The Damages of Mansplaining

Question Time in the Australian Federal Parliament is meant to be a time for advised, non-bigoted  discussion.  However earlier this month Labor Senator Katy Gallagher found that not to be the case. In the middle of querying the Turnbull government's welfare bills, Minister Mitch Fifield gave a lengthy explanation of the bill's basic concepts to the Senator - which she already knew -, cutting off her final question by saying "Let me just stop you so you don't waste a line of questioning". Gallagher replied with an exasperated comment "I love the mansplaining. I'm enjoying it." The narrative continues somewhat frustratingly: Fifield demanded a definition of this new word, Gallagher spelt it out, Fifield became increasingly offended, and shouting was the order of the day. You can watch the "standoff" here.

As much as this demonstrates the quality of Australian governmental banter, it drew a lot of public attention to the central theme "mansplaining". Urban Dictionary defines the informal verb as "Used to describe boorish men who felt the need to "correct" what a woman said, even on topics that the man didn't know anything about." Essentially mansplaining refers to the social tendency for men to assume women are unknowledgeable, weak, or otherwise incapable of understanding basic concepts, and hence explain said concept in a patronising and condescending manner. Although the terminology is new, the experiences it describes have been around for much longer. Even before the term existed, RebeccaSolnit's viral essay "Men Explain Things To Me" anecdotally recounts the time a man asked her what field she worked in, and proceeded to explain the importance of a certain book to her area of interest. If he had stopped to listen to her polite interruptions, he would have realised sooner that she herself had written that book. It's a common daily experience for women to have basic things explained to them as if they were children. Women at the gym who are happily working to their own regime apparently need to be told "how to do it". Women in an office who quickly ask a minor detail about plugging in data apparently need a run down on the basics of Microsoft Excel. Women who run a business apparently need advice from male clients on how best to manage their finances. 

Explaining things to women isn't an inherently sexist act, however we see a trend where women receive advice, explanations and belittling comments despite not asking, nor making any signals that they required help.

Mansplaining comes about because from a young age, we are conditioned to believe women do not know as much, or are less capable of doing work than men. In preschool, the boys are asked to do the "heavy lifting", despite the physical differences between sexes at age three having no impact on strength. Throughout school, boys are encouraged to pursue STEM subjects, while girls are herded towards the arts. In a vicious cycle where masculinity is valued over femininity, hence "masculine" jobs are valued over "feminine" jobs, society does not respect women's professional or social input nearly as much as men's. Coupled with this comes the constant trope of the "knight in shining armour"; a man willing to help the poor woman out of the goodness of his heart. Romantic interests in movies and pop culture are often characterised this way, and so real-life versions of the character are bolstered and encouraged. Through no fault of the individual, men are encouraged to help women wherever possible because in the social neurosis, women always need help; they are never smart enough to know what they're doing.

Although mostly insignificant in isolation, mansplaining has pretty negative effects on sexism when it occurs on a large scale - which unfortunately it does. Women are constantly fed implicit messages that their expertise and skill will always be underestimated, which needless to say is a disempowering experience. When you have grown up in a society that constantly reminds women of how men are more capable, it discourages women from pursuing "masculine" career paths for fear of ostracision and failure, hence further cementing the harmful gender divide in the workforce.

Although Senator Katy Gallagher has received mixed review on how she handled the situation, calling out mansplaining when it occurs in the public arena is an important step in preventing men from accidentally adding to the oppression of women. Although that may sound a little drastic, the important thing is to understand how "sexism" and other forms of oppression aren't one definitive act, they are a conglomeration of a thousand everyday instances of discrimination, aggression and power imbalance. 

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Hannah