Ask a Manager

This is a transcription of the Ask a Manager podcast, episode 8: “Am I a Mansplainer?”

Alison: Hi, I’m Alison Green. Welcome to the Ask a Manager podcast. Some of you may know me from my website, AskAManager.org, where I answer daily questions from readers about how to navigate all sorts of sticky situations with coworkers, managers, and employees. Each week on the show I’ll take calls and talk directly with listeners about the toughest, most frustrating, or just plain weirdest work predicaments they’re facing. I’ll help you figure out what to do and say to handle these situations successfully and get the outcomes you want. So let’s get started.

Alison: This week we’re going to talk about mansplaining. If you’re not familiar with the term, it was coined to describe what happens when a man gives a woman an unrequested explanation of something, usually in a condescending way, on a topic that she has more expertise on than he does. Imagine a man explaining menstrual cramps to a woman without any invitation to do so, and you’ve got the idea. It has its origin in an essay by writer Rebecca Solnit, who described how a man at a party, upon learning what she writes about, kept condescendingly explaining her own book that she had written to her. That’s mansplaining – the assumption that a woman will need something explained to her, no matter how much expertise she has on the topic. And while, sure, sometimes this might happen with the genders reversed, the idea is that it happens all the time to women – really disproportionately often – to the point that it does seem gender based.

Women talk a lot about mansplaining, but we don’t often hear from men who might be guilty of it or who worry that they might be doing it. So I posted something on Twitter asking if any men who think they might be a mansplainer, or worry they might be a mansplainer, might be willing to come on the show and talk to us about it. Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter: Hi Alison, how are you doing?

Alison: You are very gracious to agree to explore this topic on the show. Do you want to start by reading the letter that you sent to me and then we’ll talk about it?

Peter: Yeah, thank you. It’s a bit scary. Thanks for asking on Twitter for mansplainers or people that worry about mansplaining. It’s a bit of a red rag to a bull because that gives me the chance to mansplain about mansplaining. Actually, preparing to talk to you was a great opportunity to talk to male friends about mansplaining, which I hadn’t done before.

To be honest, I might have my moments, but in general I don’t think I’m a mansplainer. But I definitely worry about it. It’s especially complex because a lot my work is around being a so-called expert, and I don’t always know how to see the line between explaining and mansplaining. I’m British, if your listeners haven’t figured that out already, and I work in developing countries, so I’m at risk of mansplaining not just across gender but also across class, education, country, and language barriers as well.

On top of this professional circumstance, personally I love having opinions about things whether I know about them or not, and certain reactions can really bring that out of me. If someone says something like, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure about a certain subject,” then I really love to jump in at that point. I notice this dynamic happens even with super smart female friends who are expressing themselves cautiously but know more about the subject than I do.

I was really pleased, and totally surprised, to hear from male friends, some of them, that the concept of mansplaining led them to talk less and listen more. But other friends were asking about the differences between having a strong opinion or explaining something, and mansplaining. While I personally see the gendered nature, as you said in your introduction that this happens more to women, not all of my male friends agree necessarily with seeing their actions in gendered terms. They agree that they might be overbearing or patronising but don’t necessarily see that’s a problem.

I’d really love to hear your advice on how to check or understand when one is mansplaining, and how to do it less. And it would also be good to know how I could communicate the gendered part of that to friends who don’t see that.

Alison: Fascinating, all of it. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Have you ever talked to women friends about this and gotten any input from them about whether they have ever felt that you were mansplaining?

Peter: Yes, the idea that I don’t mansplain comes from having asked female friends who’ve seen me in a range of circumstances at work and they say, “Mostly you don’t.” So that’s where I’ve sort of said that with confidence. I know it’s possible in theory that I mansplain, but about a specific incident, it’s really hard to hear that. And then the other kind of how I speak to – I spoke to women that I really respect and have good relationships with, and so the dynamic with them might be different from my dynamic with other women that I don’t necessarily know or have the same respect for.

Alison: Ah, that’s a great insight. It’s natural that the people you’re asking for input would be the women who you respect the most. But yeah, it could be a different dynamic with them.

Peter: Yes.

Alison: I wonder to what extent do you feel like you’re actively watching for people’s cues that they want and welcome advice and input?

Peter: To some extent. It’s a bit difficult – I don’t feel that I could claim I’ve mastered all the cues. But I listen a lot, I ask a lot of questions, so I try not to jump in. And then the other kind of personal thing, that when I think I have a good idea, it feels pretty important to me to share it. So that could stop me listening to cues because I’m a bit excited.

Alison: Yeah, and that’s a nice quality in people too, so it’s tricky. I mean, you don’t want to suppress your enthusiasm and your excitement about something. I do think a big element of mansplaining is that the man misses cues that the explanation is unneeded or unwelcome. So I think one thing you can do if you want to be sure that you’re not inadvertently doing it is to explicitly ask. When you feel yourself about to embark on a big explanation, you can say, “I’m dying to tell you about topic X because I think it’s really interesting, but I realize you might already know plenty about it.” And then let them tell you if they want you to go on or not. And you can even do some things similarly partway through, you know, if you’ve gotten going and then you have to catch yourself. You could even pause and say, “I’m sorry, I should have checked to see if you already know plenty about this topic or if you want to hear all of this,” and that way you’re checking in and you’re giving them a chance. They’re not being steamrolled. You’re giving them an opportunity to say something.

And I think too, you just want to make sure that you’re not delivering a lecture, which is something that a lot of people do in conversation without meaning to. You want it to be a conversation with real back and forth, you know? So ask questions! Ask, “What do you think about that?” or “Does that sound right to you?” Just be explicit about being interested in what the person you’re talking to thinks and feels. And I hesitate to give this advice, because I know that no one likes to talk by formula, but there’s so much research about how men tend to get a lot more of the air time in conversations than women do that it’s not a bad idea to be very deliberate about ensuring that you’re really only talking 50 percent of the time. Or if you’re with three people, one third of the time, or so forth. And I think for a man who worries about mansplaining, you could even aim for a little bit less than that and see how that feels. It could be an interesting experiment for a month to just try that and see what it’s like. And of course, doing that will mean that you’re giving the other person more space to contribute their own thoughts and maybe more space for you to proactively try to draw them out. It could lead to a whole new kind of interesting way of talking with people that might end up feeling pretty good.

Peter: Those are really great, those are really practical. I think some of those I’ve started to do as my own response, asking people, “Is it okay if I go into a rant about this?” I liked your suggestion of checking in the middle to see if that was still okay.

Alison: I think that’ll help. And I think the other thing is to very consciously ensure that you’re starting with a baseline level of respect for the knowledge and understanding of the person you’re talking with. Like, if you assumed the woman you were talking to did bring her own expertise to the table, would you still be explaining the thing in this way? And what if the person was a man 15 years older than you? Would that change anything about how you were approaching it? It might just be an interesting intellectual exercise to think through those questions and just reflect on, do I approach this differently?

Peter: Yeah, I’ve been slightly terrified when I’ve noticed myself speaking in a way that I would never address my boss in, right? (Laughs)

Alison: Yeah.

Peter: I guess I also saw a different nomenclature about the question of expertise. I know the iconic mansplaining is when the man knows nothing and the woman knows more, that’s when it’s most obvious. But I guess I also saw mansplaining as even if the man does know more, or if it even makes sense to say who knows more or less than someone. Even if the man does know more, they can still be mansplaining and silencing a woman or being condescending to a woman or being patronizing, and so I guess that’s sort of being in the position that I might have to explain things. People might have a bit of an exaggerated sense of my knowledge, but I’m trying to try and respect where they also have to explain some things that I might know more about. But even in that case I’m worried.

Alison: I think particularly in a work context, yes, there will be times when you know more than the person you’re talking to and you need to explain it to them for work-related reasons, and that’s fine. That’s just a normal part of being at work. I think where it can become problematic is if it’s an overwhelming amount of information delivery that the person doesn’t need and hasn’t indicated would be welcome. I think there, too, pausing to check, “Is this more information than you needed or wanted?” and looking for cues that they’re interested and engaged and really welcoming the information you’re giving them. Now at work, sometimes there are times where you need to impart that information whether they welcome it or not. Sometimes that’s just the nature of jobs, but in cases where that’s not the situation, where it’s more optional, I would say just pause and check how welcome it appears to be and how interested the person appears to be. And if you’re not sure, and especially with cultural differences in play, you might not be sure. So I think just pausing to ask is fine to do.

Peter: Yeah, I like what you said about “more than they needed,” because I think when you start explaining something it’s very easy to think, “Well, they need to know the A to Z of that,” but maybe they don’t – the main thing is enough.

Alison: Yeah, I think it often is. I get so many letters from people who are like, “How do I stop my coworker from giving me the half hour version of the answer?” (Laughs) We all have that tendency, I think – I’m sure I do it sometimes too.

I wanted to say, your friends were asking about the difference between just explaining something versus mansplaining as well. And I think if you want to go back and talk to them about it more, there are two big points I would make. One is, it’s when your default assumption is that of course you know more than the other person and that of course they will welcome hearing all about your expertise, and you don’t stop to check that. And the reason it’s gendered is just about numbers. It’s that it happens so incredibly often to women. It’s not that no woman ever condescends to a man or explains something to him that he already knows about. It’s just the rate at which it happens. I mean, I think almost every woman can tell you about a ton of times that a man has done this to her just in the past year probably. And men might be able to come up with their own examples too, but I think the difference in frequency is very different. And for a lot of women it fits into a larger pattern of having to work harder to have their ideas taken seriously. And so that’s why it’s gendered. It’s not that it never happens in reverse, it’s just how it breaks down numbers wise.

Peter: Yeah, I think it’s a quite big conversation to have (laughs). It’s going to take a while to get there.

Alison: Simply by being a man who’s having these conversations and who’s saying, “Well, this is something that I’m thinking about and I’m trying to get better about it” – that right there I think is doing really good work in the world. You know, by being an example of a man who’s willing to be open to having a pretty uncomfortable conversation about this, you’re modeling pretty great behavior for your male friends and I’m sure you’re planting seeds with them, even if it’s not coming to fruition right away.

Peter: That’s kind of you to say. If any of them are listening, I wouldn’t want to say – when they explained it to me, their behavior didn’t necessarily come across as bad, and I think we have genuine and valid disagreements based on seeing the world in a different way. And we’re all trying to be better people in some way or the other. But it’s like you’re saying, I think that deeper context on the receiving end that isn’t visible for women that are being spoken to in this way, and reiterating the frequency that women have to hear this, is the way to go forward with that.

Alison: I think maybe my advice to men would be when people talk about mansplaining, it doesn’t have to be something that puts you on the defensive. No one is saying “You’re a jerk,” or “You’re a terrible person,” or even – no one’s saying you’re a sexist. I think it’s more the message to men is: be aware that these patterns exist in our society and be aware that your own communication habits may inadvertently be contributing to these pretty damaging larger patterns. And it doesn’t mean that you’re trying to do that, it doesn’t mean that you’re being a jerk. It just means that we’re all existing in this larger cultural context that we should be thoughtful about.

Peter: Yeah, you’ve explained a really complex thing very well.

Alison: I’m so glad that you came on the show to talk about this. It’s really interesting to hear the male side of this and I think it speaks so well of you that you’re grappling with this and talking to your friends about it and trying to sort through it, so thanks for being here.

Peter: Thank you for helping me to do that.

Alison: Thanks for listening to the Ask a Manager podcast, produced in conjunction with Penguin Random House and Anchor. If you like what you heard, please take a minute to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Play. If you’d like to ask a question on the show, email it to podcast@askamanager.org. And check out my new book from Ballantine Books called Ask a Manager: Clueless Coworkers, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work. It hits stores May 1st, and it’s the ultimate guide for tackling any and all workplace dilemmas. You can pre-order a copy today at penguinrandomhouse.com or anywhere books are sold.

Thanks for listening! I’m Alison Green, and I’ll be back next week with another question.

Transcript provided by MJ Brodie.

You can see past podcast transcripts here.