Comment by meddlepal
7 years ago
It's simple:
- most folks in tech are men
- most men date women
- in 2018 any attempt a man makes to explain something to a woman is a candidate for being accused of "mansplaining".
I'll say one other thing:
I honestly have no clue if mansplaining has a more technical definition but in general I see most people interpreting it as a man explaining anything to a woman.
It originated with Rebecca Solnit, who had an experience where a man and she were talking and a book came up that he had read. As he's telling her about the book, she points out that she's the author of the book, and he proceeds to continue explaining the book to her.
I certainly see this happening sometimes. Earlier this month I remember sitting in on a meeting where a boy fresh out of college was trying to explain SQL injection to a (female) senior security engineer.
That said, I think that happens to everybody, albeit disproportionately to women. And now mansplaining has other really silly uses as an epithet, like "a male with expertise is telling me something I don't want to hear" or "a male disagrees with something I believe very strongly."
I’ve most often heard it used in the context a man explaining something that didn’t need explaining in the first place. “If you don’t screw this screw in reallll right, it’ll come loose. And you know what happens if it comes loose right? Well first...” etc etc. It’s an assumed and implied ignorance of the issue at hand
My understanding is that the whole point of the term is to denote explanation that is redundant and caused by a man assuming a woman's incompetence. Like some story about a man explaining a book to the female author of the book.