11 Likes
Surprised your comfortable with going there. Personally I would never want to imply some kind or moral equivalency between white supremacists and “bros,” and thus would never want to interleave the conversation that way, as nothing good can come of that kind of rhetoric.
tl;dr: don’t assume that your conversational partners are fanatics. It’s not nice.
Well, none of it rhymes.
Bros Prose?
1 Like
This skewed reality I am stuck in really sucks.
11 Likes
“Tech-bro”, “Pharma-bro” and “broetry” aren’t aimed at half the population. That’s like saying the phrase “poisonous snakes” is disparaging to non-poisonous snakes.
“Mansplaining” and “man-spreading” are sexist terms, albeit not ones that anyone else had brought up. Overall, men still patronise women a lot more than women use “mansplaining” to discount male opinion – so I’d hardly make a campaign out of it – but preferably neither would happen. For most purposes, if someone is being condescending, you can just tell them they’re being condescending, and not make it into a fruitless Team Woke vs. Team Deplorable thing.
5 Likes
This quoted passage is, by itself, correct. Your username is apt.
6 Likes
You’re/not welcome, Ms. Fink!
@Enkita, @GulliverFoyle, @milliefink: you may be interested in reading Liz Cookman’s essay on that matter; she makes a really good argument that the implied gender essentialism is inherently anti-feminist.
Then again, you may not, so carry on.
1 Like
I didn’t. I pointed out where your argument led.
I can’t help it if you read stuff into my posts that isn’t there.
4 Likes
I think I can do better in general reading than to rely on one journalist being contrarian for page clicks.
2 Likes
Thanks, I read her argument, and I think it’s a bad one, not a good one.
The term mansplaining only implies gender essentialism to those who hear it that way. As for me, and for those I know who use the term, I know there are obviously many men who don’t mansplain. We also know that the tendency to mansplain that many other men enact is socially instilled, and therefore not an inherent trait. It’s not anti-feminist to label, and thereby better work against, socially instilled tendencies; doing so is exactly the opposite.
As for the blithely contrarian Liz Cookman, that article has too many problems for me to dismantle at the moment, but I will address her conclusion:
Entitlement is still a problem. However, before we go smooshing any more man-words together, it might be worth remembering that a prat is a prat, whatever their gender.
But Liz, if male entitlement is a problem, and terms like mansplaining or manspreading help to label some manifestations of a problem that is enacted much more by male prats than by female ones, and if thereby pointing out such behavior helps to stop some of that behavior in prattish men who are willing to listen, then why not create and use such terms?
Mr. Ambiguity, since you’re into sharing, perhaps you in turn could read this piece. It offers good practical advice for girls and women, many of whom face nearly daily onslaughts of – brace yourself! – mansplaining (and other common, dismissive forms of behavior commonly enacted by men). This writer also does a much better job than Liz Cookman does of explaining from whence such terms arise, and how society encourages boys and men to act in ways that call for such terms.
11 Likes
No broetry? Do you prefer when they write in brose?
4 Likes
Not to get too off topic, but whenever I’ve heard it used, it’s not about discounting the man’s opinion. It describes the behavior of a guy going into a big long explanation of something that the listener already knows a ton about. The thing is that the man in question just assumes lack of knowledge on the part of the female listener and doesn’t bother to check, and often can’t hear or ignores any insistence by said listener to the contrary.
9 Likes
12 Likes
Yeah, you want unpleasant I can do unpleasant. In fact, if you open an account with suitable references, I can do it wholesale.
5 Likes
Which reminds me, there’s a thought provoking (even if you disagree with him) article in the Independent by Zizek*. What he’s saying about combating fascism has, I think, some relevance to combating other isms.
*Men with beards: Zizek and Marx. Hence the reminder.
1 Like
Oh, the sexism just keeps coming. /s
5 Likes
Men with beards
Now there’s a REAL problem. Zizek himself says so!
3 Likes
