By Ms. Solnit’s telling, it took three or four interjections by her friend to get through to the mansplainer that Ms. Solnit was indeed the author, before he finally heard it. As Ms. Solnit notes, it “crushes young women into silence” by telling them “that this is not their world.” She adds, “It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.” More than a decade on, why is men’s interruption of women to explain things — often things they know less about than the women to whom they’re explaining — still so common? How did we arrive at the idea that men are the authorities of knowledge? Inherent in patriarchy is men’s entitlement to all valuable human goods: things like love, care, adoration, sex, power — and knowledge. Sometimes it’s connected to the idea that women are incapable of being authority figures.

Source: New York Times September 09, 2020 19:30 UTC