I was in an elevator yesterday with a man maybe ten years younger, and we shared traditional Philadelphia summer pleasantries: “Sure is hot!”
But he insisted it was no hotter than ever, and that storms weren’t getting worse.
“The bad storms happen more often, and do more damage,” I said.
“That’s not true, you just think that. None of it’s any worse,” the man, who is apparently a part-time meteorologist, told me. “You’re listening to these green types, they just want to keep the country from proper industrial development.”
“Have a nice day,” I said and walked away.
You’ve hit one of my pet peeves in life. How to explain anything in social situations when the ignorance on the other side requires at least three hours of detailed lecturing to even begin to make a dent.
I mean, in addition to the not-so-special case of testosterone-blocked thinking, what can one do about offhand bullshit you can’t correct without making what feels like a scene?
“Proper industrial development.” This guy listens to Rush Limberger and FOX. Probably exclusively. His fact set is very different then our fact set. Because we have different teachers. In addition, where you want to end up dictates the path that you follow and who you listen to for directions. The number one thing on this guys mind was probably jobs. You can not teach a Chinese speaker to speak English in an elevator ride. Regardless of their gender. You can talk about the best way to create jobs however. And how “proper industrial development” can be fueled just as well by the sun, wind and water as it can by Big Oil. We must stop burning crap and screwing with the atmosphere and weather. To accomplish that will require both genders equally.
Even though some of my “right of center” male friends know that I have an Earth Science and Geology background, I get really amused when they try to “mansplain” earth processes and issues. They start to talk slower as if I don’t understand all the “technical” terms they use (and assume I don’t understand being a wimmen and all.) Then I “Boosplain” their position is purely political….
Let’s just all agree to stipulate that some women are dumber than most men. That way we can all stop using “mansplain” as a device for diminishing men. “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” Simone de Beauvoir.”
The assumption was that since he was the man, he had the answers and I was the one who needed to hear them.
Imhotep, walk a mile in my anecdotal shoes, buddy….
susie
The assumption was that since he was the man, he had the answers and I was the one who needed to hear them.
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Did he state that outright, or are you inferring it because conservative men (and women) are NEVER condescending or pedantic to liberal white males?
“Mansplaining” is just a faddish cheap=shot, like “it’s a black thing” used to be.
So please let me “mansplain” conservatives. They consider themselves experts on anything they may have ever read or heard about, whether it was in the 2nd grade weekly reader, or focksnooze, on any subject. And if they are feeling “polite” they will condescend and be pedantic on any subject towards anyone who doesn’t agree with them. If they are not feeling polite, you will get an earful of the insults they are dying to make.
Me walking in your shoes might turn out to be far easier than you walking anecdotally in mine. But neither one of us can ever know that. So let me just say that I can feel your pain and I hope that you can feel mine. Peace.
Mostly from the “now look here, little lady” tone. He thought he was reassuring me! But I’ve experienced lots of liberal men taking exactly the same posture, especially when it came to the 2008 Democratic primary. (In fact, a lot of former readers were among that number. They left because I was so stubbornly resistant to the idea that Barack Obama was a progressive.) And Rebecca Solnit, the woman who wrote the original “Men Explain Things To Me” that inspired the term “mansplaining”, wasn’t at a Tea Party convention. She was at a party.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175584/
gee boohoney that would terrifically suck. I think they need boosplainin’ something fierce.
I have often noticed and that goes for this scenario: the RW always takes our memes and uses it back on us as if to innoculate their minions — in this case the argument that ‘things aren’t so bad you just remember them wrong’ which was actually first employed by NYAS in discussing climate change — you are used to warm winters so when one comes along that is like the old days you all say ‘what global warming?’ Another example of course is the current ‘Worse President Ever’. I got the tee shirt from Bartcop that said it for Dubya.
BTW, check encyclopedias for 50s and 60s under opossum. The range of the opossum then was not even as far north as southern Iowa/ central Illinois.
I found them outside my home in Minnesota several years ago. In winter, too.
I would have thought that to be ‘pedantic’ you would have to be a pedant: i.e. even if wrong, at least capable of pouring out details and references tediously and ad nauseum, even if marginally relevant, not simply being dismissive.
This weekend, while sitting next to a babbling stream and enjoying life’s beauty, we got mansplained on the complete sex life of a Green Drake (a type of insect) by a conservative school teacher and could not stop laughing about his detailed descriptions of insect sex for the ENTIRE WEEKEND. Which, of course, were incorrect. HA HA HA HA you can’t make this stuff up!