You may have noticed that we’ve been afflicted with a series of “reality” TV shows that have people come on your telly and belt out a tune in hopes of being tomorrow’s forgotten pop star, today.
Instead of that, how about we have a show which features our world’s best Mansplainers, mansplaining to women how screwdrivers work, The Anglo-Zulu War, spatulas.
Just think of the things we could learn while keeping our big yaps shut!
Just imagine: “TOP MANSPLAINER!” and it’s off-shoot: “IRON MANSPLAINER!”
Mansplaining (a blend of the word man and the informal form splaining of the verb explaining) means “(of a man) to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner”.[1] [2][3][4] Lily Rothman of The Atlanticdefines it as “explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman”.[5] Author Rebecca Solnit ascribes the phenomenon to a combination of “overconfidence and cluelessness”.[6]
In its original use, mansplaining differed from other forms of condescension in that it is rooted in the sexist assumption that a man is likely to be more knowledgeable than a woman.[7] However, it has come to be used more broadly, often applied when a man takes a condescending tone in an explanation to anyone, regardless of the age or gender of the intended recipients: a “man ‘splaining” can be delivered to any audience.[2] In 2010 it was named by the New York Times as one of its “Words of the Year”.[8]