felt like I needed to throw my two cents in. As your whitesplaining example shows, this is typical behavior whenever one outlook is privileged, and privilege comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

*Actually, that’s not quite what I believe. I think sexism, more blatantly than other -isms even, cuts two ways. It tells my wife that she’s not a proper woman if she’s not all jumper dresses and bake sales, and it tells me that I’m not a proper man if I like romantic stories, raising kids, cooking, and talking about my feelings.

To their credit, my colleagues were all intelligent guys who, for the most part, had made apparent efforts to be fair to women. And I did eventually rise to the role of de facto creative director.

The thing was, the mansplaining never stopped. It was mostly in the form of manslation, with male colleagues taking my words and simply rephrasing them, then enjoying the credit for my ideas, suggestions, criticism, etc.

A few instances still stick sorely in my mind. “[Blank] isn’t the right word for it. It’s [blankity-blank].” (Synonyms.) “I can explain what she’s saying more clearly.” (Repeated what I said in equally clear terms.) “Why don’t you just let me handle those [design] decisions.” (Said by someone who had no authority over me and wasn’t even a part of the design process.)

It wasn’t the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) misogyny that drove me to leave, but that attitude is definitely part of why I’m not going back to the field. It isn’t worth the endless bombardment of tiny bee sting misogynies. This male superiority complex is especially entrenched, unfortunately, with nerdy/geeky men, as they’ve had to endure years of ridicule at the hands of the brawn-over-brain types.

Well, forget that. I’ll be my own boss in a field where I should be a natural, since we women never shut up, right?

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD MALE COLLEGE FRESHMAN (laying down the law at a party): If Marlowe had lived, he would have written very much better plays than Shakespeare’s.

ME, A THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH (dazed with boredom): Gee, how clever you are to know about things that never happened.

THE FRESHMAN (bewildered): Huh?

One year after Russ’s novel came Delany’s Trouble on Triton, which is kinda about the way science fiction (as a genre of explanation) and mansplaining go together: we listen to this guy from the fascinating future tell us everything about everything until he’s contradicted and undermined himself so many times that even he can’t ignore it anymore. And he had to become a woman to finally get to that point.

I know it’s not about me, I get that, but I’m just wondering.

I think I choose INDIVIDUAL.

I never knew YA authors didn’t drink. But now I know why YA novels can never, ever have kids drinking in them (I’m only a YA author in my notebook and computer, but my story involves lotsa drinking, which may derail any hopes I have of publication. I am in Australia, so perhaps I have a slight chance.)

The situations above exemplify my engineering career experience. This has resonated so strongly with me its nearly opened up the cracks again!

Hearing your own words repeated in a meeting by a male colleague who is listened to? Yes. For a while I used this as a tool to get what I wanted, but got to see my puppets getting the rewards.

After 20 years of the above, and watching far less capable male friends and relatives get pushed into leadership roles, I have given up and changed career into the more female dominated area. Oh, for changed career, read, started again at the bottom instead of getting recognition for 20 years of experience I have. Oh and wait again, did I say female dominated? Wrong. The key players are still male and still think they run the joint.

I’m beginning to understand why disenfranchised people retaliate with (socially inappropriate behaviour); its just I have been socialised into silence and submission and cannot lift a hand.

I can lift a finger, though! Salute!

PS There was an article in the APESMA journal about abusive behaviour towards female engineering students at Universities in Australia; just as I was realising, thank goodness it wasn’t just me, I realised – it wasn’t just me.

If you’re explaining why you’re not classist to someone who’s working class, shut up.

Even if you’re an academic.

ESPECIALLY if you’re an academic.

I think lots of people see the pregnancy as the foremost importance, and the woman herself is secondary. It’s a weird form of discrimation and because it’s only a temporary state, a lot women put up with interference that they normally wouldn’t. Plus if the woman doesn’t follow, or at least appear to appreciate, the dictatorial advice, she’s obviously selfish and doesn’t care enough about the well being of her unborn foetus.

For the next half hour, the gentleman sitting next to me proceeded to lean over and “explain” everything the GM said. Everytime he did it, I replied with some variation of “Thanks, I know the rules.” (well, at the top of the hour. Towards the six, it sounded more like “dude, I KNOW THE RULES.”). Eventually, I got sick of it, picked up my dice and wandered off to the con suite. Throughout the course of the rest of the con, every person who’d been at the table other than Mansplainer came up to me to apologize for him.

Sadly, I mean “apologize” in the classic sense of explaining why I should have been ok with his behavior, not in the sense of “yeah, he was being a sexist tool and we were wrong to let him keep at it until it ruined the game for you.”

I don’t game at cons anymore.

Yeah, it’s a fair cop. I’ve done it. I’m not proud.

In fairness, I’ve also had what it means to be a straight white guy explained to me by people whose opinions didn’t match my own, but a bunch of those were also straight white guys. FWIW.

Tim: The problem isn’t with you forming a view of whether something is racist/homophobic/sexist; it’s if you assert that your view is the correct one for all. If you say that you are seeing a text or thing this way, and aren’t, say, getting the sexism, but then you’re a guy, and are willing to listen to why women feel it is sexist — to the other perspective — then that’s usually a way to have a dialogue. But if you assert that it isn’t sexist and the women shouldn’t see it in that interpretation, then you are calling the opinion of those who have the most experience with assessing the issue — who live with it daily – invalid, that their opinion doesn’t count as much as yours — the guy who belongs to the group that has long said their group doesn’t count. And you’re reacting to things that don’t effect you — and thus don’t seem so problematic — but very much effect them, and then saying that they shouldn’t be effected.

Essentially, if you are white, you don’t get to decide what non-whites see as racist. If you’re male, you don’t get to decide what women see as sexist. And if you’re straight, you don’t get to decide what gays see as homophobic. And it’s very hard to do because I honestly think that most people don’t want there to be prejudices and so often don’t see it. But when something is not aimed at you, you have to be willing to listen to those whom it is aimed at, listen and not correct.

This is occasionally augmented by folks further explaining that they are really *honoring* you and then congratulating themselves on their sensitivity.

Not that this has ever happened to me. Cough. But if it did, I would be hyper reasonable about the whole thing because my other choice is…?