Why I Love Mansplaining. Nothing is Obvious to the Uninformed
Before commenting, please do your basic research.
In the ongoing, never-ending and often hilarious (as well as hilariously sad) effort for men and women to learn to communicate with one another, every so often I get a Medium comment that leaves me breathless and on the floor. While I am grateful to the writer for the amusement, I am forever saddened by the lack of awareness. Worse, the lack of initiative to do even the most basic of research.
To illustrate my point, the other day Medium peep Elle Silver wrote a funny article that spoke to the business of body hair. Here’s her piece:
One of her comments caught my eye:
They’re dismissing marketing campaigns that encourage women to spend extra money on razors that are virtually identical to the less expensive ones that men can buy.
To that I made a spicy reference to the Pink Tax. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s the cost of being a female consumer. Here’s a very clear description of it:
It took me a matter of perhaps three seconds to type Pink Tax into my search bar and get this clear, concise and detailed explanation. With plenty of research to back it up.
A Medium writer referring to himself as an “aspiring writer” wrote the following laff riot, and he was utterly serious:
Because it’s a specialty item. People will pay more for the pink edition of something. Hence, it costs more. It’s supply and demand. And I don’t think women are so simple minded that they automatically have to buy something because it’s pink. Women can decide to buy the blue or black edition of something.
Sorry for mansplaining this to you, but the pink tax is absolute crap. There isn’t some grand conspiracy to keep women down by forcing them to spend more on certain items. But if you look hard enough into anything… (author bolded)
I wrote him a polite response, acknowledged that I admired that he knew that he was indeed mansplaining, and writersplained in response that while I get his point, he might want to do his research.
Here again is his final sentence:
But if you look hard enough into anything…
That implies research. Which clearly said aspiring writer didn’t bother to do. Hey, I am just using the man’s own words here.
Look, I can’t speak for anyone else. However when I get a comment like this I usually will look at the profile of the person, and at least scan a few articles. The commenter seems to have an anti-liberal bent (ya think?) and is just starting out.
What’s sad is that if this self-proclaimed aspiring writer does indeed intend to become a real writer (I’ll explain, stick with me here) then it might behoove said gentleman mainsplainer (again, as he described himself) to count on more than just his own rather biased opinions.
Kindly, we all have them. But if we’re going to make claims to facts, a good writer is going to check theirs before going public.
This is a reasonably good list for how to be a good writer if someone is going to take you seriously:
There are plenty of other similar lists. This points out the importance of doing the research. You and I don’t have any authority about a topic unless we do the work. While you and I can pen an opinion piece, self-described mansplainer above makes his points without checking the facts. He’s welcome to pen an opinion piece, as are we all.
The problem is that when your opinion, or mine, isn’t corroborated by solid research, as the Pink Tax most certainly is, then the above writer risks looking a tad foolish by not taking the extra tiny seconds it takes to check his facts.
If aspiring writer believes that the Money Matters article is nothing more than fake news, which is also an unfortunate habit among the mansplainers who comment with anger, hate and vitriol on my articles, then he is welcome to do his own research.
A good writer, a professional writer, conducts unbiased research. A true journalist is careful not to pick and choose only the material that corroborates their biased points, and we all have them. You and I can easily link only to those articles that bolster our case. Or we can have the courage to read both sides of the story, get educated, and make an informed, thoughtful decision about what to write.
That’s what professional writers do.
I have on plenty of occasions begun with a premise for an article. Then when I dig more deeply I discover that not only was I wrong, I was badly misinformed. I scrap the article. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. It’s not fun to find out but I’d vastly prefer to find that out before I make a royal fool of myself by publishing pap as fact, and having someone who has in fact done the research call me on it. Which would be richly deserved, for my part.
Mansplaining, which in my experience on Medium seems to bubble up from rather consistent sources, is almost invariably rather uninformed. Men who condescend and attempt to set the record straight with my clearly stupid self have, in my long observation, the habit of not bothering to check their sources’ veracity, nor question their assumptions.
If I may, with all due respect to Mansplainers United, checking the veracity of your facts doesn’t mean waddling down to the corner bar, asking your red-faced, beer- guzzling mates what they think about this stupid Pink Tax bullshit, getting widespread agreement, and stumbling home, satisfied with How Things Really Are.
At least if you are an aspiring writer, as Mansplainer self-identifies.
Writing, good writing, takes work. It’s often damned uncomfortable.
Most assumptions that I make need to be checked before I write about them. Otherwise I risk making an ass of myself, by proving that I am indeed, rather obviously uninformed.
