this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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The term "mansplaining" is not just about a man being pedantic. It is a man being pedantic or overexplaining to a woman either about something she is likely more knowledgeable on than he is or about something that is such common knowledge it should be assumed that she knows these facts as well as he does. It is a demonstration of misogyny through the assumption that you, a man, knows better than her, a woman, despite all liklihood to the contrary and yet you condescend to her anyway. It's the arrogance and gender bias that is the problem, not the pedantry itself.
And what's the evidence that this happened here? You just assumed he was sexist.
Funnily enough, assuming men are likely to be sexist is sexist
The thing I don't like about the mansplaining accusation is it makes lots of men out to be sexist/misogynistic when they are really just pedantic twits that very well could have commented the same stupid thing to a man. But because it was to a woman someone has to accuse them of being sexist too.
Don't get me wrong there are a lot of sexist assholes, but just assuming it to be the case off a single comment irks me.
I think the problem a lot of people here are having is that they're assuming the accusation is active sexism. Like it's a cognitive decision to go "phht, what would she know, she's a woman".
I suspect the vast majority of mansplaning scenarios are subconscious. They probably don't even know that's what they're doing abs would never see themselves as being sexist. I think that's because everyone sees the word "sexist" and associates it with clichéd extreme sexism, like cat calling, not wanting a Female pilot, ignoring their ideas in meetings etc.
The thing about subtle unconscious bias is that you're almost never aware you're doing it, but it still has similar effects on the affected group.
The healthy thing to do is to listen to the person it's affecting, analyse the scenario, and reflect on if it's something that you, or people you know, might have been doing without realising.
Counterpoint - explaining things the other party knows is how you get on the same page.
I don't give a shit about your degree or your gender, it tells me nothing about where you're at. Most people are fucking idiots who have no idea how anything works, and that includes doctors and probably astronauts
And I say this as someone constantly underestimated. Yeah, it's annoying to hear things you already know at a basic level. I ask people if they know about things and take them at their word
But this is just normal communication. I don't know what you know, you don't know what I know. I probably understand how your mind and body work better than you do, because most people don't know how their mind and body work beyond a 4th grade level
Explaining things the other person knows is undesirable. It's also how most people reach the starting line for a dialogue
(New person here)
The big issue is that we don’t see men being pedantic towards other men at nearly the same rate. Absolutely it happens, but there is definitely a problem with men not respecting women specifically.
Part of it, I think, comes from social conditioning and it’s more of a reaction than anything on purpose when it comes to a large subset of the people doing it. Even still, it’s important to gender it at least sometimes to highlight why we might be doing it and to give us the correct thing to reflect on. I’ve done it before where I could say it to a man but I realized that I what I was saying or doing was fueled, at least in part, by some internalized misogyny. Knowing that has helped me get to it before I do something stupid.
Men are the most pedantic assholes to other men.
Treating women like they are soft little creatures is insanely sexist. Treat them as equals and they will treat you the same. I don't understand why it's so hard for other men to understand this.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not that men need to treat women “equally”, it’s that the reason mansplaining happens is different to the reason that generic pedantry happens. They can happen at the same time, but the general idea is that mansplaining is pedantry with a boost of sexism, intentional or otherwise, not simply being pedantic to a woman. The difference is subtle, and luckily the solution of just not not being an ass to people solves both issues quite well but it’s still good to try identify how much of one or the other is present when you slip up so you can address the correct problem.
Put it another way, you also shouldn’t be treating an old person like a baby when helping them with their phone, or a child like they’re stupid and couldn’t possibly know things a grown-up doesn’t. All of these are genderless examples of how disrespect can come from several angles at once and there is also the gendered scenario we call “mansplaining”.
Okay, but do you not realize how big a problem being discharitable to others is?
The fucking fabric of society is falling apart. I'm sorry women get underestimated, like I do. It's very annoying, believe me, I deal with it constantly
But you suck it up, listen, and make them feel foolish with your response.
The alternative is a further breakdown of communication. You can't be primed to see others as bad actors, it's so incredibly damaging
No one is the villain in their own story. No one knows how smart they are, only if others are higher or lower.
Listening to people tell you things you already know is inevitable. It's social hygiene. It sucks, but it's the social contract
That’s a lot of words to say you don’t understand the difference. Not knowing something is fine, but fighting it like this is weird. You’re not helping anything with this comment and instead are basically trying to say that it’s not a problem enough to even talk about or understand. If you cannot handle this information that’s something to look inwardly at, not lash out at me for simply explaining what it is.
Women feel talked down because they are women and they can see the exact same men treating other men differently. I regularly see this happen to them, too. Sometimes it’s a small accident and sometimes it’s very much on purpose and all of it is important to understand. I don’t know why you want to pretend like it doesn’t happen but it does either way.
It happens, I'm not denying that.
But the cure is worse than the poison. The term primes people to see it where it isn't there, and that's extraordinarily toxic.
Call them a misogynist and be done with it. I know it when I see it. You know it when you see it.
It's like man spreading. It's ok to be comfortable. It's not ok to push into other people's personal space. If you're alone on a bench, who gives a fuck. If you want to signal "I'd prefer no one sit next to me", that's fine until someone sits next to you. Then you're an asshole or you're not, we don't need extra words to gender niche behaviors
Words are perception. Labeling a thing primes you to see it. These overly specific, gender based labels are harmful
It literally makes the world worse for everyone involved to create subcategories of asshole behavior based on gender dynamics
The cure is not worse than the poison. And if you admit that it happens, and you also say we should call them misogynist if they’re doing it, then calling someone out for “mansplaining” is exactly that except for some reason you don’t like it.
It’s giving “I’m fine with the protests I just don’t think they should block traffic or otherwise get in my way.”
Yeah well disputing traffic does something. It makes people feel the breakdown of society in a visceral way
The concept of mansplaining is discharitable. It is bad to prime people to spot it, because false positives are extremely damaging to interpersonal relations.
Don't give it a name, just call it what it is: talking to a sexist asshole. There's no confusion there... It doesn't matter if they're being patronizing or making rude comments, the Venn diagram is a circle.
You're taking to a bigot, or you're not. And when you're not, you're probably talking to someone neurodivergent, who is genuinely trying to communicate in good faith
If you’ve already agreed that the person is sexist then people will just say that anyone doing it is sexist and you’ll complain that people are primed to say it and “false positives…” and all that.
It sounds like you’ve felt personally hurt by this in the past less than there’s a good argument here.
And you're projecting even more things on me now. You're not speaking to me as an equal. You're not trying to come to common understanding.
You're just trying to fight the strawman you carried into this conversation
Which is my whole point. What you're doing, right now, is what I think this word leads to.
Mansplaining is a type of dickishness. It is not a wholesale replacement, just a version thereof. You are outright refusing to allow for the refinement of an idea and I do not know why aside from somehow this specific level of detail is the line which you have decided is “dangerous”. Hell, you don’t even seem to be against the idea that there is a specifically male-on-female sexist dickishness but rather just hate that there is a term for it that people can use to more effectively communicate the idea.
You don’t have a stance I could even make a strawman up for, you just hate that something has a name.
Yes, but men experience this at a slightly lower rate.
So if an astronaut man were to get, say, 10 of these comments, while an astronaut woman gets 15 of these comments, it's fair to infer that about 5 out of the 15 comments wouldn't have been made to a man. Problem is that you can't exactly tell which 5 they are. But you know it's happening.
Of course, if the ratio is actually closer to 50 versus 10 comments like this, then you've got a pretty good sense that 80% of the pedantic overexplainers-to-an-expert are doing it because the original poster is a woman.
And one thing you find for these types of examples with a woman who has clear, unmistakable, objective indicators of expertise (literal astronaut) in the topic at hand is that the ratio is much higher for women than men, in a way that might not have been obvious for lesser credentials (like a high school science teacher). But yet, it still happens.
It's a name for a phenomenon that has existed for a long time. It's a concise way to describe that phenomenon, and I still think it's a good word to have in the vocabulary.
pssssh, sounds like typical Womanplaining….
that’s where a woman complains too much….
you see, in a typical post by a Man, they will get on average 15 complaints by women, but in a post by a woman, only five complaints by women… now you can’t tell which posts are Womanplaining and which ones are genuine complaints, but i think inventing new terms with “woman” and “man” attached to the front are the perfect way to achieve harmony between the sexes and don’t just reinforce sexism.
/s
all satire.
but, “mansplain” is hate speech and it needs to stop.
sexist condescending speech of men towards women is hateful and needs to stop as well….
inventing new slurs is counterproductive.
lmao
it sure as hell ain’t nothing like misogyny, but misandry is a real thing:
https://en.wikipedia/ .org/wiki/Misandry
….
but i do appreciate your thoughtfulness, @petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
(crazy how MRA psychos have ruined any conversation about the topic)
Both exist and are a problem.
true
Yeah I do no think mansplaining is not a thing that happens, it absolutely is and is incredibly annoying and insulting.
I just don't like how people assume someone is misogynistic and mansplaining because of a single comment on the internet and get all accusatory.
It is more of a thing that you need to witness a person doing multiple times to women in order to definitely make an opinion of that person.
If it were a YouTuber that constantly does it in multiple videos then ya fair, throw that in the comments all you want.
In this case though it's jumping the gun a little bit.
Sure, but being an arrogant prick that thinks they're smarter than anyone else, regardless of gender, is already a thing that should be derided. Having only a single instance of this behavior being aimed at a woman as an example of his arrogance may mistakenly lead one to attribute that to misogyny instead of a general prickishness behavior, sure. But that's a perfectly understandable assumption to make in that situation and the mistake of calling them the wrong kind of asshole, i feel, is less of a concern than him, indeed, being an asshole.
You can do that without calling someone sexist.
Sure. But it gives the appearance if sexism. Who gives a fuck if he is being an asshole if you mislabeled the kind of asshole he is. I don't.
You kinda should. The entire value of shaming people is to show a person that somebody else or a group of somebody elses do not approve of their behaviour. If you dont care about being accurate in calling out antisocial behaviour, how do you think the person expressing said antisocial behaviour will understand that interaction? Do you think they'll be able to understand what they did wrong? Obviously thats not always relevant, some people just want to mudwrestle and they'll never hear you no matter what you say. It's worth it to be accurate in case they are the type of person who might remotely consider your words though
If they were being sexist and you don't point that put, wouldn't that be inaccurate?
Yes, it would. It's also not related to the comment I replied to, in which you stated that you dont care about being accurate when calling somebody out. My point is that you should care about accuracy when youre calling out bad behaviour, I'm not trying to defend Mr "actually it would be spontaneous" from the image
Sure, my point was that a single instance outside of other context means that you cannot necessarily discern a pattern of behavior upon which to base your conclusion into which kind of asshole he is being. You could be innacurate in assuming he is sexist as well as assuming he isn't. If complete accuracy is required, then you would need to not make a conclusion at all and let the comment slide without feedback until you have more data. I'm saying that it is more important to call them out than to worry about the exact accuracy, to not let the comment slide, to make sure they know that, in some way, it was inappropriate.
One's experience may lead one to make some assumptions that are incorrect in this context, but I don't feel like that is the important part that you should critique. Either she says nothing, calls him a sexist, or calls him out but doesnt point out the sexism even if there is unconfirmed sexism involved. I'm saying either of the latter is reasonable under the circumstances.
It's not about making a value judgement on a person, its about calling out a specific behaviour. As a thought experiment, would you have engaged with me if I came at you like "you're an idiot" (making a value judgement on you as a person) rather than specifically addressing the behaviour you exhibited that I disagree with?
To be clear, I have no negative opinions of you and I absolutely do not think you're an idiot. That was posed purely as a hypothetical to illustrate the difference in communication effectiveness between making a value judgement about a person and addressing a specific behaviour.
Mansplaining is a behavior. It is a man arrogantly talking down to a woman assuming she knows less than him by virtue of being a woman or despite evidence to the contrary. If their defense to that was, "I just thought I was smarter than you and needed to demonstrate that, but it had nothing to do with your gender. How dare you judge me for being sexist." Then... well, I feel like they still need to examine that behavior.
it would be incomplete, not inaccurate.
it is much better to be incomplete than inaccurate.
Sometimes people are being sexist. Mansplaining is a real thing that happens. You may not see the need for the word because you personally don't need it, but maybe you can understand that there a lot of people who do need it?
I mean sure, but you can't deny it's misused sometimes. I never said it didn't happen at all. Stop reading what I didn't write.
Yes, it's misused sometimes. And it sounds like you agree that sometimes it's the right word for the situation.
If a man inaccurately and smugly trying to correct a female astronaut, punctuating it with "Simple thermo", isn't the right time to use "mansplaining", then when would be?
So you prefer defaming people just in case? I'm sorry but that's dumb.
At this point most people explaining things to others, assuming they're not knowledgeable, can be called racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic...
I feel like falsely calling out someone makes you a bigger asshole than someone thinking they're smarter. In a way, you think you're smarter and believe they only say these things because they're discriminating.
everyone knows that.
you just explained very common knowledge to people that certainly know it.
the problem is the terminology…
men and women condescendingly explain shit to people all the time. If you attach the word “man” to it then you’re being sexist.
when a man is condescending to a woman because she’s a woman, then that man is being sexist.
if you assume every time a man is being condescending to a woman they’re being sexist, then you’re sexist.
every time ANYONE makes a factual claim on the internet and it gets enough traction, someone will chime in and condescendingly explain why they’re wrong. gender is not the only factor.
….
it’s certainly terrible how men are sexist and condescending towards women so often… making a new sexist term doesn’t help that problem.
also, i’m not assuming your gender and you don’t know mine, i am merely disagreeing with you.
that's mansplaining /s
That's a great way to put it.