Mansplaining

Even before reading Solnit’s article I was too aware of "Mansplaining". I have two reoccurring situations of Mansplaining. First my dad, love him to death, but this is probably one of his worst traits. My dad is a retired volunteer fire man.. growing up I was constantly reminded of what was a fire hazard. It literately drove me insane and it still does. Over the summer, both my older sister and I lived at home. My sister sometimes has a bad habbit of turning on the straightener and forgetting about it. Well we were in the bathroom getting ready for dinner and we had both a hair straightener and a curling iron plugged into the outlet. We both walked out of the bathroom and into our bedrooms to continue getting ready while the tools heated up. All the sudden I hear someone come up the stairs and go into the bathroom. It was my dad. When he comes out he has an irritated look on his face "Girls, why are the straightener and curling iron on if neither of you are in here using them?" We tried to tell him that they were heating up but he cut us off, "They don't heat up, you plug them in and they're on. You know that they can not only burn my countertop but set the whole house on fire. Pay attention to what you have plugged in. You don't just walk away from it. " First of all, he get his hair buzzed cut. He doesn't even use hair tools. Secondly, You don't just plug them in and they're ready.. its like an oven it has to heat up. Thirdly, clearly we know that they can cause a fire... I think that was drilled into our head since kindergarten. Regardless he still felt the need to explain such a simple, common knowledge thing.

Although he irritates both my sister and I when he "Mansplains", we cant help but laugh when he does it to my mom. My mom is not a technology person at all, but she likes to figure things out on her own. For Christmas we bought my parents an ipad, but she uses it more than he does. Well we were all sitting down watching a movie and my mom was on the ipad. She asked me a question about something she was looking at on the internet and my dad misunderstood her question somehow. He thought she was asking how to look up something. He started explaining to her how to use the ipad in general. As if she hadn't been using it for the last 7 months almost every day. This made her a bit irritated and she told him she knew how to do it. He even went so far as to take the ipad and show her what he was talking about.