How this phrase originated is much less important than how it often functions in effect which is: “I have no duty to make any effort to understand you, in fact, I’m allowed to intentionally or recklessly misinterpret what you say”. I guess the point is that circumventing this requires extra labour, ie. “I’m not saying men have it worse, but..”
I think overtly politicized contexts in which people are responding to a long history of asymmetric demands for interpretive labor are not the right place to start. We’d be better off focusing on mundane examples where people spend most of their time, like school or work or talking with their friends.
How this phrase originated is much less important than how it often functions in effect which is: “I have no duty to make any effort to understand you, in fact, I’m allowed to intentionally or recklessly misinterpret what you say”. I guess the point is that circumventing this requires extra labour, ie. “I’m not saying men have it worse, but..”
I think overtly politicized contexts in which people are responding to a long history of asymmetric demands for interpretive labor are not the right place to start. We’d be better off focusing on mundane examples where people spend most of their time, like school or work or talking with their friends.