What does mansplaining even mean anymore? Mansplaining still occurs, rampantly, but the term has been thinned and flattened into political doublespeak, with alarming repercussions, bridgetgillard writes
Photo: Simon Potter/Mint Images/Getty Images What does mansplaining even mean anymore? Last week, three different women allegedly fell victim to it in our nation’s capital. There was Fiona Hill, career diplomat and former Trump adviser, who was subject to a tirade from a Republican congressman during impeachment hearings.
And finally Republican senator Joni Ernst told reporters that she did “not need to be mansplained by Chuck Schumer,” after the Democrat declined to support her version of the Violence Against Women Act for failing to contain crucial protections for domestic-violence victims. Mansplaining gained traction at first on feminist blogs, as writers and activists finally had a catchall way to talk about a specific, albeit insidious, dynamic experienced by qualified women in male-dominated fields. When I heard it for the first time, the term helped to instantly describe so many interactions I had with men over the years that left me feeling annoyed and bad about myself.
Which is the much more worrisome implication of mansplaining’s ballooning definition: that some people, many of whom actually oppose the goals of feminism, have figured out how to use it as a political attack, to deflect engagement with the contents of their positions.