Mansplaining

                Even before reading Rebecca Solnit’s article I was all too aware of the fact that men have a tendency to talk down to women. My father may perhaps be the biggest offender of what Solnit referrs to as “mansplaining” in my life, and my mother is a very independent woman who taught me things that would be considered more masculine activities, like how to change the oil in your car and skeet shooting. I have always had tomboy tendencies and interests and as a result I have endured quite a lot of “mainsplaining”.

                Perhaps the most annoying times I find men explaining how to do things to me is while camping, which is one of the things I absolutely love to do. My family has been camping every weekend since I was a toddler, and not always in a camper, so I know a lot about setting up camp and living in the woods. My boyfriend has four brothers, yep there’s five of them total, so when we all go camping together I’m ready to scream and pull out my hair after the first hour. Each and every one of them, including my boyfriend, will explain and try to show me how to start a fire, set up a tent, put up a rain tarp, what wood to collect, and the list goes on and on and on. They believe that because they are boys they naturally can do more masculine things better than me. They have, as they would call it, “man smarts” that make them inherent experts if all things manly, even if they know I can start a fire in half the time it takes all five of them together. Luckily the one thing they don’t try to explain to me is how to pee in the woods, because I guess even they know that they have no idea how to squat and not get some on yourself.

                Solnit refers to credibility as a “basic survival tool”; it’s a sad and true fact that men talk down to women because they view us as lacking credibility and knowledge based upon our gender.