Men upset by cartoon

[Archon]

@Blaze_Curry

I like this. The difference between “I think it means…” and “It means…” is worlds apart, and truly important.

@zathras

A long time ago, I realized that whenever someone opens their mouth and says “X is true”, that means that they “think that X is true”. Whether that actually coincides with reality, now that’s the hard question.

Oooh! Oooh! It’s a slight, but very relevant aside, to mention Korzybski’s ‘E-Prime’, if you haven’t heard of it already.

Basically stripping forms of ‘to be’ out of straightforward English - despite its flaws (and it absolutely has them), it tends to require one to qualify and ground absolute statements, making the assumed conditions explicit.

Even though speaking in E-Prime can be hard work, it had been my experience that even some knowledge encourages precision and reduces accidental ambiguity.

Not that that would stop all the different 'splainin’s discussed hereabouts, but that required qualification of assertions helps stop the ‘The art is about X’ assertions.

(The Wikipedia link may over-explain it, so I’ve added a second link)

E-Prime

https://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm

_{(And Robert Anton Wilson found that phrasing conspiracy theories in E-Prime is difficult-to-damned-impossible, which is always a bonus.)}

[Cunk]

I’d like to hear how they feel about Lucy never letting Charlie Brown kick that dann ball. What sort of psychological powerplay bullshit is that? So manipulative.

[turkeybrain]

@theodore604

There’s a whole lotta baggage piled on by society that makes “womansplaining” nothing at all like “mansplaining”.

Indeed. Like if the internet hears about it, someone might call in a SWAT strike to her house.

[theodore604]

I dunno to men and women (ugh I hate to stereo-type or come off all men from mars women from venus) just communicate differently? If the man’s response was “I believe it means… or IMHO it means, or to me it means” would that somehow be better? I used to talk that way all the time and apparently it upset some people they were all like that’s implied anything out of your mouth is clearly informed by/as your opinion. No need to explicitly state it. To which I agree to a large extent anytime I hear anyone express “facts” I always note to self that those are facts from that person’s perspective/understanding which very may very well be wrong/opinionated or informed from a different POV.

[Melizmatic]

@Cunk

I’d like to hear how they feel about Lucy never letting Charlie Brown kick that dann ball.

Oh Lucy was just an opportunistic asshole. The better question is why CB was always so foolish as to keep falling for it.

“Fool me once, shame on you…”

[anon48584343]

@Melizmatic

The better question is why CB was always so foolish as to keep falling for it.

The Secret Rage Behind Lucy’s Pulling the Football Away From Charlie Brown...

“a cycle of pain and humiliation endured and transmitted” Pretty heady stuff interpreting the cartoonist Schultz. Who knew?

[Melizmatic]

Damn, that’s a lot of history for a simple sight gag; thanks for sharing the article.

Also who knew that in the very first iteration of that gag, Lucy let CB try again, without pulling the ball away?

[Foggen]

[tachin1]

@kaibeezytentroy

why talk to someone in a museum

I’m having trouble replying to this, and no, you didn’t ask for a reply but why else would you post your thoughts on the intwerwebz amirite?

See, I’ve lived long enough to learn that some people do just speak aloud without expecting a reply, and I would not feel off put by this response, maybe a bit embarrassed, but then again, I wouldn’t take it as a conversation ender either. If the woman would just have answered with “OK”, or even “interesting”, you know, short non committal type answers, then the conversation would be over. That she bothered to actually explain what she meant is a chance to restart the conversation.

See that’s what I’m having trouble with here, yeah OK, a man misunderstood the situation but getting upset means that the person is still misunderstanding the situation.

[SpunkyTWS]

An interesting side note: Jackson Pollock’s “splatter” paintings look random but film footage of him at work shows great deliberateness on his part.

And for the film “Pollock” with Ed Harris art students recreated some Pollock paintings. That also suggests they aren’t as random or haphazard as they appear.

[someguy]

@anon61833566hunter

I am not a doctor…when a female doctor proceeds to explain to be the details of a particular condition or procedure; I do not get upset and say “Stop womansplaining it to me”. If anything, I am probably saying “Hey Doc…I appreciate that you understand all this…but dumb it down for me at least!”

Depends on the context, right? If she’s your doctor, and you are paying her, sure. But if you come home and say to your wife (who is also a doctor) “Wow, that colonoscopy sure was unpleasant,” and she responds, “well, actually, while unpleasant, the procedure is very important for detecting colorectal cancer…”

The better response would be, “it sounds awful. Let’s have a drink to celebrate that it is over with.”

[SpunkyTWS]

The first response though gives the guy a chance to say “Can I get a second opinion?”

[someguy]

@tachin1

See that’s what I’m having trouble with here, yeah OK, a man misunderstood the situation but getting upset means that the person is still misunderstanding the situation.

Less funny in a cartoon, though.

(Also, one could argue that explaining why one is irritated is better for long term relations than a response that doesn’t give the guy any clue that there was miscommunication.)

[anon6955837]

I know, right? It’s almost as though we could communicate with intent, but non-verbally!

@AcerPlatanoides

It’s the price you have to pay, to listen to people?

(The kitchen regrets the slow service of your dinner today)

[anon50609448]

@MikeTheBard

Most of the men I know would give their good arm to be the first person to do something. The same thing which would deter a woman would encourage a man.

But here’s a question, how many of them are midwives?

@zathras

It’s not that simple to tell. Being annoyed leads to complaining, and others complaining can be annoying, so you can’t distinguish between the two things on formal grounds alone.

Actually, being annoyed doesn’t necessarily lead to complaining. It’s perfectly possible to be annoyed and keep it to yourself. I can’t point you to a study on the subject, but my experience has lead me to believe that in western, English-speaking culture, men are more likely to complain and women more likely to keep it to themselves, and that women who don’t keep it to themselves are described by a specific, gendered pejorative term.

@zathras

Have you never met an asshole who might express interest in a subject, but wouldn’t ever want to listen to you on the subject, because they consider your opinion beneath contempt? Or have you met an asshole who says something that would normally considered a request to do something, and then berate you for interpreting the request differently from their secret interpretation of the day?

Honestly I don’t know that I have. I certainly know of someone who was very much in the latter category through a friend who had to deal with that, but while I have misunderstood and been misunderstood countless times, I’ve never met a person who I thought was intentionally creating misunderstandings as a manipulative powerplay (I guess my five-year-old does that, kind of, but I don’t think that’s being an asshole so much as it’s coming to grips with the reality of what it’s like to interact with other people). The former, definitely never have met such a person, and never heard anyone complain about meeting such a person. And then there’s:

@zathras

When I find myself in a kitchen together with a woman, and she hasn’t had a chance to taste my cooking or to see me cook, then she will assume she’s in charge, and maybe give me a free beginner’s lesson on how to cut onions.

I’ve never had an experience like this either, never witnessed such an experience, and never had anyone tell me they experienced something like this before now. If this is based on your own repeated real life experience rather than a hypothetical (it’s sometimes hard to know in the internet) then I guess maybe I’m just making assumptions about culture I shouldn’t be? Where-abouts are you from/living?

[joey_bladb]

Here’s a classic douchey mansplainer in action:

Unfortunately for the world of science, the mansplainer has since deleted his Twitter account, but not before one last tweet: “Again, I forget how everyone gets offended by everything.”

Distractify

[Melizmatic]

@anon50609448

in western, English-speaking culture, men are more likely to complain and women more likely to keep it to themselves, and that women who don’t keep it to themselves are described by a specific, gendered pejorative term.

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[Groundman]

Geez! It took me forever to figure out the fuss. I thought she was telling him what the painting meant by way of an exaggerated confused/anguished face. I thought the joke was more about someone expressively reflecting the emotion in the painting than about someone being upset by being patronized. I guess I’d better stick to Calvin and Hobbes.

[anon50609448]

@tachin1

See that’s what I’m having trouble with here, yeah OK, a man misunderstood the situation but getting upset means that the person is still misunderstanding the situation.

Well, it’s communicating badly that means the person is still misunderstanding the situation. In this comic the woman both apparently is upset, and is explaining why she is upset. You can communicate well or badly whether you are upset or not (though it’s harder do anything well the more upset you get). I agree with your analysis, in the comic the woman explains what she didn’t like about what just happened.

Without the social context of understanding condesplaining, we wouldn’t even necessarily assume she was upset, we might just be baffled - “What has happened here, and why is she drawing that distinction?” we’d say.

So everyone except @popobawa4u is making a lot of assumptions about what happened just before the woman said this, but also assumptions about the woman’s tone of voice. Some people are assuming this woman is getting angry over nothing and taking it out on this man. Some people are assuming this woman is getting angry over something totally reasonable to get angry about, and it was the man who made her angry.

So it’s the people getting defensive on the man’s behalf that is really telling. Suppose the full interaction was this:

Panel 1. Woman says, “I wonder what it means.”
Panel 2. Man opens guide he picked up on his way into the exhibit, “Apparently this represents the artists’ struggles with learning to cook.”
Panel 3. Woman says, “I said, ‘I wonder what it means’, not ‘Tell me what it means.’”
Panel 4. Man says, “Oh, sorry I misunderstood you. Would you look at the time, I have to be going.”

Why would an artist, trying to tell me a story in New Yorker comic form, decide they will show me panel 3 of that story? If the goal of the comic is to say, “Men sometimes overexplain things, amirite?” then I understand why the creator of the comic chose to present it in this way. If the goal of the comic is to say, “Dames are crazy, amirite?” then the creator of the comic has some very avant garde ideas about storytelling. Thinking that the backstory of this comic is that man was being totally reasonable seems utterly baffling to me, it just wouldn’t be presented this way.

[ChuckV]

Dripped: An Animated Tribute to Jackson Pollock’s Signature Painting Technique

Stan Brakhage on a meeting with Jackson Pollock:

They were, like, commenting, and they used the words “chance operations” — which was no bother to me because I was hearing it regularly from John Cage — and the power and the wonder of it and so forth. This really angered Pollock very deeply and he said, “Don’t give me any of your ‘chance operations.’” He said, “You see that doorknob?” and there was a doorknob about fifty feet from where he was sitting that was, in fact, the door that everyone was going to have to exit. Drunk as he was, he just with one swirl of his brush picked up a glob of paint, hurled it, and hit that doorknob smack-on with very little paint over the edges. And then he said, “And that’s the way out.”