Bored Panda was curious to find out whether it's the intent or the way that something's said that's more important. "There may be helpful intent, but the problem is the conscious or unconscious assumption that the -splainee doesn’t know something. People without societal privilege are frequent targets, which is why the behavior gets labeled mansplaining (or sometimes white-splaining, since white women often do this to women of color, too)."
Goodwin added that trying to label the term as being reverse-sexism ignores the reality about life: "Trying to police the term is attempting to deny that communication patterns are influenced by systemic sexism or other pervasive imbalances."
For those not in the know, mansplaining is a mix of the words ‘man' and ‘explaining' that denotes when a man comments on or explains something to a woman in a ‘condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner.'
Very often, it has everything to do with the explainer in question having little to no clue about the details of the topic and trying to pose as an expert. It's less a comment about gender and more a comment about human beings tending toward overestimating their abilities, wanting to be right, and claiming the spotlight for themselves. However, others disagree and argue that the term is meant to be gendered.
The term ‘mansplaining' also led to the rise of words such as womansplaining, whitesplaining, rightsplaining, and others. The suffix -splain was added by Dictionary.com in 2013 and it's been an official part of the English language since then. However, its origins are older than that. The verb ‘splain' has been in use for over 200 years and has increasingly come to refer to condescending or verbose explanations.
Some critics have pointed out the irony that calling the term ‘mansplaining' is sexist in and of itself, biased, dismissive of men, and creates the very same double standards that those using the term claim they'd like to avoid.
While there are tons of examples of mansplaining (or, to be honest, all kinds of -splaining) in the world, there's always the lingering suggestion that all men are somehow inherently flawed. Even author Rebecca Solnit, who is known to have coined the term, seems to think that “it seems to me to go a little heavy on the idea that men are inherently flawed this way, rather than that some men explain things they shouldn't and don't hear things they should.”
Meghan Daum, writing for the Los Angeles Times, pointed out that the term can be used to silence anyone with a different opinion or useful insights. “To suggest that men are more qualified for the designation than women is not only sexist but almost as tone-deaf as categorizing everything that a man says as mansplaining.”
Finally, if you're not sure whether or not something is or isn't mansplaining or any other kind of -splaining, here's your reminder that Goodwin has created a handy chart. It's a nice roadmap to have to keep conversations civil, instead of letting them devolve into petty arguments with no friendly resolution in sight.
