Stop Telling Me Things I Already Know: Confronting the Dreaded Mansplainer

By: Anna Everhart

We’ve all been there-- group projects, daily interactions, and now zoom breakout rooms-- places where it can seem difficult to speak up or have your voice heard.  Even with everything going online I have been overwhelmed by encounters with the dreaded mansplainer.  When I think of this term my mind automatically conjures up the image of an overconfident guy trying to assert his supposed intelligence upon others.  But, this often goes deeper than mere personality clashes or someone being more outgoing than other people.  Having your voice heard as a woman is rooted in history and interpersonal dynamics that can make it difficult to speak up for yourself.    When we speak up we are forced to consider both everyone’s perception of us as people and our role as women.  There’s a pattern to this behavior and it is based on all of our implicit and explicit gender expectations.  Here is a more thorough explanation of how mansplaining came to be and how it affects all of us even today.  

But the bottom line is when men take it upon themselves to explain topics to or about women, they are also contributing to the fact that women are often seen as less worthy of having their voices heard.  So, the next time you witness a person mansplaining to someone else or it happens to you, let’s call it what it is and work to make it less prevalent in school and in the workplace.  

Show this graphic to all your male friends who ask you how they are supposed to know whether they’re mansplaining or not (and then ask them to study it and do better).

(Image credit: Kim Goodwin)