Mansplaining -- A Critical Self-Inquiry
The irony of this post would be that as a male, I would be explaining men explaining.
The greatest advantage to education is not the textbooks or the tests -- as happy experiences as they are -- but to come into contact and conflict with ideas that are not your own; ideas that contest one's habits and world views and presuppositions with which we raised. We are the product of nature and nurture, and as a white southern male, I was inculcated into a society that assumed masculine dominance in most areas of my life. Perhaps the kitchen was the only exception; but business and religion and school (most my principals were male, right?) and politics, and the family all presented the male with the dominant voice, the authoritative (sometimes authoritarian) position of superiority, and others (read: women) accepted that relationship too easily.
Because my father was the public figure of the family -- working class, he went out into the world, was promoted quickly and repeatedly, traveled extensively for more leadership conferences to Akron Ohio and bring back little but photographs of white men in shirts and ties smiling into the camera, and a leadership training certificate. No women were ever in those photographs. My father, oldest son of the youngest son of a Primitive Baptist preacher, assumed natural leadership position in the larger family, especially after his father was murdered and my father became the de facto man of the extended family. The family would travel to The Mountain and dad would assume the leadership role in every sense -- repairs to the barn, fence maintenance, security, etc. He would also assume the leadership role of the Giver of All Knowledge since no one else in the extended family had been to college. He and my mother had been in college when they met, married, and no more college. But he was in fact, still is in fact, one of the most prolific readers I've ever known in my life. I wish I had the time that he's had to read the tens of thousands of novels he's read.
And so, when any topic came up, he had an opinion. And he had the right to express that opinion, no matter what. His siblings and his mother might disagree, but somehow -- the tone of his voice, the grin on his face, the decibels coming from his head -- he silenced the conversation, always on top.
I learned that somehow, well, obviously. I remember being in conversations in college talking to friends about shit I knew little about, but assuming the mastery position, the Giver of All Knowledge. Sometimes I was actually correct and could cite a source. Some of it was bullshit.
Graduate school changed that. I was fortunate -- really fortunate -- to have colleagues, especially women colleagues -- who how to speak for themselves, knew their sources, and knew how to present an argument. Still, because of my whiteness, my maleness, my previous middle class position, my multiple degrees, I sometimes fell into the old white southern male trap of "explaining" something to my friends and colleagues.
Solnit explains it from a woman's POV:
Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don't. Not yet, but according to the actuarial tables, I may have another forty-something years to live, more or less, so it could happen. Though I'm not holding my breath.
I tend to believe that women acquired the status of human beings when these kinds of acts started to be taken seriously, when the big things that stop us and kill us were addressed legally from the mid-1970s on; well after, that is, my birth. And for anyone about to argue that workplace sexual intimidation isn't a life or death issue, remember that Marine Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach, age 20, was apparently killed by her higher-ranking colleague last winter while she was waiting to testify that he raped her. The burned remains of her pregnant body were found in the fire pit in his backyard in December.
That's not me. I don't do those things. I don't encourage those things. But I read about these things in the Houston Chronicle about men in my county during these things.
So, I have learned to be a bit more silent before I enter into the Burkean parlor sometimes. One advantage is reading, reading, reading -- dozens, then hundreds of books within the discipline, authors engaging authors I've never heard of, seeing the world in new ways I've never considered. Being exposed to new unknown reminds me of my humility. Now, I hope, when I share my explanations, I do so in a tone of sharing, not domination. I'm not a saint. I just need to remember that I've got two ears and only one mouth. The ratio might mean something.
Be strong, and courageous.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
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