Prime Example of Mansplaining

Thanks to Mark Antill, Communications Director for the Faulk for Congress campaign, for this great example of mansplaining in response to my blog post about voting for Sheila Jackson Lee:

1) You are voting for a woman because she is a woman. That’s your prerogative.
2) You have no idea what Sheila Jackson Lee has actually done for the district. Not trying to be mean, just factual.

What’s mansplaining, you ask? This fabulous definition lays it out:

Mansplaining isn’t just the act of explaining while male, of course; many men manage to explain things every day without in the least insulting their listeners.

Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate “facts” about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.

My husband likens mansplaining to SPEAKING REALLY LOUDLY TO A FOREIGNER. Exactly.

My absolute favorite example is comment #31 in this thread:

You might be a mansplainer if you begin a sentence addressed to a woman whom you know holds a degree in neuroscience with “there are molecules in the brain called neurotransmitters”.

In my blog post, while I did posit that Sheila Jackson Lee receives different treatment because she is a woman, and it would be my prerogative to vote for her because she is a woman, that is not why I said I would vote for her.

I clearly stated that I plan to vote for her because she votes the way I want her to on the issues that matter most to me.

And, in fact, because I know she has voted the way I would want my representative to vote on certain pieces of legislation, I do know what she has done for the district.

I didn’t include the full comment from my mansplainer of the day because I don’t feel the need to give over my forum to a representative of a candidate whose positions I completely oppose. He’s got his own website for that.

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