Mansplaining and Men’s Entitlement to Control Women

By: John Zamora, Ashleen Bird , Amy Hernandez, & Abbigayle Pals

DML Group Project:

For most of time, women have been looked down upon by men due to their so-called “in-capabilities”. Men across the planet use this persona as if women are not able to hold their ground. This despising depiction of women is something that we come across even to this day. The idea of mansplaining, the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing, is a definition that consistently comes up in today’s day and age. Teaching men how to respond in situations is a goal that we had in mind, however, the main goal is to bring awareness to the problem at hand, mansplaining. Using multiple different resources we got to the bottom of this realization by asking multiple different females how they have been mansplained in the past.

About Mansplaining:

To begin, mansplaining has not become a thing until just 2008 in a Los Angeles Times excerpt. In an opposing article, the author of the mansplaining lexicon, describes the frustration within her argument , “…mansplaining is

not a universal flaw of the gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck” (Men Explain Things to Me, 2012). This gender gap is something that author, Rebecca Solnit, explicitly talks about. Men have overconfidence when communicating with the opposing gender and that’s where most of the conflict takes place. Workplace environments are also cancerous areas where mansplaining may occur the most. The degradation of women in these settings sets off more red flags, “But what they remind us is that it isn’t “inflaming the gender wars” as purported by Salon, but rather a cultural practice wherein “women are continuously robbed of the benefit of the doubt,” despite their competence or intellectual prowess” (5 Scientific Facts About Mansplaining, 2015). Men conform to social norms that women are incompetent to do their work in the workplace. This idea degrades women of their capabilities even though they excel socially and mentally.

To show the prowess of how mansplaining has affected different women, we went to social media to gain some information!

Our Own DML:

We gathered intel from the public through a variety of channels. Ashleen posed a question to her 400 Instagram followers, specifically the women, asking them to share their experiences with mansplaining.

Instagram Survey Question

As expected, we didn’t get a huge amount of interaction from this post, so we took the survey to different platforms. We created a one question survey on SurveyMonkey to share across the different platforms.

SurveyMonkey Survey Question

Ashleen posted to her Facebook wall, once again asking her female friends to take part in the questionnaire.

Facebook Survey Question

She also posted the same link to the subreddit r/samplesize which is a space for people to post their surveys for a multitude of purposes.

Reddit Survey Question

Responses #1

Through all of these outlets, we received 21 responses, 7 from Instagram and 14 from the survey. It is not possible to distinguish which survey responses came from Facebook or Reddit. The overall consensus of the responses are that many women, if not all, have experienced the epidemic that is mansplaining. A majority of women have been mansplained something so simple that it would not warrant any kind of explanation. However, the overarching theme is that men assume that they know better than women and feel the need to explain even the most mundane details to them.

Responses #2

Responses #3

In order to take these responses from multiple outlets and compile them together to create our own DML channel, we made an Instagram page.

https://www.instagram.com/what2say2021/

“What2say2021” is a page where we can share the responses of the women from the survey or Instagram responses, we can share what the problem is with this example of mansplaining, and we offer advice on how to avoid the same mistake in the future. It can also, in the future, serve to be its own outlet for collecting responses from more women and building on the foundation we created. We also share and highlight women who speak out against these and other issues that affect women across the world.

This intel that we had gathered proved the importance of transferring information about this topic. Through the multiple different social media outlets that we used, we created a form of connected learning for all individuals giving their insights on the topic. Through different social media networks such as Instagram, Facebook, SurveyMonkey, and Reddit, we allowed for this topic to grow outwards to multiple different industries. To excel using our platforms, we primarily focused on networks that were based off of the internet. MML (mobile media learning) was our main focus because that is how most information is transferred in today’s day and age. Our generation has grown accustomed to gaining information through social media, the news, movies, t.v shows, etc, therefore, we believed it would be super beneficial to stay online.

The main goal of this project was to create our own form of DML and transfer different learning tactics between media platforms. We all in all wanted to note that men needed to show accountability for their actions when mansplaining. Implementing the experiences of women in the past gives us the opportunity to change the perspective that society has on this topic. Informing the public of our findings changes the development of men around the world. This is naturally known as sociocultural theory, and it states that individual development and the society we live in are affected by one another. Mansplaining from men to women can only change through our society and this project is the first step in accomplishing that goal.

References:

Keck, C. (2015, March 24). 5 Scientific Facts About Mansplaining. In Bustle. Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/articles/69251-5-scientific-facts-about-mansplaining-because-sexist-interruptions-arent-at-all-new

Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2011). New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning (Third ed.). Berkshire, England: Open University Press.

Solnit, R. (2012, August 20). Men Explain Things to Me. In Guernica. Retrieved from https://www.guernicamag.com/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/