Does anyone smell Poe’s Law book burning around here? Or is it just me?
why hasn’t anyone offered Carrot Top a late night chat gig? WTF?
That’s just too much awesomeness for the small screen. Not even movies can correctly capture his hilarity.
That and he got scary looking when he bulked up.
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Samantha Bee would be perfect. They should totally do that.
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Those may be words now, but they are not words that mean things.
Colbert paid dues doing improv in Chicago then Strangers with Candy and finally his show. So no, not quite like that.
omg, if only there was a “Bugle” show.
Google is your friendly definition-providing friend, my friend. Mansplaining and whitesplaining may indeed not mean “things,” as in tangible objects, but they do encapsulate phenomena that are all too familiar to woman and people of color, most of whom get condescended to by their supposed betters just about on the daily.
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Then call it by its perfectly functional existing name, “condescension.” Calling it “mansplaining” is an attempt to shut down a conversation based on the identity of the person who’s disagreeing with you.
I disagree. Those terms are not an attempt to shut down a conversation. They’re an (accurate) attempt to account for the kinds of condescension that tend to come from certain kinds of people. People in privileged groups tend not to realize that their membership in those groups has shaping and informing effects on their perspectives.
I’ve actually seen some men ask what “mansplaining” means and why people use it – imagine that! A man who listens to those to whom he often condescends! (Which is not to say that all men are condescending towards women.)
Sadly, though, I think you’re right in one sense; such terms do sometimes “shut down” “conversations.” However, if someone walks away because they’re not willing to listen to the other side, well, it wasn’t an actual conversation in the first place, was it?
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Replace “privileged” with almost any other word and see how that sentence reads. Would you feel the need to call out the subjective perspectives brought to the table by women or ethnic minorities or gender-fluid people? “Well, your point of view is obviously shaped by your queer black identity, so I can dismiss it with a neologism.” That doesn’t sound like something you’d say, does it?
First off, to say someone is mansplaining or whitesplaining is not to entirely dismiss their point of view. Instead, it’s to object to something in particular that someone is saying.
And no, I wouldn’t bother to say out loud that a person with a queer black identity has a point of view shaped by that identity, because it’s so obviously true, and so obviously something that person is very likely already aware of, since the white heterosexist world so continually reminds that person in mostly negative ways of their difference. I just wouldn’t see any need to call out that person’s subjective perspective.
More to the point: Thanks to having to deal with being subjugated, what those in subjugated groups tend to see is that which those who subjugate them often fail to see – that the privileged are members of oppressing groups, and that they often act that way without even realizing it. Privileged people tend to think they’re just free-floating (and thus relatively objective) individuals, but they’re not. In other words, subjugated people often understand things about members of privileged groups that the privileged usually fail to understand about themselves, one of them being the fact that being a member of this or that group tends to shape one’s perspective.
So no, that sentence of mine that you quoted wouldn’t read well if you simply substituted “privileged” with “subjugated” or “oppressed.” In order to keep our eye on the right ball – that is, on obliviously abusive power – the substitution in the sentence of mine that you quoted should actually read:
People in subjugated groups tend to realize that membership in any significant social group has shaping and informing effects on one’s perspective.
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Thank you for chicksplaining.
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