| I am going to over-explain in detail in my reply. You may already know this but I know we have a lot of neuro-divergent folks, people who have difficulty understanding social interactions, and similar on HN so perhaps it will be of benefit. I am in no way trying to imply that you or anyone else isn't aware of these factors. Nor am I trying to claim that my explanations are the full and complete explanations. In your first post you said: >I don't post to this specific list, so there might be weird issues I'm not aware of So right off the bat you are declaring "I do not have the same problem as the OP". This is in response to a post where the OP said "I know how to solve this problem, please do not offer me explanations". So you jump in with admittedly no experience with this specific issue where someone explicitly told you they don't want your input... to give your input. That in and of itself is rude behavior. Especially when this is something anyone with a moderate technical background can figure out with a Google search so it isn't likely to be unique or useful. Even if you didn't intend it (and I'm sure you did not!) the implication is that she's non-technical so she either wouldn't know what to search for or would have a difficult time figuring out the instructions so your input will obviously save her time and effort. Because she is technical (as is obvious because she's talking about emailing the Linux Kernel mailing list which is an extremely geeky thing to be doing) and perfectly capable of solving the problem herself (as she indicated in the post) it can sometimes seem like you're being sexist by assuming otherwise. Obviously this is not the intent of everyone (or even most) people but the OP has no way of knowing that and has likely experienced similar behavior that was later proven to be driven by sexism. So it leaves her in a difficult spot: how many people who ignored my request not to explain the solution are doing it because they are rude, how many are doing it because they think "she's just a woman, she won't understand these things", and how many are doing it just to troll on purpose? And if she replies in a negative way is this one of the men who will start harassing her, trying to dox her, or stalk her to "put her in her place"? That's a small percentage of men who do that but she has no way of knowing which ones are the unhinged ones and which ones aren't. The other major problem with this behavior is that it is exhausting when it happens frequently. It becomes tiring to have to politely explain yourself over and over. Any human on the planet in this situation - unless they have super-human levels of patience - will eventually stop offering fully qualified explanations. When women do this they are often perceived negatively or as having a bad personality if they try to enforce boundaries or request respect (see below about violence). The reason it is called "mansplaining" is partially because it is something done by men more frequently because growing up girls are often socialized to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible while a subset of boys are socialized to believe everyone should listen to their thoughts and opinions. Obviously that is not always the case. As a subject matter expert and man myself I don't have a big problem with the term because while I have had people "mansplain" how a product I work on works (incorrectly I might add) I have never had a woman attempt to do that... it is exclusively men who try this with me. Millions of people use it so it isn't a completely tiny sample size, but I do admit it is anecdotal. As they grow up women are far more likely to have some random man they don't know get angry and physically grab them or threaten them if they tell the man they don't need his input or they want to be left alone. This is something I've witnessed happen to women many times while never having seen the opposite (a random woman a man does not know getting irate, in that man's face, screaming at him, or physically preventing him from leaving and/or hurting him because he politely told her he wasn't interested in her input. Emphasis on "random" person here, not someone known to the victim). How does this relate? One of the reasons women are socialized to always be nice, polite, and quiet is because of the risk of harassment or violence from random men she does not know. Do most men do this? No. But enough that it is quite common. If you really took the time to listen to the women you know (and didn't try to argue or excuse away the behavior) most of them would have at least a few stories like this. Then survey the men you know to find out how often they've had anything similar happen to them. Again emphasis on random strangers, not ex partners, coworkers, etc. (For my own pre-emption posting that you're a man and it happened to you once is not helpful. Obviously it happens, it is just far less common. It is still unacceptable regardless of gender). |