In general I disagree with your remarks, but the only one I feel we can make progress on is probably:
And I’m sure I’m “mansplaining,” a sexist term which boils down to trivializing male perspective.
You know, I’m pretty sure it’s sometimes used that way, but I’m also pretty sure that there’s an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
Why do I say this? First, I’ve seen examples of it among my coworkers. Second, I’ve experienced first-hand the equivalent phenomena where straight people try to comment on what they think my situation is like as if they know what’s going on, and end up being completely wrong.
Now I’d agree that the term has become inflated sometimes to mean any negative male reaction to a female narrative, but that’s just an argument for deflating it, not an argument that the inflation is universal, and that legitimate examples of illegitimate negative male reactions don’t exist.
I’m also pretty sure that there’s an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
People certainly explain things in a tone of certitude from positions of ignorance, like, all the time. And I find it plausible that this is more common among men since exuding competence and knowledge tends to be more important for male status and men seem to be more concerned with “winning” arguments than women. But I don’t see any good reason to make the phenomenon about the relationship between genders. I’m male. My male friends “mansplain” to me all the time. I “mansplain” to them. But most of my friends are highly intelligent, opinionated women—and all of them “mansplain” to me too.
It’s a bad epistemic habit and often disrespectful. It’s talking to seem impressive instead of talking to learn or share. It’s important for rationalists to avoid it. But I think it’s really absurd to suggest it is something only men do—to the point of referring to it as “mansplaining”. Especially since the issues on which -in my experience- women most often talk with certitude from a place of ignorance is gender politics, particularly regarding the experiences and motivations of men.
I detest the term “mansplaining” because it conflates gender issues and errors. It’s better to point out actual problems with what’s being said.
As a side issue, though, when I was trying to find out whether mansplaining might refer to something real, I did notice on NPR shows that the people who called in and took up more time by using obvious statements to lay groundwork for their questions were typically men.
Personally, I detest it because it exists in order to avoid having to point out actual problems with what’s being said. It’s a form of ad hominem, really.
In addition, I think the use of “mansplaining” as a signal that just about anything a man can say will be unwelcome. It’s a way of eliminating relevant input, and is more likely to silence men who care about behaving well than those who don’t care.
I think badly of anyone who uses the word as a straightforward description.
This is what I hear as a man when someone uses the word mansplaining. I don’t like being implicitly told that anything I say or think is irrelevant and will be ignored.
I am not at all surprised that men are more likely to exhibit this behavior. Likely for the same reasons men tend to be more adversarial in discussions and debates (on Less Wrong for instance).
But I think it’s really absurd to suggest it is something only men do—to the point of referring to it as “mansplaining”.
Sure. Similarly, I think it’s absurd to suggest that complaining loudly and aggressively is something only women do, to the point of referring to it as “bitching.”
And yet, terms like this are common in our linguistic environment.
Of course, that’s not in and of itself a good reason to accept them. My culture no longer uses “Jew someone down” as a way of describing sharp negotiation practices, for example, because it’s seen as expressing and encouraging a view of Jews that we collectively no longer endorse. (Though we still use “gyp”in similar ways.) Many communities reject “bitching” for similar reasons as applied to women. And we could certainly reject “mansplaining” as harmful to men.
But it’s also worth asking where our energies are most usefully spent.
I’m male. My male friends “mansplain” to me all the time. I “mansplain” to them. But most of my friends are highly intelligent, opinionated women—and all of them “mansplain” to me too.
The reason for distinguish this genre of discourse (which one might merely call “being an ass”) from mansplaining and its related categories (e.g., the other day I overheard in a Starbucks a guy solicit two Asian students, ask them their “ethnic origin”, and then reassure them in all seriousness that “We’ll send that Dennis Rodman guy back to patch things up.”) is that the explanation revolves around the minority party’s everyday life. Therefore, e.g., your male friends don’t mansplain to you (provided you’re not a woman) because you all live in the context of being male.
Calling it all merely “being an ass” conceals the political and social mechanisms lurking under the surface of the exchange.
It’s a bad epistemic habit and often disrespectful.
The latter—sometimes. The former? Carving reality at the joints is a good epistemic habit, and I think this does the trick.
But I think it’s really absurd to suggest it is something only men do—to the point of referring to it as “mansplaining”.
Of course “being an ass” isn’t something only men do but because of the power differential, it’s socially acceptable for men to call women out on being wrong, and not the reverse. If you refuse to see the politics, then of course it all looks the same.
Perhaps we could use a new word “blackstealing” for describing when a black person steals something from a white person.
I assure you that I am fully aware that sometimes also black people steal from black people, or white people from black people, or white people from white people, etc… but that is irrelevant here, because those acts just don’t have the same qualia. Blackstealing is a specific phenomenon and deserves its name in our discourse.
(To avoid misunderstanding, this comment is not meant seriously, it just serves to illustrate the offensiveness of “mansplaining”. I just had to use an analogy, because offending men is not considered an offense.)
(More meta: This comment is probably just another example of mansplaining. It would have to be written by a woman to deserve a serious thought.)
Nice try, but “black crime” (see 1st paragraph) is actually a thing that people study.
Now, if you wanted it to mean specifically racially motivated stealing, there’s that too:
Also published by the federal government is the Known Offender’s Race by Bias Motivation, 2009.[22] According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report database, in 2010 58% of hate crime offenders were white (including latinos), 18% of offenders were black, 8.9% were of individuals of multiple races and 1% of offenders were Native Americans.[23] The report also reveals that 48% of all hate crime offenders were motivated by the victim’s race, while 18% were based on the victim’s religion, and another 18% were based on the victim’s sexual orientation.[24] The report states that among hate crime offenses motivated by race, 70% were composed of anti-black bias, while 17.7% were of anti-white bias, and 5% were of anti-Asian or Pacific Islander bias.[24]
Oh well.
(To avoid misunderstanding, this comment is not meant seriously, it just serves to illustrate the offensiveness of “mansplaining”. I just had to use an analogy, because offending men is not considered an offense.)
It is a pity your satire fell flat.
EDIT: Also, regarding:
I assure you that I am fully aware that sometimes also black people steal from black people, or white people from black people, or white people from white people, etc… but that is irrelevant here, because those acts just don’t have the same qualia.
“Qualia”? Goals, motivations, and revealed preferences (that is, the things that separate “explaining” from “mansplaining” and from “splaning” in general) aren’t qualia.
And because base rates are important, according to the CIA factbook, the US is
white 79.96%, black 12.85%, Asian 4.43%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.97%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.18%, two or more races 1.61% (July 2007 estimate)
My Yvain-inspired view of this is that there are several different levels of power, and social justice dogma tends to conflate them. This sometimes results in things like trying to solve things like institutional, situational poverty using discourse, and in pushes that will leave one side without self-respect and the other side no better off materially than before.
If they push intersectionality to its logical conclusion, they’ll actually be paying attention to what’s happening in individual lives. I don’t have a strong opinion about whether this is likely to happen.
I’ve noticed a tendency for groups to join a very specific political cluster (Kind of blue-green-ish maybe?) once they find out about and internalize intersectionality. This happened with New Atheism, and while I think it’s for the better, I don’t like it. It also seems to result in Inclusivity Wars being incredibly messy and inordinately high-stakes.
My notion is that intersectionality allowed people to bring more of their identity into a discussion than previously—for example, allowing that a person could be both black and homosexual rather than having to choose one.
If the process is allowed to go to its logical conclusion (not something you should count on with human beings), then a person’s whole experience becomes relevant.
I have a notion that one of the things that goes wrong in social justice movements is that they don’t allow enough for specialization—everyone is supposed to care equally about a huge list of injustices.
I’ve wondered about the history of the acceptance of the idea of intersectionality. This seems like a safe place to ask.
The New Atheists: this is just my perspective: Started out with becoming aware that New Atheists should cooperate with other social issues, and should try to appeal to people outside of white, educated, ex-Christians, combined with (correct) realization of problems within community: Elevatorgate, skeptics uninterested in actually useful applications of skepticism to social issues, Dawkin’s Islamophobia, etc.
Meanwhile, New Atheism ceased to be lonely dissent. Bunch of talk happened, some factions adopted intersectionality and kind of just merged with the rest of modern quasiradical/moderate Social Justice, others went contrarian on other stuff and became (un-thoughtful) reactionaries, etc.
My (somewhat fuzzy) criticism of intersectionality is basically that it discourages keeping ones identity small, specifically on stuff that is usual Social Justice fare, and tends to encourage the congealment of a big body of politics where somebody can always spam ‘but that doesn’t include ’ or ‘but that wouldn’t work for ’ whenever they run into an idea they disagree with.
That said, I do think that the basic concept is important and needs to be understood.
As far as I can tell, some of the leading New Atheists decided to expand their identity to include certain political stances, as well as certain political labels. By doing so they formed a distinct in-group, and immediately became embroiled in an escalating series of in-group vs. out-group skirmishes. At present, as far as I can tell, New Atheists in both groups spend more time on inter-group fighting than on advancing their original goals.
The reason for distinguish this genre of discourse (which one might merely call “being an ass”) from mansplaining and its related categories (e.g., the other day I overheard in a Starbucks a guy solicit two Asian students, ask them their “ethnic origin”, and then reassure them in all seriousness that “We’ll send that Dennis Rodman guy back to patch things up.”) is that the explanation revolves around the minority party’s everyday life. Therefore, e.g., your male friends don’t mansplain to you (provided you’re not a woman) because you all live in the context of being male.
Calling it all merely “being an ass” conceals the political and social mechanisms lurking under the surface of the exchange.
I understand that this is the position of those who like using the term. But my comment was explicitly denying that there is any obvious political or social import lurking under the surface of the exchange. My position is precisely that what is called “mansplaining” is just “being an ass” and that there is no need to attribute any darker, oppressive content to the exchange. Your reply is begging the question.
The latter—sometimes. The former? Carving reality at the joints is a good epistemic habit, and I think this does the trick.
I actually wasn’t talking about “using the term ‘mansplaining’” here. I was talking about the behavior the word refers to. Obviously, I don’t think it carves reality at the joints, though.
Of course “being an ass” isn’t something only men do but because of the power differential, it’s socially acceptable for men to call women out on being wrong, and not the reverse.
I’m aware there are parts of the world where this is the case and I’m sure there are retrograde parts of the West where it is true as well. But this claim is totally and hilariously laughable in my social circle and demographic. Most of my friends are women. I get called out for being wrong all the time.
You know, I’m pretty sure it’s sometimes used that way, but I’m also pretty sure that there’s an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
This is part of humanity. It’s not unique to men.
I’ve experienced first-hand the equivalent phenomena where straight people try to comment on what they think my situation is like as if they know what’s going on, and end up being completely wrong.
Being bisexual, I know exactly what you’re referring to. However, again, the typical mind fallacy is not unique to straight people, or men.
Now I’d agree that the term has become inflated sometimes to mean any negative male reaction to a female narrative, but that’s just an argument for deflating it, not an argument that the inflation is universal, and that legitimate examples of illegitimate negative male reactions don’t exist.
The issue with this argument is that “male” doesn’t belong in your last sentence. Illegitimate arguments exist. Point out why they’re illegitimate. If you can’t, you have no business responding to the argument.
“Mansplaining” is sexist. It’s kind of like the term “hysterical.” Cognitive dissonance is encountering somebody who regularly uses the term “mansplaining” complaining about the sexist origins of the word “hysterical.”
It’s better (although it still fails to reject an argument on its merits, or lack thereof), but I’m not sure the term can really be rehabilitated in such a manner. First, the connotation has already been established among too many people, and it’s bad, and second, most of those I’ve encountered who use that term write it as `splaining.
It comes across less as addressing a problem and more as hiding it. It becomes a code word—whitewashing the explicit sexism, but maintaining the implicit.
The other problem is that when a problem has become a topic of public discussion, people say the same things again and again. It’s not just the other side who uses bingo cards.
(“Bingo cards” is a term used to deride your opponents saying the usual things.)
“Mansplaining” is sexist. It’s kind of like the term “hysterical.”
Well… I’d guess that many of the people who use the word “hysterical” aren’t aware of its etymology, or at least aren’t thinking about it. (Is the word “bad” *ist because it originally meant “hermaphrodite”?)
Cognitive dissonance is encountering somebody who regularly uses the term “mansplaining” complaining about the sexist origins of the word “hysterical.”
The root of the word refers to the Greek word hystera, which refers to the uterus. Hysteria -originally- referred to female sexual dysfunction, but medical quackery resulted in becoming a catch-all diagnosis in women experiencing unidentified symptoms.
Given that the treatment was using vibrators or other mechanisms of inducing orgasm, and given that the culture of the era was that men weren’t supposed to desire sex/sex was demeaning to them, and women were supposed to be sex-crazy (the reverse is actually a fairly recent phenomenon—watch older movies and you’ll still see traces of these attitudes), I suspect that women were frequently more than a little complicit in that particular bit of quackery.
Freud and other contemporary psychologists started using one of the quack versions of the word to describe emotional issues, and it stuck.
I feel I’ve responded to most of this in the sibling thread (tl;dr: fallacy of gray, ignores social/political contexts, not useful to generalize as “being an ass”), except:
Illegitimate arguments exist. Point out why they’re illegitimate. If you can’t, you have no business responding to the argument.
A wrong argument is still wrong, even if the social/political cost of responding to it is too high. A correct counterargument is still correct, even if the social/political cost of stating it is too high.
Cognitive dissonance is encountering somebody who regularly uses the term “mansplaining” complaining about the sexist origins of the word “hysterical.”
It’s cognitive dissonance provided you ignore the political, social, and historical context of each utterance.
I assume you believe that your belief in the significance of that context is rational. What evidence could I present that your understanding of the context is incorrect?
Because absent that, I don’t see this argument as being fruitful. Your essential argument comes down to the point that I lack sufficient perspective pretty much on the basis that my perspective doesn’t match yours.
(I will confess that my own perspective probably won’t change. There was some fucked up shit in my childhood which I won’t get into that is going to permanently color my attitudes; suffice to say I have little sympathy for people who insist misandry can’t happen or is somehow different or less significant because context. Those are my experiences you’re trivializing there.)
What evidence could I present that your understanding of the context is incorrect?
For example, evidence that women were a dominant group during the period when “hysteria” came into use. Then I would agree that “hysteria” is largely equivalent to “mansplaining.”
Your essential argument comes down to the point that I lack sufficient perspective pretty much on the basis that my perspective doesn’t match yours.
I find that I’m confused. I thought we were talking about whether or not social and political forces were relevant (in a “carving reality at the joints” sense) to interpreting a certain kind of behavior.
suffice to say I have little sympathy for people who insist misandry can’t happen or is somehow different or less significant because context. Those are my experiences you’re trivializing there.
Excuse me, but I’ve not said anything about your experiences, and I do in fact believe that misandry exists and is significant.
I just don’t know how to talk about either “women being told things they already know by ignorant men” or “men being told things they already know by ignorant women” without actually distinguishing the two as subclasses of the class of actions I’ve called elsewhere “being an ass.”
I find that I’m confused. I thought we were talking about whether or not social and political forces were relevant (in a “carving reality at the joints” sense) to interpreting a certain kind of behavior.
Excerpting something you’ve written in another comment: “If you refuse to see the politics, then of course it all looks the same.” Am I mistaken in taking your position on the matter as that all gender relations should be viewed through historical context?
Excuse me, but I’ve not said anything about your experiences, and I do in fact believe that misandry exists and is significant.
You are, however, insisting that it’s different/less significant. My statement was addressing a broad class of gender relations contexts that I cannot accept. My childhood self had neither input into nor knowledge of that context, and your position reads to me as requiring that historical context makes my experiences less significant than an analogous experience by a girl. I refuse to accept a worldview which dehumanizes me.
I just don’t know how to talk about either “women being told things they already know by ignorant men” or “men being told things they already know by ignorant women” without actually distinguishing the two as subclasses of the class of actions I’ve called elsewhere “being an ass.”
Why do you insist on carving reality at those particular joints, however? Why are woman-man and man-woman the appropriate places to carve reality? You’re coming into the discussion -assuming- those joints are appropriate places to carve.
“Mansplaining” is offensive, and it’s used by precisely that group of people who believe man-woman and woman-man are appropriate places to carve reality. I can only take it as a -deliberate attack on my gender-. People using the word “hysteria” aren’t generally aware of its original meaning or intent. The words are no longer the same. “Hysteria” is no longer reasonably offensive, because it is used by people who do not know that it could be; it takes education to even know that it is something you could take offense at. “Mansplaining” on the other hand is used almost exclusively by people who know exactly what they’re doing, and it is almost exclusively directed at people who know exactly what it means when they’re doing it.
You are, however, insisting that it’s different/less significant.
Different? Yes, of course it’s different; it’s a different activity with different characteristics that occurs in substantially different ways. Less significant? No.
Why do you insist on carving reality at those particular joints, however?
Because that’s where we started when we started talking about mansplaining. (In fact, I also made a gay-straight distinction that is also not completely true.) It’s not the only place, but it is a place, and I’ve tried to argue here that treating both classes of interaction (or, more broadly, the whole continuum of interaction) as a single class is not helpful.
I’m done being accused of misandry when all I’ve said generalizes to a broad variety of classes of interaction and kinds of power struggles within many different groups.
EDIT: Perhaps I should have explicitly said I was tapping out. Suffice it to say I agree with very little of OrphanWilde’s interpretation of the views I’ve presented in this thread.
I haven’t accused you of misandry. (Seriously, this should be an “I am confused” moment. Please stop trying to fit what I am saying into a predefined narrative.)
What I’ve accused you of, effectively, is supporting a dominance hierarchy that dehumanizes me, that makes my experiences less significant. More than one guy has said in this post that he finds the term “mansplaining” to be offensive, and a strong signal that his gender will be held against him, and anything he says will be ignored. Why do you persist in defending it? Because you insist on a dominance hierarchy that makes their experiences matter less than… what exactly? The ability of feminists to be offensive? Because you think being in a dominant class confers an immunity against hurt?
The dominance hierarchy didn’t protect me from an emotionally abusive misandrist. It didn’t protect me from the college professor who routinely flunked or kicked out every male student who ever made the mistake of taking a class with her without asking around about her reputation first. It doesn’t protect me from rape or violence. It does not, in fact, confer any protections at all. Instead, it strips them away, and then I get thrown to the bottom of the pile and told “We’ll get to you when we’re satisfied everybody else’s problems are solved first”.
And hell, I don’t even demand anybody fix the problems; I’m not a crusader, nor do I want to be, because the pay is shit and everybody hates people who stand up for men, if only because they think it’s distracting attention from the “real” problems. All I want is for the people who claim to be fixing these problems in general to stop heaping shit on top of me, actively working to make things worse. I really don’t think it’s all that unreasonable, nor do I think it’s unreasonable to call out the people who -are- actively making things worse.
I’m also pretty sure that there’s an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
Well, yes. It also involves women explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance. Because the category in question is, in fact, that of people explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
I fail to see why being certain while uninformed and powerful vs. being certain while uninformed and powerless is a good Schelling point. I suspect this is why that comment was downvoted.
If you’re not going to give reasons why you don’t think it’s a valuable ontology, then there’s nothing more to say.
The comment was clearly downvoted for political reasons. I should never have wasted so much time arguing with someone who had admitted they were mind-killed. Please don’t act like karma is remotely representative of the correctness of comments.
of course it was. the entire concept and topic of mansplaining is political. It’s overtly a status move, seeking to reduce the status of men explaining to women. We can ignore whether or not this should be the case, or whether the current disequilbirium in the splainosphere towards men doing the splaining is something that deserves to be corrected, but to say that “mansplaining” carves reality at any joints but political ones seems untrue to me.
I assure you that I am fully aware that sometimes also black people steal from black people, or white people from black people, or white people from white people, etc… but that is irrelevant here, because those acts just don’t have the same qualia.
“Qualia”? Goals, motivations, and revealed preferences (that is, the things that separate “explaining” from “mansplaining” and from “splaning” in general) aren’t qualia.
See the sibling thread. I’ve already wasted enough time on this without regurgitating it and promptly losing karma on another fools’ errand. Asking me to do so as if I haven’t already is disingenuous, as is implying my failure to comply with your demand means I’m unable to do so.
Sorry, I can’t seem to find it. Could you please quote it?
Everyone, please don’t downvote paper for answering this request, downvote the original thread if you feel the argument is downvote-worthy and haven’t already done so.
In general I disagree with your remarks, but the only one I feel we can make progress on is probably:
You know, I’m pretty sure it’s sometimes used that way, but I’m also pretty sure that there’s an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
Why do I say this? First, I’ve seen examples of it among my coworkers. Second, I’ve experienced first-hand the equivalent phenomena where straight people try to comment on what they think my situation is like as if they know what’s going on, and end up being completely wrong.
Now I’d agree that the term has become inflated sometimes to mean any negative male reaction to a female narrative, but that’s just an argument for deflating it, not an argument that the inflation is universal, and that legitimate examples of illegitimate negative male reactions don’t exist.
People certainly explain things in a tone of certitude from positions of ignorance, like, all the time. And I find it plausible that this is more common among men since exuding competence and knowledge tends to be more important for male status and men seem to be more concerned with “winning” arguments than women. But I don’t see any good reason to make the phenomenon about the relationship between genders. I’m male. My male friends “mansplain” to me all the time. I “mansplain” to them. But most of my friends are highly intelligent, opinionated women—and all of them “mansplain” to me too.
It’s a bad epistemic habit and often disrespectful. It’s talking to seem impressive instead of talking to learn or share. It’s important for rationalists to avoid it. But I think it’s really absurd to suggest it is something only men do—to the point of referring to it as “mansplaining”. Especially since the issues on which -in my experience- women most often talk with certitude from a place of ignorance is gender politics, particularly regarding the experiences and motivations of men.
I detest the term “mansplaining” because it conflates gender issues and errors. It’s better to point out actual problems with what’s being said.
As a side issue, though, when I was trying to find out whether mansplaining might refer to something real, I did notice on NPR shows that the people who called in and took up more time by using obvious statements to lay groundwork for their questions were typically men.
Personally, I detest it because it exists in order to avoid having to point out actual problems with what’s being said. It’s a form of ad hominem, really.
In addition, I think the use of “mansplaining” as a signal that just about anything a man can say will be unwelcome. It’s a way of eliminating relevant input, and is more likely to silence men who care about behaving well than those who don’t care.
I think badly of anyone who uses the word as a straightforward description.
This is what I hear as a man when someone uses the word mansplaining. I don’t like being implicitly told that anything I say or think is irrelevant and will be ignored.
I am not at all surprised that men are more likely to exhibit this behavior. Likely for the same reasons men tend to be more adversarial in discussions and debates (on Less Wrong for instance).
Sure. Similarly, I think it’s absurd to suggest that complaining loudly and aggressively is something only women do, to the point of referring to it as “bitching.”
And yet, terms like this are common in our linguistic environment.
Of course, that’s not in and of itself a good reason to accept them. My culture no longer uses “Jew someone down” as a way of describing sharp negotiation practices, for example, because it’s seen as expressing and encouraging a view of Jews that we collectively no longer endorse. (Though we still use “gyp”in similar ways.) Many communities reject “bitching” for similar reasons as applied to women. And we could certainly reject “mansplaining” as harmful to men.
But it’s also worth asking where our energies are most usefully spent.
I sense a fallacy of gray coming.
The reason for distinguish this genre of discourse (which one might merely call “being an ass”) from mansplaining and its related categories (e.g., the other day I overheard in a Starbucks a guy solicit two Asian students, ask them their “ethnic origin”, and then reassure them in all seriousness that “We’ll send that Dennis Rodman guy back to patch things up.”) is that the explanation revolves around the minority party’s everyday life. Therefore, e.g., your male friends don’t mansplain to you (provided you’re not a woman) because you all live in the context of being male.
Calling it all merely “being an ass” conceals the political and social mechanisms lurking under the surface of the exchange.
The latter—sometimes. The former? Carving reality at the joints is a good epistemic habit, and I think this does the trick.
Of course “being an ass” isn’t something only men do but because of the power differential, it’s socially acceptable for men to call women out on being wrong, and not the reverse. If you refuse to see the politics, then of course it all looks the same.
Perhaps we could use a new word “blackstealing” for describing when a black person steals something from a white person.
I assure you that I am fully aware that sometimes also black people steal from black people, or white people from black people, or white people from white people, etc… but that is irrelevant here, because those acts just don’t have the same qualia. Blackstealing is a specific phenomenon and deserves its name in our discourse.
(To avoid misunderstanding, this comment is not meant seriously, it just serves to illustrate the offensiveness of “mansplaining”. I just had to use an analogy, because offending men is not considered an offense.)
(More meta: This comment is probably just another example of mansplaining. It would have to be written by a woman to deserve a serious thought.)
Nice try, but “black crime” (see 1st paragraph) is actually a thing that people study.
Now, if you wanted it to mean specifically racially motivated stealing, there’s that too:
Oh well.
It is a pity your satire fell flat.
EDIT: Also, regarding:
“Qualia”? Goals, motivations, and revealed preferences (that is, the things that separate “explaining” from “mansplaining” and from “splaning” in general) aren’t qualia.
And because base rates are important, according to the CIA factbook, the US is
It’s a patent absurdity of the social justice dogma that every man has power over every woman.
My Yvain-inspired view of this is that there are several different levels of power, and social justice dogma tends to conflate them. This sometimes results in things like trying to solve things like institutional, situational poverty using discourse, and in pushes that will leave one side without self-respect and the other side no better off materially than before.
If they push intersectionality to its logical conclusion, they’ll actually be paying attention to what’s happening in individual lives. I don’t have a strong opinion about whether this is likely to happen.
I’m… not sure what you mean by that.
I’ve noticed a tendency for groups to join a very specific political cluster (Kind of blue-green-ish maybe?) once they find out about and internalize intersectionality. This happened with New Atheism, and while I think it’s for the better, I don’t like it. It also seems to result in Inclusivity Wars being incredibly messy and inordinately high-stakes.
What happened with the New Atheists?
My notion is that intersectionality allowed people to bring more of their identity into a discussion than previously—for example, allowing that a person could be both black and homosexual rather than having to choose one.
If the process is allowed to go to its logical conclusion (not something you should count on with human beings), then a person’s whole experience becomes relevant.
I have a notion that one of the things that goes wrong in social justice movements is that they don’t allow enough for specialization—everyone is supposed to care equally about a huge list of injustices.
I’ve wondered about the history of the acceptance of the idea of intersectionality. This seems like a safe place to ask.
The New Atheists: this is just my perspective: Started out with becoming aware that New Atheists should cooperate with other social issues, and should try to appeal to people outside of white, educated, ex-Christians, combined with (correct) realization of problems within community: Elevatorgate, skeptics uninterested in actually useful applications of skepticism to social issues, Dawkin’s Islamophobia, etc. Meanwhile, New Atheism ceased to be lonely dissent. Bunch of talk happened, some factions adopted intersectionality and kind of just merged with the rest of modern quasiradical/moderate Social Justice, others went contrarian on other stuff and became (un-thoughtful) reactionaries, etc.
My (somewhat fuzzy) criticism of intersectionality is basically that it discourages keeping ones identity small, specifically on stuff that is usual Social Justice fare, and tends to encourage the congealment of a big body of politics where somebody can always spam ‘but that doesn’t include ’ or ‘but that wouldn’t work for ’ whenever they run into an idea they disagree with.
That said, I do think that the basic concept is important and needs to be understood.
As far as I can tell, some of the leading New Atheists decided to expand their identity to include certain political stances, as well as certain political labels. By doing so they formed a distinct in-group, and immediately became embroiled in an escalating series of in-group vs. out-group skirmishes. At present, as far as I can tell, New Atheists in both groups spend more time on inter-group fighting than on advancing their original goals.
I understand that this is the position of those who like using the term. But my comment was explicitly denying that there is any obvious political or social import lurking under the surface of the exchange. My position is precisely that what is called “mansplaining” is just “being an ass” and that there is no need to attribute any darker, oppressive content to the exchange. Your reply is begging the question.
I actually wasn’t talking about “using the term ‘mansplaining’” here. I was talking about the behavior the word refers to. Obviously, I don’t think it carves reality at the joints, though.
I’m aware there are parts of the world where this is the case and I’m sure there are retrograde parts of the West where it is true as well. But this claim is totally and hilariously laughable in my social circle and demographic. Most of my friends are women. I get called out for being wrong all the time.
This is part of humanity. It’s not unique to men.
Being bisexual, I know exactly what you’re referring to. However, again, the typical mind fallacy is not unique to straight people, or men.
The issue with this argument is that “male” doesn’t belong in your last sentence. Illegitimate arguments exist. Point out why they’re illegitimate. If you can’t, you have no business responding to the argument.
“Mansplaining” is sexist. It’s kind of like the term “hysterical.” Cognitive dissonance is encountering somebody who regularly uses the term “mansplaining” complaining about the sexist origins of the word “hysterical.”
At least some feminists today prefer the term “splaining”, precisely because the behavior isn’t unique to men.
It’s better (although it still fails to reject an argument on its merits, or lack thereof), but I’m not sure the term can really be rehabilitated in such a manner. First, the connotation has already been established among too many people, and it’s bad, and second, most of those I’ve encountered who use that term write it as `splaining.
It comes across less as addressing a problem and more as hiding it. It becomes a code word—whitewashing the explicit sexism, but maintaining the implicit.
The other problem is that when a problem has become a topic of public discussion, people say the same things again and again. It’s not just the other side who uses bingo cards.
(“Bingo cards” is a term used to deride your opponents saying the usual things.)
Well… I’d guess that many of the people who use the word “hysterical” aren’t aware of its etymology, or at least aren’t thinking about it. (Is the word “bad” *ist because it originally meant “hermaphrodite”?)
Yes.
The root of the word refers to the Greek word hystera, which refers to the uterus. Hysteria -originally- referred to female sexual dysfunction, but medical quackery resulted in becoming a catch-all diagnosis in women experiencing unidentified symptoms.
Given that the treatment was using vibrators or other mechanisms of inducing orgasm, and given that the culture of the era was that men weren’t supposed to desire sex/sex was demeaning to them, and women were supposed to be sex-crazy (the reverse is actually a fairly recent phenomenon—watch older movies and you’ll still see traces of these attitudes), I suspect that women were frequently more than a little complicit in that particular bit of quackery.
Freud and other contemporary psychologists started using one of the quack versions of the word to describe emotional issues, and it stuck.
I feel I’ve responded to most of this in the sibling thread (tl;dr: fallacy of gray, ignores social/political contexts, not useful to generalize as “being an ass”), except:
A wrong argument is still wrong, even if the social/political cost of responding to it is too high. A correct counterargument is still correct, even if the social/political cost of stating it is too high.
It’s cognitive dissonance provided you ignore the political, social, and historical context of each utterance.
I assume you believe that your belief in the significance of that context is rational. What evidence could I present that your understanding of the context is incorrect?
Because absent that, I don’t see this argument as being fruitful. Your essential argument comes down to the point that I lack sufficient perspective pretty much on the basis that my perspective doesn’t match yours.
(I will confess that my own perspective probably won’t change. There was some fucked up shit in my childhood which I won’t get into that is going to permanently color my attitudes; suffice to say I have little sympathy for people who insist misandry can’t happen or is somehow different or less significant because context. Those are my experiences you’re trivializing there.)
For example, evidence that women were a dominant group during the period when “hysteria” came into use. Then I would agree that “hysteria” is largely equivalent to “mansplaining.”
I find that I’m confused. I thought we were talking about whether or not social and political forces were relevant (in a “carving reality at the joints” sense) to interpreting a certain kind of behavior.
Excuse me, but I’ve not said anything about your experiences, and I do in fact believe that misandry exists and is significant.
I just don’t know how to talk about either “women being told things they already know by ignorant men” or “men being told things they already know by ignorant women” without actually distinguishing the two as subclasses of the class of actions I’ve called elsewhere “being an ass.”
Excerpting something you’ve written in another comment: “If you refuse to see the politics, then of course it all looks the same.” Am I mistaken in taking your position on the matter as that all gender relations should be viewed through historical context?
You are, however, insisting that it’s different/less significant. My statement was addressing a broad class of gender relations contexts that I cannot accept. My childhood self had neither input into nor knowledge of that context, and your position reads to me as requiring that historical context makes my experiences less significant than an analogous experience by a girl. I refuse to accept a worldview which dehumanizes me.
Why do you insist on carving reality at those particular joints, however? Why are woman-man and man-woman the appropriate places to carve reality? You’re coming into the discussion -assuming- those joints are appropriate places to carve.
“Mansplaining” is offensive, and it’s used by precisely that group of people who believe man-woman and woman-man are appropriate places to carve reality. I can only take it as a -deliberate attack on my gender-. People using the word “hysteria” aren’t generally aware of its original meaning or intent. The words are no longer the same. “Hysteria” is no longer reasonably offensive, because it is used by people who do not know that it could be; it takes education to even know that it is something you could take offense at. “Mansplaining” on the other hand is used almost exclusively by people who know exactly what they’re doing, and it is almost exclusively directed at people who know exactly what it means when they’re doing it.
Different? Yes, of course it’s different; it’s a different activity with different characteristics that occurs in substantially different ways. Less significant? No.
Because that’s where we started when we started talking about mansplaining. (In fact, I also made a gay-straight distinction that is also not completely true.) It’s not the only place, but it is a place, and I’ve tried to argue here that treating both classes of interaction (or, more broadly, the whole continuum of interaction) as a single class is not helpful.
I’m done being accused of misandry when all I’ve said generalizes to a broad variety of classes of interaction and kinds of power struggles within many different groups.
EDIT: Perhaps I should have explicitly said I was tapping out. Suffice it to say I agree with very little of OrphanWilde’s interpretation of the views I’ve presented in this thread.
I haven’t accused you of misandry. (Seriously, this should be an “I am confused” moment. Please stop trying to fit what I am saying into a predefined narrative.)
What I’ve accused you of, effectively, is supporting a dominance hierarchy that dehumanizes me, that makes my experiences less significant. More than one guy has said in this post that he finds the term “mansplaining” to be offensive, and a strong signal that his gender will be held against him, and anything he says will be ignored. Why do you persist in defending it? Because you insist on a dominance hierarchy that makes their experiences matter less than… what exactly? The ability of feminists to be offensive? Because you think being in a dominant class confers an immunity against hurt?
The dominance hierarchy didn’t protect me from an emotionally abusive misandrist. It didn’t protect me from the college professor who routinely flunked or kicked out every male student who ever made the mistake of taking a class with her without asking around about her reputation first. It doesn’t protect me from rape or violence. It does not, in fact, confer any protections at all. Instead, it strips them away, and then I get thrown to the bottom of the pile and told “We’ll get to you when we’re satisfied everybody else’s problems are solved first”.
And hell, I don’t even demand anybody fix the problems; I’m not a crusader, nor do I want to be, because the pay is shit and everybody hates people who stand up for men, if only because they think it’s distracting attention from the “real” problems. All I want is for the people who claim to be fixing these problems in general to stop heaping shit on top of me, actively working to make things worse. I really don’t think it’s all that unreasonable, nor do I think it’s unreasonable to call out the people who -are- actively making things worse.
Well, yes. It also involves women explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance. Because the category in question is, in fact, that of people explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
See here.
I fail to see why being certain while uninformed and powerful vs. being certain while uninformed and powerless is a good Schelling point. I suspect this is why that comment was downvoted.
If you’re not going to give reasons why you don’t think it’s a valuable ontology, then there’s nothing more to say.
The comment was clearly downvoted for political reasons. I should never have wasted so much time arguing with someone who had admitted they were mind-killed. Please don’t act like karma is remotely representative of the correctness of comments.
of course it was. the entire concept and topic of mansplaining is political. It’s overtly a status move, seeking to reduce the status of men explaining to women. We can ignore whether or not this should be the case, or whether the current disequilbirium in the splainosphere towards men doing the splaining is something that deserves to be corrected, but to say that “mansplaining” carves reality at any joints but political ones seems untrue to me.
That’s all I was saying. For instance:
I never would have guessed that anyone could have meant that by “qualia”. I take it to mean the experiential aspect of the world.
If you’re not going to give reasons why you think it’s a valuable ontology, then there’s nothing more to say.
See the sibling thread. I’ve already wasted enough time on this without regurgitating it and promptly losing karma on another fools’ errand. Asking me to do so as if I haven’t already is disingenuous, as is implying my failure to comply with your demand means I’m unable to do so.
Sorry, I can’t seem to find it. Could you please quote it?
Everyone, please don’t downvote paper for answering this request, downvote the original thread if you feel the argument is downvote-worthy and haven’t already done so.
I have, in fact, read the sibling thread, having done so before you linked to it. I’m re-reading it now in case I missed something.