In a piece called “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit writes about a man who, introduced to her as a writer, starts pontificating about a book she “should” read. Despite Solnit and another woman mentioning several times that Solnit is actually the author of the book she should read, the man still goes on - the reality literally doesn’t sink in. She goes on to say:
A few years after the idiot in Aspen, I was in Berlin giving a talk when the Marxist writer Tariq Ali invited me out to a dinner that included a male writer and translator and three women a little younger than me who would remain deferential and mostly silent throughout the dinner. Tariq was great. Perhaps the translator was peeved that I insisted on playing a modest role in the conversation, but when I said something about how Women Strike for Peace, the extraordinary, little-known antinuclear and antiwar group founded in 1961, helped bring down the communist-hunting House Committee on Un-American Activities, HUAC, Mr. Very Important II sneered at me. HUAC, he insisted, didn’t exist by the early 1960s and, anyway, no women’s group played such a role in HUAC’s downfall. His scorn was so withering, his confidence so aggressive, that arguing with him seemed a scary exercise in futility and an invitation to more insult.
Hmmph. No, I have no idea what she’s talking about. Can’t imagine such a thing. Nope.
I think I was at nine books at that point, including one that drew from primary documents and interviews about Women Strike for Peace. But explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge. A Freudian would claim to know what they have and I lack, but intelligence is not situated in the crotch — even if you can write one of Virginia Woolf’s long mellifluous musical sentences about the subtle subjugation of women in the snow with your willie. Back in my hotel room, I Googled a bit and found that Eric Bentley in his definitive history of the House Committee on Un-American Activities credits Women Strike for Peace with “striking the crucial blow in the fall of HUAC’s Bastille.” In the early 1960s.
So I opened an essay for the Nation with this interchange, in part as a shout-out to one of the more unpleasant men who have explained things to me: Dude, if you’re reading this, you’re a carbuncle on the face of humanity and an obstacle to civilization. Feel the shame.
The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women — of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.
After all, Women Strike for Peace was founded by women who were tired of making the coffee and doing the typing and not having any voice or decision-making role in the antinuclear movement of the 1950s. Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being. Things have certainly gotten better, but this war won’t end in my lifetime. I’m still fighting it, for myself certainly, but also for all those younger women who have something to say, in the hope that they will get to say it.
Susie,
Thanks for pointing out Rebecca Solnit’s powerful essay. This is a timely reminder for me that speaking out is necessary, even as it goes against my personal and cultural tendencies. And then I just get so flabbergasted or angry by the Grand Explanation that I’m rendered speechless. Maybe invoking your and Rebecca’s names will help me keep my cool and help me speak up.
Susie,
Thers was talking this morning about some wingnut woman who’s responded to Solnit, basically by telling her to shut up. I think he’s planning a smackdown in the near future–keep your eyes open for it.
Oh, and then there’s this:
I am a loud feminist and a longtime Clinton skeptic who was suddenly feeling that I needed to rationalize, apologize for, or even just stay quiet about my increasing unease with the way Clinton was being discussed. Meanwhile, I was getting e-mails from men I didn’t know well who approached me as a go-to feminist to whom they could express their hatred of Hillary and their anger at her staying in the race — an anger that seemed to build with every one of her victories. One of my closest girlfriends, an Obama voter, told me of a drink she’d had with a politically progressive man who made a series of legitimate complaints about Clinton’s policies before adding that when he hears the senator’s voice, he’s overcome by an urge to punch her in the face.
I don’t suppose the Men Who Explain Things to you here will get the point.
Very interesting article, because it strikes home. I’m definitely a Man Who Explains Things. But it’s hard for me to know whether I’m that way because of gender, education, or vanity. I’m pretty sure that gender plays a role, because I do seem to do it more with women than with men — but on the other hand, I don’t interact as often with men. I’m also a teacher by background, and that certainly predisposes me to lecture at people. And I’m also pretty well educated compared to most people, which also predisposes me to lecturing.
This piece made me recall a conversation I was having with a woman friend, about politics, during which I realized with a start that I had transformed it from a discussion to a lecture. I felt embarrassment at my behavior. My conclusion is that this is some sort of ingrained tendency among men, something that must be consciously recognized to be countered. It’s rather like the urge to stare at a well-endowed woman’s breasts. It just happens naturally, and one must make a conscious effort to refrain. Every man must learn this lesson on his own.
While the responsibility to correct this rude behavior is entirely the man’s, I’ll offer some suggestions for women who must cope with this rudeness:
1. Don’t get mad. Yes, it’s rude, but it’s the way men are born and they have to learn how to be polite. While you were playing tea parties as little girls, we were throwing rocks at each other. It takes men a long time to catch up on social skills.
2. It’s particularly difficult to teach men social skills, because the act of teaching is simultaneously an assault on their sense of place in the hierarchy, so they inevitably respond defensively.
3. With many men, it’s hopeless; you can only abandon them to their brutishness.
4. With other men, however, it is possible to get through to them with a passive-aggressive approach: when the fellow reverts to Neanderthal behavior, just roll your eyes, turn and look pointedly at another woman, or heave a disappointed sigh — that kind of thing. If the man is so sensitive as to consciously notice it and inquire as to the meaning, just brush his request aside with a “never mind, it’s not important” and ask him a question that defers to his superior intellect. That plants the seed without challenging him.
5. Never forget that many men really do mean well but simply don’t understand the implications of their actions. When I was in high school, I was once on a long car trip with some friends. I was in the back seat with two girls. I was sewing something, and whenever I pulled the thread through, I stretched my needle hand straight towards the face of the girl next to me. After some time she asked me not to put the needle in her face. I was shocked — it simply hadn’t occurred to me how I was imposing upon her. Guys aren’t mean, they’re just clueless! In this case, I felt very shamed and put away the sewing.
Gee, do these suggestions constitute Explaining Things?
Chris,
Do we really need to be so patient and understanding? It’s not like pontificating men extend the courtesy to women (unless we’re fabulously good-looking). It’s not our job to kiss up to men–how exhausting! Can’t we just have a civilized, direct interaction? Men are direct with each other.
Its the women that allow it that are the problem — the ones who buy into their own “inferiority” — that keep the rest of us down.
Heres the problem–its not just men that do this (although they’ve done this to me countless times. My father used to do this to me (and to my mother, who accepted it), but my mother did it to me too.
As an only child and a girl, I was patronized and ridiculed throughout my life by my mother for presumed ignorance and stupidity, whereas she treated any male — adult or child — deferentially and actively cultivated their approval. Girls, she claimed, were “mean”, and not “accomplished” (despite their actual accomplishments). Women of achievement were objects of her approbation and ridicule. Regardless of her deep-seated reasons for this attitude, she was intractable.
My ex-husband, and all boyfriends treated me this way. It was the reason for much of my difficulty with “romance”. I just won’t accept it. Neither will my daughter, so she has difficulties finding acceptable boyfriends at her elite college. She just won’t allow herself to be patronized, and that makes things tough. But its tougher for us because so many girls and women in fact encourage it.
I see this attitude in my son, who should know better. He is only 23, and his mother is a lawyer. His best friends moms are doctors, museum curators, magazine publishers, CFOs, etc. He works at a high-end consulting firm with many women — from better universities than his — some with PhDs. He should know better — but his behavior is accepted by his father, his friends, his (male and female) co-workers, and presumably by the girls he dates.
The societal bias against women is pervasive and pernicious, but I have no idea how it can be transcended and overcome when so many women accept and seemingly embrace it. It remains part of virtually all religious and social traditions, no matter the lip-service that might be paid to “equality”.
Things have gotten somewhat better, I suppose. My daughter presumably won’t have to type fast in order to get a job as a lawyer like her mother did, although there will still be some women — younger versions of her grandmother — who laugh out loud and say “how cute — a lady lawyer”.
I will not presume to suggest ways to improve the situation, I only acknowledge that it is rude, boorish, Neanderthal behavior. Frequently, I am guilty of it, even though my wife constantly points it out, and I make effort to change it. Men are as much a product of the patriarchal society we live in as women are victims, and its hard to undo that ingrained lack of social skill.
Don’t get mad.
Why in the world not? What’s the down side?