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Victoria is a recent graduate living in Ontario, Canada, and she started posting TikToks about misogyny and feminism in January, just to share some of her experiences online. They have been well-received by women who can relate to the everyday sexism that we face, so she just keeps going.
"I realize that mansplaining is not peak feminism, but as someone who is intelligent, well-read, and a grown person, I know that when men speak to me condescendingly about things that are so mundane - like pillows! - it is because he assumes - knowingly or not - that women are not as smart as men," Gravesande told Bored Panda.
"Mansplaining is one of those things that women are just expected to tolerate in a patriarchal society, so I knew a lot of women would be able to relate and share their own experiences with it, and it's not a heavy topic ... so I knew women would not hesitate to share their experiences. 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."
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The term mansplaining is often credited to Rebecca Solnit for her 2008 essay, which became a book in 2014 called Men Explain Things to Me. While Solnit did not coin the term, the book solidified it and the concept of mansplaining quickly spread across social media and pop culture.
As feminist writer Erynn Brook pointed out in The Guardian, since then, the "-splaining" suffix has been applied to other areas as well. There's whitesplaining, cisplaining, hetsplaining, richsplaining... The list goes on. The important thing to note about these words, Brook said, is how they highlight the power differential. "The word always describes the act of the person with the most power in the conversation, the man, the white person, the cisgendered person, the heterosexual person, the rich person and so. This is why terms such as femsplaining or womansplainingw to describe the act of a woman speaking condescendingly to a man are not generally accepted," Brook explained.
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Gravesande wants women and girls to engage with her TikTok in a funny and frustrating way where they all can share their experiences and feel less alone, reminding people that women and girls aren't stupid. "It's not fair that we have to 'just accept' that as women, we will not be taken as seriously as men," she said.
"The response to this TikTok has been overwhelming and at first, I tried to watch and comment on every single person who answered my question but there were just so many. I think I lost count after 300 and that was three days after I posted the video. Rebecca Black and Lili Hayes stitched my video and my friends sent it to me so that was really cool!"
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"As I said earlier, exposing mansplaining is not peak feminism. 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," Gravesande added. "My country has been in lockdown for the past year so I haven't been out and about speaking to anyone who might mansplain something to me, but I do realize that I will probably still experience this in the future."
The woman said it feels almost inescapable since "at any position of my adult life, as a partner, an employee, someone with a hobby, and as a student, someone is always willing to mansplain something to me."
Gravesande doesn't think it will go away until men simply accept that women are intelligent and can, in fact, be experts.
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All the replies her TikTok has received have reassured Gravesande that mansplaining is a universal experience for women. "I saw videos from women in the UK, Australia, and Brazil stitch my video. Professional women who have PhDs and are doctors have stitched my video. This has opened my eyes to sexism at its core," she said.
"Women around the world from different backgrounds and with different jobs have all experienced this and it's a phenomenon that occurs when men perceive you as a woman. There is also an alarming amount of men who have mansplained periods, PMS, and pregnancy to women and girls and that has been jaw-dropping for me."
Many stories downright shocked Victoria. "Dr. Melissa Mork, an academic expert, stitched my video and shared her experiences losing her parents, her close friends, and her partner, and a man still told her she knows nothing about grief and then explained to her what it was based on losing his dog at the age of 12. Video answers like that struck a nerve because mansplaining experiences boil down to men thinking their feelings are more valid than women's."
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