The Eternal Problem of Mansplaining

I saw this cartoon online and needed to share it. It's from the New Yorker, I believe last week. I found it on Twitter because it went viral when the woman who Tweeted it wrote "Sharing just because it prompted so many men to leave long, angry comments to the New Yorker." Her Twitter feed then proceeded to blow up with thousands of other angry men and their backlash to the message (thus, as frequently happens with mansplaining, proving the point the cartoon was making).

The cartoon is just such a perfect example of mansplaining that the average woman experiences probably at least once a day. The two people in the cartoon are probably supposed to be either friends or on a date, and either way the example works. The man thinks he's doing the right thing by trying to impress the woman with his supposed knowledge about modern art, when in fact by shoving his interpretation on her when she never actually asked for it, he's being benevolently sexist.

If a guy I was on a date with did something like this and I didn't know him well I probably wouldn't even go through the exhausting process of explaining that his comment bothered me and why it did - after all it would be awkward, start an "unnecessary" confrontation, and no doubt either anger or humiliate the guy (they tend really not to like that).

Obviously, the cartoon doesn't depict a Huge Important Moment of Sexism, but this type of experience is far more insidious and universal to the female experience. Tiny moments of men overreaching in conversations or shoving their 'intellect' in the faces of women who would never be socially allowed to do the same construct our understanding of gender and the power dynamics the gender occupies in the world. And if just made me chuckle, since I could picture so many of the men I know doing something like this.