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I can always tell between when thoughts are (bonus thoughts) or when they’re condescending. Most the time it’s neither, but there are some assholes.
Then there’s my wife for whom it’s both. I’m the idiot she has to explain her complicated thoughts to.
Isn’t mansplaining just being condescending?
In theory yes, in practice some people use the term very broadly.
IMO, it’s just being overly confident and stubborn in your explanation of something. specifically in relation to the two sexes (or genders, depending on the scenario)
Anything else just doesn’t apply. But i also have a pretty strict definition of anything like this tbh.
Poor communication often by men. Assuming the other is uninformed and then not picking up on cues from them, taking the explanation way too far.
That’s rather broad i think. Like are we including people who don’t socially communicate very well? Like autistic people for example. I like to define things specifically enough that they have an explicit category. I don’t interact with people physically very often, i’m not good on picking up cues, and often just completely ignore their physical state, because i’m in the middle of doing something else.
Forgive me if i’m rather brazen here, but like, just fucking tell me i’m being a dumbass and explaining something i don’t need to. It’s fine.
….oh
Third option: Neurotypical comms major
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Is bolding every other word an ADHD thing or some zoomer thing
I think it’s a form of ADHD over-clarifying.
You don’t have to mansplain it to everybody.
You don’t have to adhdsplain it to everybody.
Makes reading it very jittery for me, like if it was 👏 this 👏 sorta 👏 text
I’m an old millennial AuDHD and I have to resist the urge to use bold and italics everywhere for different kinds of emphasis. I’d use even more variations when available (text size, colors).
When I was younger, I used to do the same in analog form with multi colored pens when taking notes.
I don’t often bold comments, but i do like using italics and sometimes all caps to EMPHASIZE an important part. I guess the difference for me is whether it’s something I get fired up over like bodily autonomy. I use caps to emphasize more than italics.
In a regular discussion or if I’m just overexplaining something, I stick to italics. (and if I feel something needs additional clarification, but also maybe the reader wants to skip because it’s not really necessary, I’ll use parenthesis to show where you can skip to)
(it’s parentheses all the way down)
Oh! Same. You cannot portray the nuances of speech easily through text. I often feel like my intentions may be misconstrued if I don’t emphasize or elaborate, lol. I still have an array of colored pens for personal and close friend/family use!
You can read the bold parts only and still understand the text
Tried it. It didn’t work
I feel called out.
I am so repetitive when explaining things or telling stories, it is awful.
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that’s a thing, sure, but at least personally most of the time it’s neither of these, it’s “i have so much knowledge of this topic lodged inside my brain that it’s fighting to escape and i have a profound need to talk about it to others, and there is no greater joy in life than having a person ask follow-up questions”
That sounds like you may too few people in your life to talk a lot and deeply to? Or you simply have a way higher urge to talk than the average person
And it would be so much better if that something was something others actually find interesting. Instead its something esoteric like energy storage solutions, or the difference between b550 and x570. I was once asked, “what’s the difference between m-ATX and mini-ITX?” And I knew way to much about it to be socially healthy…
This is what I like about the makerspace community. We get a lot of new members who almost reflectively react to the perceived “WTF are they talking about, why won’t they shut up?” vibe that most people give off. It’s an amazing trainwreck when they realise that they are not only not annoying people with it, but that people have an active interest!
m-ATX is if you need a computer without excessive IO, mini-ITX is when you have to choose between proper VRM and a second DIMM slot. Oh, and pay double for less than half the real estate.
you will fucking love sociology and philosophy then.
the cycle goes something like this:
- You write a shitty book about philosophy.
- Someone else reads your shitty book. Decides they have a lot of thoughts on your shitty book, and then write their own shitty book about it.
- You then read that book, because now reading is the only thing you do in your time ever (on account of the philosophy) and now you have more thoughts on the topic, and so you write another shitty book.
And this is how we get shit like “incars” philosophy is truly incredible.
My dad does the opposite of mansplaining, he explains things using terminology and concepts that are way above my level of understanding and gets frustrated when I ask too many clarifying questions or when I struggle to catch on.
It fucked with me pretty bad growing up and in an effort not to put other people through that I tend to assume people know little about esoteric subjects I’m talking about and try to explain things in a way the general layperson would understand. If they let on that they seem familiar with the subject then I adjust but I do often worry I’m coming off as being condescending :-\
I tend to assume people know little about esoteric subjects I’m talking about and try to explain things in a way the general layperson would understand. If they let on that they seem familiar with the subject then I adjust but I do often worry I’m coming off as being condescending :-\
I do the same thing. I feel like I suck at explaining things, because I am so deeply into a few things, and shallowly into a ton of things, I have no idea what the average layperson knows. When I’m explaining how I solve a Rubik’s cube, do I use the word algorithm? Do people know what algorithm means?
How much does the average person know about space travel? I got into KSP at a relatively young age, so I have no idea if most people are aware that to get to orbit you have to go really fast sideways. I have no idea how many people think that astronauts could drop something off of the ISS onto the planet. Can I use the phrase ∆v? How deeply am I going to have to explain the concept of ∆v?
I think the most complex thing that I can reasonably explain is what a parsec is, but it still takes like 3 paragraphs, and that’s assuming I don’t have to explain the concept of using degrees to measure how far apart things appear to be in your field of vision. Which I genuinely don’t know whether that’s general knowledge or not.
Relevant XKCD.
I tend to just lean into the fact that I can’t explain things well and get as vague as possible.
“Hey honey, how was work?”
“Not bad, did a thing that lead to another thing needing to be done and broke all of the things at the place.”
No I mansplain because too many dumb fucks in my life will tell me they understand what I mean and then when I explain it anyway they have no idea what I meant.
Sucks to suck stupid people ruined it for everyone now y’all have to listen to explanations regardless.
So, everyone suffers because you surround yourself with people that you think are beneath you?
The thing is that there are almost an infinite number of things you can learn and you only have enough time to learn a few of them. So if I talk to someone else, there is a very small chance that person spent their limited time learning the exact same things I did. Of course, this depends on context. At work I assume that the people who also work in the quite specific niche I’m in have a large overlap in knowledge, but a random person I meet anywhere else probably won’t even be aware that this thing I know a lot about is even a thing. Not because they are stupid but because they spent their time learning other stuff I know fuck all about.
I don’t think anyone is beneath me but the amount of times I’ve gone through the aforementioned scenario.
"Hey do you understand how to do x?
“Yeah sure!”
Proceeds to not even slightly understand how to do x
“Hey this is how you do x”
“STOP EXPLAINING I ALREADY KNOW”
In reality it’s more of a 50/50 whether I actually explain it after they’ve fucked it up because I just can’t be bothered but a lot of the time if someone fucks it up it falls on me.
I should also say this is mainly a work thing. I don’t generally do it to random people.
You forgot about the part of option 2 where you realize midway through explaining that the other person either understood and you misread the situation, or they just don’t care, but now you’ve gotten too far into the explanation and you just have to power through even though literally every fiber of your being is telling you to shut up
… wait
In my experience, they usually lose interest partway through the clarification and then later ask three questions that were covered while they weren’t paying attention.
Yeah… Explaining things the other person doesn’t care about…
My wife called me on that earlier today. “I know you need to ADHD info dump on me, but it’s time to wrap it up.”
That’s sweet.
I’m very lucky to have a partner that’s helping me manage and understand my ADHD!
Also the need to include irrelevant context and to overly correct yourself on irrelevant details.
“So I learned this from a coworker who drove a blue car, or was it red? Either way it was definitely a 1993 Honda Civic. Or '94. Definitely from the early 90s. I could tell when they got to work because the brakes sounded like a duck that got hit by a rock, not that I’ve ever thrown a rock at a duck! I did chase a goose away from my dog with a stick once. That dog was fearless in every situation except against birds. I never found out what breed he was but probably a shepherd mix. I remember the day my parents brought him home…”
Why you guys calling me out like that?
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This is what the case is 9 times out of 10.
Mansplaining is a thing, sure. lit happens. But I think a key aspect of it is talking down to someone. Its explaining things like how to turn on a computer or telling an engineer how to do addition.
My head is filled with mostly useless facts. I’ve learned that if im talking to someone about something I’m interested in chances are they’ll have never heard of it or no nothing about it. So I make sure to ask things like: do you know much about x? Or have you heard of you before?
It gives me an idea of how much I’ll need to explain. Ive had a few instances where someone has gotten indignant to the question. To which I normally reply by jumping right past first principles and into to the heart of it. Cue confused look.
I’m right there with you, but I can’t ever seem to thread the needle. Like in your Matrix example I have had people get offended by a question like that.
More generally speaking, I think it’s so difficult because a lot of people aren’t actually all that interested in learning or communicating in a way where a mutual understanding of each other’s base reality/knowledge are understood. They prefer to operate on their innate or learned social cues and prefer making assumptions or reading between the lines of what the other person is saying. Or in modern parlance, they just go by the vibes.
I have watched two people completely talk past each other and misunderstand the other person and yet they both seemed to come out of the conversation pleased with the interaction so many times. It’s baffling to me.
In theory, asking them first makes sense, but when you’re me, and your nerdy interest is in stuff like nuclear reactors and linux. You don’t bother asking because 90% of the time, you either know who you’re talking to, and can assume that they have a similar level of knowledge, or you assume they don’t because you’re pretty certain they don’t and it works well 99% of the time.
I want to tell people this sometimes, but I figure they’ll just think I’m mansplaining mansplaining.
Not really. When a dude pulls the “sorry, I’m neurodivergent and can talk way too much about this” or “I’m sorry I struggle with getting my thoughts clear to other people so I can overexplain” I’m a lot more sympathetic. I really think it’s best to think of mansplaining as gendered preemptive assumption of lack of knowledge
Just NDOC NDOC some more
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