Some people really like to talk to impress others, but what actually happens is that they come across as annoying and seem to think they are better than others. It is especially evident when men explain obvious things to women or don’t believe them when they say they know. The best case is when they are so convinced of something, they need to explain it to a woman, but they are so far from the truth, it’s not even worth correcting them.
This phenomenon is so prevalent that it even has a name—‘mansplaining.’ It is very annoying and shows that some men think women are not smart enough to know certain things which essentially is belittling the whole gender. Just by itself it’s not that harmful, but it is a symptom of a bigger problem, so talking about it is necessary.
A good place to vent is TikTok, where you don’t know when a new trend will start. Victoria Gravesande simply asked in a video for women to share the stupidest things men have ever explained to them and started with her own story. Bored Panda has already made one list of the most amusing stories stitched with this video, but there are constantly new ones, so here they are for your enjoyment.
We would also like to hear your own stories. Does it happen a lot? What are the most annoying types of mansplaining? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to upvote the stories that you found the most ridiculous.
More info: TikTok
#1
One time I went to the grocery store with my ex boyfriend because I needed tampons, and I had made a comment about how I thought the tampons were getting so expensive. And he straight up told me to stop complaining. And I said "No tampons and pads should be free because it's something that a woman needs and something that they just can't control" then he says "No, buying one box of tampons is like buying a bulk item from Costco." And I was like, "What are you talking about? Some of the boxes only have like 10 or 20 in them. That's not a lot." And he tries to tell me that women only need one tampon throughout their whole entire cycle. I'm full on arguing with him in the middle of the grocery store saying "No, you have to change them every couple hours or you can get toxic shock syndrome and get really really sick and potentially die." And he said, "See you're paying for something that could be deadly. Of course it's not going to be free." I broke up with him after that.
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Last year, when Bored Panda made an article with the stories shared in this trend, we talked with Victoria, the person who started it and we found out that Victoria did for a reason as her TikTok is dedicated to addressing similar issues, "My goal with my TikTok account is to talk about everyday experiences for women and to think critically about everyday things that we don't realize are rooted in misogyny."
#2
So a little bit of backstory here. I'm seven months pregnant. And at 20 weeks I posted a bump update. And I had a guy messaged me and say that it's disgusting, that I'm flaunting my weight gain. And I was like, "Dude, I'm pregnant." And he's like, "No, women's bodies aren't supposed to get bigger when you're pregnant. Your body is equipped with the room to carry an entire child and that any weight gain, swelling is because you're eating your cravings and you're being unhealthy and hurting your child." I pray that this man never reproduces.
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#3
I was just leaving Lowe's and the kind gentleman decided to inform me that the veterans parking at Lowe's is for the veteran and not the spouse. Sir, sir, why do you think I'm parked there?
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#4
A friend of mine asked me to share her story because she doesn't have TikTok. Her name is Madi as well, full name Madilynn. And she has a long last name with a bunch of random letters on it. Also, she's a scientist. She's very smart. Okay. She's in some kind of training class for work. And the male teacher decided that she spelled her own name wrong, so he corrected it for her. He told her to pay more attention to detail and that he fixed her mistake. He changed the ending of her last name to what he thought it was supposed to be and took the second -n off of her first name, because that just didn't seem right to him. This has happened her whole life. People tell her her last name is spelled wrong. No, I think she knows how to spell her name. Thank you very much.
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Mansplaining is a real phenomenon that is observed by not just women who ge mansplained but also in the academic environment. We talked about mansplaining with linguistics professor in University Of Florida, Diana Boxer, whose areas of interest, among others, are discourse analysis and pragmatics, and gender and language.
She told us, "Mansplaining is an insidious and pervasive issue in current gender relationships. It displays society's disparity in power dynamics between the binary poles of gender-female-male. "
The professor exlains further what the dynamic is, "We are shown how men feel inherently empowered to take on the explanatory role for what is said by women, even women who are experts in the area that is being 'explained. '"
#5
I don't know if this counts, but this one time this guy was telling me something and I was like, "I don't think that's correct." And he looked at me and he said, "Well, I'm very well read and I have an IQ of 130" and that prompted the best comeback of my life. I said "Sir, do not flex being well read on an English major, I read dissertations for fun. Do not flex having a high IQ on me when I was in my school's gifted students program, the minimum IQ requirement for that is 130. Your high IQ is my bare minimum." He didn't want to talk after that. I don't know why.
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#6
Okie dokie, I feel like as an athletic female this was just made for me. So, my specialty is benchpress. Most of you guys that follow me already know that, you already know that I'm a state record holder, and that I am pushing for nationals in the next couple years. Hopefully, to take the title that'd be really cool. Most of you already know that right? Okay. Benchpress is a predominantly male activity, apparently. I swear to God if one more man comes up to me in the gym and says, "Oh, honey, honey, honey, honey, you can't bench that." "B***h the h**l I can't? I bet I can rep it for more than you can. Okay, so step off." They're always trying to critique my form and I'm like, my guy, you're just making yourself look stupid.
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#7
I once had a male coworker told me that by putting my body out there on the internet, men weren't gonna take me very seriously. And then when I tried to explain to him that I'm literally doing this for everybody but men, like men are literally the last person on my list that I hope my content reaches. He told me that that was misguided because men are really in control of a lot of things. So I need men on my side. Seriously, I'm a fat lesbian who preaches body positivity and smashing the patriarchy to the girls, gays and theys. Do you know what, if a straight cis man stumbles across my profile that I hope he gets educated. But other than that, move on.
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Victoria told us that she felt that "It's not fair that we have to 'just accept' that as women, we will not be taken as seriously as men." Although she sees mansplaining to be a problem, she doesn't think that this is the most burning issue concerning women, "Women don't die from it, I wouldn't necessarily say that we are traumatized from it, but just because there are no casualties doesn't mean it's harmless or not a real issue."
#8
I have a lot of these and most of them come from first dates, but my favorite is the time a man asked me what I studied in undergrad. And I told him I studied Middle English literature, medieval literature. And he spent the next several minutes explaining that Shakespeare was meant to be performed and viewed on stage, not studied in classrooms on paper, and I'd probably wasted my time. Of course, Shakespeare is not medieval literature.
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#9
Off duty OBGYN here. Where do I begin? So I used to do circumcisions on newborn baby boys and a dad was very specific on how he wanted his son circumcision done and offer to show me his own circumcision, so that I would see exactly what he was referring to. I refused. And more than once that a gentleman had to explain to me how to repair an episiotomy to his exact specifications immediately after the delivery of his child. And then in the office, more than once gentlemen insisting that I give their partners medication so that they would want to have relations with them. And of course, there's the more than once that I was told in front of people's partners that I was too pretty to be a doctor.
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#10
I once had to explain to a man, that I was sleeping with, that a woman does not pee out of her c******s, but that we have a urethra it's called urethra meatus. And it's located below the c******s but above the vaginal opening. And I spent several hours arguing back and forth with him about this. And he kept insisting that I was wrong and he knew better because he was a biology student and had passed as an anatomy class with flying colors. And finally I had to sit him down on the floor and take off my pants and show him, and afterward, he insisted that my v****a was deformed because women peed from the c******s.
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Diana Boxer also thinks that masplaining is a problem that should be solved, but it shouldn't be targeted as it is and raher the cause of the problem should be the main concern, " Until true parity in gender power dynamics is reached in society, mansplaining will be evident in all areas of life by virtue of the fact that many men feel it is their role to be the 'expert, ' even when they are far from it."
Do you think that this goal is possible to reach? Do you think that more women talking about it can help solve the problem? Let us know what do you think about this issue and if you see any positive changes in the comments!
#11
One time this 20 ish year old dude was telling me that it's not possible to pee with a tampon in. And I was like, "Yeah, it is, the urethra and the v****a are different things." And he just like wasn't wrapping his mind around it and he just continued to argue with me. And I was, "First of all, I'm literally both a female and a female that works in women's health and wants to become an OBGYN. Like, I'm not sure why you think you have the right to argue with me on this in the first place. Also, like how stupid you have to be to think that."
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#12
So I used to work front desk at a hotel and I was chatting with a guest one day, and at one point he asked what my name was. I said my name is Cartier. And he was like, "Oh, that's interesting. How's that spelled?" And so I spelled that for him. And he was like, "Um, no." And I was like, "What do you mean no?", and he was like, "That's pronounced car tee err." And I was like, "Um, no, actually, it's French. So it's pronounced Cartier. But Cartier is fine in English." And then he proceeded to argue with me about it back and forth. Trying to be like, "No, -er does not make an -a sound" and I was like, "Not in English but in French in does." And then he was like, "Okay, but it's French. Can you even name one person who speaks French?" And I was like "En fait, moi je parle français."
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#13
So I'm a certified athletic trainer. I did my master's thesis on concussion in sport. I deal with it every day elbow, apple, carpet, saddle, bubble, you know what I'm talking about, yeah, so I know them in and out. I was standing on the sideline of a football game guy gets hit, he kind of goes down, does a whiplash type of counter-coup type of mechanism. And I just see a light go out in his eyes, he does not look like he's there. So I immediately go over to him. I'm going to pull him off to do a quick eval when a coach literally steps in front of me says, "No, I was standing right there. I saw him he didn't get hit in the head." I said, "I know. But he hit his head on the ground. You don't have to get directly hit in the head to have a concussion." He says "No, that's not true. I played football all my life. I know." This guy literally is body checking me, will not let me do a concussion eval on this kid. Keeps bringing up how he's played football all his life, so he knows. I said, "Are you a medical professional?"
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#14
So as most stories would start, I was dating this horrible guy. We're both in college, I'm studying biology. I told him this fun fact that being polydactyl, having more than five fingers, is a dominant trait. When I learned this in class, my mind was blown. So excited to tell him this. And he laughs at me. He starts telling me all these things, that it's absurd, my professors wrong. They don't know what they're teaching us. I mean, he was a business major, obviously, he would know. So, I tried explaining the Punnett Square to him about dominant recessive genes. And he stops me mid sentence and just says, 'I can't take you seriously right now.' Basically, he wouldn't hear me any further until I had come back after researching it more. Really tried explaining that just because it's not desired, doesn't mean it's not dominant. You know, joke's on me. I have to admit I was wrong because obviously a business major would know more about genetics.
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#15
So I'm a book editor. And I had to explain to a full grown man that women do not get their periods while they're pregnant. He had a pregnant character and there was some plot point for drama where she starts bleeding and they think it's a miscarriage. So it's this big sort of emotional thing. And the plot point was explained by it not being a miscarriage, but being a period, and she's like, eight months pregnant or something. So, I came back with all these suggestions. I'm like, "There's other reasons why she could be bleeding, can't be a period though. Like just anatomy. This is how it works." And he literally sent me a long, detailed email about how, yes, women do have their periods while they're pregnant. This man was like 50.
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#16
So I was writing on a show once and we did a table read to go through all the sketches that was written. And a man turns to me and explains why one of the sketches was funny that I wrote. And I just said, "Oh, yeah, I'm glad you understood the jokes I wrote. Now I don't have to explain them. Good job!"
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#17
One time this guy tried to explain to me that women's vaginas are just one giant l***a. I told him "Well actually, women have two pairs of l***a majora and the l***a minora." He double down and told me that I was wrong. And that it's incredibly dangerous that sexually active women, like myself, don't have a basic understanding of our own bodies.
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#18
He told me "You can't get pregnant on your period" and I was like "Yes you can" and he was like "No you can't, I'm a medical student, I know what I'm talking about", and then I was like, "No uterus no opinion."
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#19
About a year ago my mom had been briefly dating this guy and on the night that I met him, he picked me and my mom up in his truck. And it was a pretty chilly night. It was like January or February. My mom was feeling chilly. She was sitting in the front seat, so she decided to turn off the AC. I s***t you not. He decided to explain to her that AC in fact stood for air conditioning. And that even if she was cold, she was not allowed to turn off the AC because that means that the air in the car would not be properly conditioned. Word for word, he explained that to her and me in the backseat. My mother has a PhD. Not that that even has anything to do with this, but I was flaming with rage in the backseat, and she broke up with him shortly thereafter.
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#20
I was 19, stuck in the car with my dad on a trip and having a hellish period. So I happen to mention how bad the cramps were. And my father, a normally, you know, palatable aging hippie with a master's degree in science, turns to me and says, 'Maybe if you worshiped your uterus, it would be nicer to you.' Excuse me, Jim.
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