mansplaining is a word women use to shut people up who they disagree with. i've been accused of mansplaining because i was critiquing the slogan "white silence is violence". the definition of this word seems to move around depending on when its useful to. and that is why i hate this word.
Theo Warner, I wanted to post a reply, but for some reason it will not let me. I hope you end up seeing this: "I agree with the conclusion that gay pride isn't heterophobic and women's shelter's aren't necessarily sexist. I disagree with the reasoning to get there though. I've never been persuaded by the argument that a less powerful group can't exhibit sexism or racism. It strikes me as demonstrably false unless we define sexism and racism in an atypical way. When I talk about sexism or racism, I'm referring to treating someone as inferior on the basis of skin color or gender. The behavior of treating someone as inferior for these reasons, I believe, is immoral regardless of what skin color or gender you happen to have. Whether or not someone wants to call that sexist is semantics and doesn't bother me too much. It doesn't matter what we agree to call it or refrain from calling it as long as we are both on the same page that treating someone as inferior because of their skin or gender is problematic and immoral. "
"Stereotypes are inherently problematic" nah. If the stereotype is true it acts as a heuristic; priming a person to think along lines of truth False stereotypes are bad, true stereotypes are good; mainly they act as a kind of statistical discrimination, which is often useful along lines of productivity-oriented decision making and so on Stereotypes are by no means "confirmation bias." Confirmation bias occurs ex post an observation, stereotypes "prime a person to think," in your words. That means it would be ex ante an observation. It is what we would call a prior in bayesian logic. A prior is quite other than confirmation bias. All that being said, I do agree with some of your particular criticism of the term 'mansplaining.' It has become a weapon of misandric feminists and others who would like to censor communication on the grounds of a red herring.
John Vandivier Stereotypes either tend to be false or tend to be true. Even when they "tend" to be true, they are still generalizations that will be false in specific situations. Rather than treating each individual as an individual it allows us to lump individuals into groups. Even stereotypes that tend to be true cause us to judge individuals in inaccurate ways.
I'm not quite sure that stereotypes are inherently "problematic." Confirmation bias obviously is a problem, but what if you stereotype without confirmation bias? Stereotypes seem to be a way of helping us to make the right decisions with regard to people without having to take the time to get to know them as a person. One stereotype, for example, is that women do not like you staring at their chest, but men really don't care. Maybe a woman you meet actually loves it when men stare at her chest, but when you meet her, you have to decide immediately whether you are going to stare at her chest, or not. Since we have a stereotype that women do not like that, you will likely choose not to do that because it will likely save you a lot of hassle. So, I think, in general, there is nothing wrong with stereotypes. It is just how they are applied. The best rule seems to be to be open to people defying the stereotype, being opened to a stereotype being false, and to do your best to try to get to know the person before judging and acting based on stereotypes.
Stereotypes always fail to treat individuals like individuals, but it is a human thing that we cannot prevent, and it helps us make quick decisions. However, my problem in this video is not so much with all stereotypes, but just with negative stereotypes that are linked with a race or gender. Those types of stereotypes inevitably lead people to erroneously have negative assumptions about individuals of that race or gender.
Maybe we agree more than I thought, then. My problem with mansplaining, though, has less to do with the idea that it is generalizing men. Every time I've had it used against me it has just been a way of trying to shut down conversation and to imply I'm sexist because I made an argument disagreeing with a woman.
Very well explained. I was preparing myself to be taught why it wasn't a sexist term but was pleasantly surprised to find that you share my opinion. Thank you.
Your analogies of "woman driver" and "bridezilla" were poor analogies to mansplaining, for what should be obvious reasons. BUT... Your general point of the entire video and your reasoning was pretty dammed accurate. Theres nothing socially positive about creating new sexist or racialized terms that are derogatory and divisive even if in some rare case they are based on some core realities. For what should be some pretty clear reasons theres little to nothing to be gained by it. We have enough words in the dictionary already such that most of these things can be pointed out and discussed without coining terms that are only going to result in aggravation and instant division.
Your point about our brains conforming the world to stereotypes is partially true. But there is a plethora of evidence in social psychology that our brains are actually very good at detecting patterns among people groups that are different from us and that we're actually really good intuitive bayesians. I recommend reading some of Jonathan Haidt's work
Mido Quick story: I used to work at a restaurant. Some folks had racist beliefs. They believed black people tipped poorly (and they were wrong. It was a rich area and there was not significant variance by race. I kept track and tested that crap) Confirmation bias (and attribution errors) made it so that they only remembered when they got a bad tip from a black person. Bad tips from white folks were just coincidences, or they were poor, or ______ excuse as to why it was an outlier that didn't count. Here is where it gets ironic. When black folks tipped well that different encounter didn't change people's belief. Instead they just perceived those particular black people as outliers. So they were using behaviorism to inform their beliefs, but confirmation bias crept in and screwed them into being misinformed.
I certainly don't dispute any of that, I don't want to give the impression that humans have perfect judgement or they don't have confirmation bias. I'm pointing out that there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that fair amount of people judgements aren't based solely on confirmation bias or bigotry but a sort of primitive Bayesian calculus of the temperament and behavioural patterns of different of people groups. While I don't dispute your story it's anecdotal and doesn't hold up against peer-reviewed data in social psychology.
I think stereotyping an individual based on their identity in a people group is a bad idea. Even if you do think generalities exist between people groups, they exist along a normal distribution where there are outliers on the tail-ends of that distribution. So it's impossible to tell where an individual is on that curve based solely on their group affiliation. But that doesn't mean a normal distribution doesn't exist.
Ok, so I'm not American and I don't hold much for your culture, but I'm forced to inform myself (e.g. via your channel, which is very good when it works) about topical thought currents in the USA, because they affect the entire western world. If portmanteau sounds elitist, why then not have an elitist term for an elitist concept? Shouldn't the label suit the jar? The use of jargon, abbreviations, local slang and portmanteaus in normal speech is elitist, because exclusive. You are by their use excluding anything from a few to the most of your audience. Why is this desireable under any terms? It is a noticeable development in American culture, it's always going to be mean-spirited and I herewith draw attention to it. Why not use language to facilitate dialogue? Buzzwords just block it, so are inherently discriminatory. This argument trumps the one out of content, which you therefore don't need to expand on. BTW: Being listed in an English-Language dictionary is no confirmation of legitimacy (unlike French). With love xx
I actually wanted to do a video on buzzwords. Folks adopt this jargon that actually functions as "thinking for them". Instead of promoting critical thinking, the term itself shuts down critical thinking (similar to how a famous book 1984 describes how you can hijack a persons brain by first controlling their language). Even on this video you have folks talking about "taking the blue pill" or calling people a "cuck". These memes get into people's heads and shape the way they see the world. Isn't it odd how the jargon becomes differentiated based on which "team" you find yourself on. I want to do a video on buzzwords like "virtue signalling" which allows you to be dismissive of normal healthy behaviors and justify criticizing others for such things. These terms (mansplaining included) are often ways of dismissing folks from the "other team".
Yes exactly, and dismissing folks in the most perfidious manner by excluding them out of the conversation whilst still talking to them (in fact, talking at them). Your exemplification of critical thinking is indeed the correct way out - I'm thinking of T. Adorno or M. Horkheimer (Critical Theory). The aim must be (as Habermas writes) to include the maximum number of participants in an exchange by use of "open" terminology. As Wittgenstein once wrote: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intellect by means of language". "Newspeak" (George Orwell) is taking the matter a whole stage further - not just excluding folks but positively deluding them.
This is a gendered behavior. I don't see how you could eliminate the man-ness from mansplaining and still have it mean the same thing. Explaining something to someone in a patronizing or condescending manner is rude, but the problem that "mansplaining" is pointing out is not that rudeness, it's that there is something causing men in particular to behave in that way towards women. I don't think it's a criticism to point out that this will cause people to look for signs of mansplaining. People should look for those signs so that they can address their causes and effects, and avoid future incidents. If the gender if the speaker becomes the sole reason for dismissing their explanation, then that's absolutely a problem and I'm sure that you'll find examples of it in tumblr threads and women's groups on college campuses. That does not mean that we should avoid the issue. It only means that we must guard against irrationality and address the causes of that behavior as well. So, when a feminist tells a man he can't speak my guess is that it's going to be because she's so damn frustrated feeling like she never gets to talk, that she doesn't have the power, and she's understandably mad. The way to really fix the problem is to address the power imbalance as the cause in that case, not just the irrationality and bias that may come from anger.
Good comment. Thought provoking stuff. I agree there is a problem. (I suspect the root problem is that folks assuming women are less competent and intelligent). I also agree that mansplaining is noble in goal. It is originally meant to bring awareness to a sexist action, and there is nothing problematic about that. I just think the term "mansplaining" is very poor word choice. It is poor word choice to the point that appears hypocritical and sets up the feminist speaker to lose the argument in the court of public opinion. I also think that the term, simply by the way negative stereotypes work, sets people up to use it in a sexist way. It so often becomes used simply to describe "a man explaining something" that in practice the term because a tool to promote sexism rather than bring awareness to it.
I think people are going to misuse the word no matter what it is. It's meaning is "a man explaining something in a condescending way." The fact that some people will remove "in a condescending way" from that definition is going to happen regardless because people are like that. But maybe I'm wrong. Do you have a suggestion in mind that wouldn't have this problem?
Even if you're right (and I'm not convinced you are, in my experience I've seen women do this sort of thing just as much as men, and men just as much to other men as to women; though maybe I don't hang around the right sort of people to see it in full) that doesn't really undermine the point. Sexist stereotypes are harmful even when they're true. If the intent is to bring light to sexist behavior (and hopefully to change that behavior), using a sexist stereotype is probably not going to be an effective way to do that.
Perhaps rather than calling it "mansplaining" and _defining_ it as something exclusively men do they instead called it "condesplaining", defined it as "explaining something in a condescending way", and then stressed that the degree men condesplain to women is problematic. This seems to allow for all the talking points without being hypocritically sexist.
I recommend it be called "sexplaining" if we must combine two terms into one. That's the wittiest thing I can personally come up with. It would siimply referring to a sexist explanation (most often coming from men to women) where a a person talks down to someone because of their sex, or speaking in a patronizing and sexist way. I think that would address the problem without running into the two problems I mentioned in the video.
mansplaining is a word women use to shut people up who they disagree with.
i've been accused of mansplaining because i was critiquing the slogan "white silence is violence". the definition of this word seems to move around depending on when its useful to. and that is why i hate this word.
How can you be a humanist and a feminist at the same time? Does it feminism state that women are more powerful than men?
"Does feminism state that women are more powerful than men?"
No.
@@Testeverything521 although a lot of people that identify as feminists do think that
Theo Warner, I wanted to post a reply, but for some reason it will not let me. I hope you end up seeing this:
"I agree with the conclusion that gay pride isn't heterophobic and women's shelter's aren't necessarily sexist. I disagree with the reasoning to get there though. I've never been persuaded by the argument that a less powerful group can't exhibit sexism or racism. It strikes me as demonstrably false unless we define sexism and racism in an atypical way.
When I talk about sexism or racism, I'm referring to treating someone as inferior on the basis of skin color or gender. The behavior of treating someone as inferior for these reasons, I believe, is immoral regardless of what skin color or gender you happen to have. Whether or not someone wants to call that sexist is semantics and doesn't bother me too much. It doesn't matter what we agree to call it or refrain from calling it as long as we are both on the same page that treating someone as inferior because of their skin or gender is problematic and immoral. "
So are we just going to ignore the name of the user?
"Stereotypes are inherently problematic"
nah. If the stereotype is true it acts as a heuristic; priming a person to think along lines of truth
False stereotypes are bad, true stereotypes are good; mainly they act as a kind of statistical discrimination, which is often useful along lines of productivity-oriented decision making and so on
Stereotypes are by no means "confirmation bias." Confirmation bias occurs ex post an observation, stereotypes "prime a person to think," in your words. That means it would be ex ante an observation. It is what we would call a prior in bayesian logic. A prior is quite other than confirmation bias.
All that being said, I do agree with some of your particular criticism of the term 'mansplaining.' It has become a weapon of misandric feminists and others who would like to censor communication on the grounds of a red herring.
John Vandivier
Stereotypes either tend to be false or tend to be true. Even when they "tend" to be true, they are still generalizations that will be false in specific situations.
Rather than treating each individual as an individual it allows us to lump individuals into groups. Even stereotypes that tend to be true cause us to judge individuals in inaccurate ways.
Fantastic video. Spot on in terms of content, and fantastic subversion getting a woman to come in at the end. Big thumbs up.
Thanks :)
I'm not quite sure that stereotypes are inherently "problematic." Confirmation bias obviously is a problem, but what if you stereotype without confirmation bias? Stereotypes seem to be a way of helping us to make the right decisions with regard to people without having to take the time to get to know them as a person.
One stereotype, for example, is that women do not like you staring at their chest, but men really don't care. Maybe a woman you meet actually loves it when men stare at her chest, but when you meet her, you have to decide immediately whether you are going to stare at her chest, or not. Since we have a stereotype that women do not like that, you will likely choose not to do that because it will likely save you a lot of hassle.
So, I think, in general, there is nothing wrong with stereotypes. It is just how they are applied. The best rule seems to be to be open to people defying the stereotype, being opened to a stereotype being false, and to do your best to try to get to know the person before judging and acting based on stereotypes.
Stereotypes always fail to treat individuals like individuals, but it is a human thing that we cannot prevent, and it helps us make quick decisions.
However, my problem in this video is not so much with all stereotypes, but just with negative stereotypes that are linked with a race or gender. Those types of stereotypes inevitably lead people to erroneously have negative assumptions about individuals of that race or gender.
Maybe we agree more than I thought, then. My problem with mansplaining, though, has less to do with the idea that it is generalizing men. Every time I've had it used against me it has just been a way of trying to shut down conversation and to imply I'm sexist because I made an argument disagreeing with a woman.
A rare voice of reason on UA-cam. ☺️
Great video! keep them coming.
-Robert and Maretta
BlindDoxie
Oh!
I didn't recognize the name at first! It's good to hear from you :)
Very well explained. I was preparing myself to be taught why it wasn't a sexist term but was pleasantly surprised to find that you share my opinion. Thank you.
I absolutely agree 1000 percent 👏
Love the videos! Haven't seen you in a while!
So far no bad comments ;-) ... well explained and straight to the point.
haha you are the first post :)
Hey, you're still alive.
I LIVE!
Your analogies of "woman driver" and "bridezilla" were poor analogies to mansplaining, for what should be obvious reasons. BUT...
Your general point of the entire video and your reasoning was pretty dammed accurate. Theres nothing socially positive about creating new sexist or racialized terms that are derogatory and divisive even if in some rare case they are based on some core realities. For what should be some pretty clear reasons theres little to nothing to be gained by it. We have enough words in the dictionary already such that most of these things can be pointed out and discussed without coining terms that are only going to result in aggravation and instant division.
Your point about our brains conforming the world to stereotypes is partially true. But there is a plethora of evidence in social psychology that our brains are actually very good at detecting patterns among people groups that are different from us and that we're actually really good intuitive bayesians. I recommend reading some of Jonathan Haidt's work
Mido
Quick story:
I used to work at a restaurant. Some folks had racist beliefs. They believed black people tipped poorly (and they were wrong. It was a rich area and there was not significant variance by race. I kept track and tested that crap)
Confirmation bias (and attribution errors) made it so that they only remembered when they got a bad tip from a black person. Bad tips from white folks were just coincidences, or they were poor, or ______ excuse as to why it was an outlier that didn't count. Here is where it gets ironic. When black folks tipped well that different encounter didn't change people's belief. Instead they just perceived those particular black people as outliers.
So they were using behaviorism to inform their beliefs, but confirmation bias crept in and screwed them into being misinformed.
I certainly don't dispute any of that, I don't want to give the impression that humans have perfect judgement or they don't have confirmation bias. I'm pointing out that there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that fair amount of people judgements aren't based solely on confirmation bias or bigotry but a sort of primitive Bayesian calculus of the temperament and behavioural patterns of different of people groups. While I don't dispute your story it's anecdotal and doesn't hold up against peer-reviewed data in social psychology.
I think stereotyping an individual based on their identity in a people group is a bad idea. Even if you do think generalities exist between people groups, they exist along a normal distribution where there are outliers on the tail-ends of that distribution. So it's impossible to tell where an individual is on that curve based solely on their group affiliation. But that doesn't mean a normal distribution doesn't exist.
Well put sir
Thank you :)
Dude your name predicted the future
Awesome! Keep it up!
Your name predicted the future
Deeply thought out piece. It's sexist alright. You can't have it both ways can you?
I enjoyed your video :)
Let me explain ladies, man do this so we are on the same page and can have an inclusive conversation
Portmanteau words are elitist anyway, because they are only understood by those "in the know" (i.e. not me).
Marcomanseckisax
That word even sounds elitist lol.
Ok, so I'm not American and I don't hold much for your culture, but I'm forced to inform myself (e.g. via your channel, which is very good when it works) about topical thought currents in the USA, because they affect the entire western world.
If portmanteau sounds elitist, why then not have an elitist term for an elitist concept? Shouldn't the label suit the jar? The use of jargon, abbreviations, local slang and portmanteaus in normal speech is elitist, because exclusive. You are by their use excluding anything from a few to the most of your audience. Why is this desireable under any terms? It is a noticeable development in American culture, it's always going to be mean-spirited and I herewith draw attention to it.
Why not use language to facilitate dialogue? Buzzwords just block it, so are inherently discriminatory.
This argument trumps the one out of content, which you therefore don't need to expand on. BTW: Being listed in an English-Language dictionary is no confirmation of legitimacy (unlike French).
With love xx
I actually wanted to do a video on buzzwords. Folks adopt this jargon that actually functions as "thinking for them". Instead of promoting critical thinking, the term itself shuts down critical thinking (similar to how a famous book 1984 describes how you can hijack a persons brain by first controlling their language).
Even on this video you have folks talking about "taking the blue pill" or calling people a "cuck". These memes get into people's heads and shape the way they see the world. Isn't it odd how the jargon becomes differentiated based on which "team" you find yourself on.
I want to do a video on buzzwords like "virtue signalling" which allows you to be dismissive of normal healthy behaviors and justify criticizing others for such things.
These terms (mansplaining included) are often ways of dismissing folks from the "other team".
Yes exactly, and dismissing folks in the most perfidious manner by excluding them out of the conversation whilst still talking to them (in fact, talking at them). Your exemplification of critical thinking is indeed the correct way out - I'm thinking of T. Adorno or M. Horkheimer (Critical Theory). The aim must be (as Habermas writes) to include the maximum number of participants in an exchange by use of "open" terminology. As Wittgenstein once wrote: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intellect by means of language".
"Newspeak" (George Orwell) is taking the matter a whole stage further - not just excluding folks but positively deluding them.
Marcomanseckisax
Great comments. I've learned some things talking with you.
I agree with majority of the video. I didn't like the ending though. Sarcasm or not.
B-boy StuntZ
Fair enough. Thanks for the feedback
Women do this all the time
This is a gendered behavior. I don't see how you could eliminate the man-ness from mansplaining and still have it mean the same thing. Explaining something to someone in a patronizing or condescending manner is rude, but the problem that "mansplaining" is pointing out is not that rudeness, it's that there is something causing men in particular to behave in that way towards women.
I don't think it's a criticism to point out that this will cause people to look for signs of mansplaining. People should look for those signs so that they can address their causes and effects, and avoid future incidents.
If the gender if the speaker becomes the sole reason for dismissing their explanation, then that's absolutely a problem and I'm sure that you'll find examples of it in tumblr threads and women's groups on college campuses. That does not mean that we should avoid the issue. It only means that we must guard against irrationality and address the causes of that behavior as well. So, when a feminist tells a man he can't speak my guess is that it's going to be because she's so damn frustrated feeling like she never gets to talk, that she doesn't have the power, and she's understandably mad. The way to really fix the problem is to address the power imbalance as the cause in that case, not just the irrationality and bias that may come from anger.
Good comment. Thought provoking stuff.
I agree there is a problem. (I suspect the root problem is that folks assuming women are less competent and intelligent). I also agree that mansplaining is noble in goal. It is originally meant to bring awareness to a sexist action, and there is nothing problematic about that.
I just think the term "mansplaining" is very poor word choice. It is poor word choice to the point that appears hypocritical and sets up the feminist speaker to lose the argument in the court of public opinion.
I also think that the term, simply by the way negative stereotypes work, sets people up to use it in a sexist way. It so often becomes used simply to describe "a man explaining something" that in practice the term because a tool to promote sexism rather than bring awareness to it.
I think people are going to misuse the word no matter what it is. It's meaning is "a man explaining something in a condescending way." The fact that some people will remove "in a condescending way" from that definition is going to happen regardless because people are like that.
But maybe I'm wrong. Do you have a suggestion in mind that wouldn't have this problem?
Even if you're right (and I'm not convinced you are, in my experience I've seen women do this sort of thing just as much as men, and men just as much to other men as to women; though maybe I don't hang around the right sort of people to see it in full) that doesn't really undermine the point. Sexist stereotypes are harmful even when they're true. If the intent is to bring light to sexist behavior (and hopefully to change that behavior), using a sexist stereotype is probably not going to be an effective way to do that.
Perhaps rather than calling it "mansplaining" and _defining_ it as something exclusively men do they instead called it "condesplaining", defined it as "explaining something in a condescending way", and then stressed that the degree men condesplain to women is problematic. This seems to allow for all the talking points without being hypocritically sexist.
I recommend it be called "sexplaining" if we must combine two terms into one. That's the wittiest thing I can personally come up with.
It would siimply referring to a sexist explanation (most often coming from men to women) where a a person talks down to someone because of their sex, or speaking in a patronizing and sexist way.
I think that would address the problem without running into the two problems I mentioned in the video.