As a woman, I’ve had to endure my share of mansplaining. I used to joke that I went through the tortures of graduate school just so I could scream, “I HAVE A PHD” and then run away from any person with a penis attempting to lecture or inform me about things that I literally wrote a book on. It might seen extreme but so is the feeling of complete annoyance when a man tries to explain something to a woman that she already knows.
So what happens when a man attempts to explain female genitalia to a woman who actually doesn’t know what she is talking about? One Redditor needed some words of assurance that he wasn’t being “that guy” while teaching female anatomy to a woman who needed to know how her body works.
“So I was hanging out with some friends. Two guys, one woman. We’re all in our early 20s and have had our fair share of romance in life. The topic of sex popped up and we start talking about some of our past experiences. One guy joked about how having sex only made his dick bigger and bigger. We all laughed and he said that he wished that’s how it works,” the OP wrote.
“My female friend (let’s call her Sarah) piped up and said, ‘Yeah, for women, it’s the complete opposite. The more sex you have, the bigger your labia gets and the looser you become.’ There were some chuckles, but then I asked her if she was serious. She said she was.”
Uh oh! That’s not how it works! But I did think about that whole “throwing a hot dog down a hallway” joke while reading this.
The OP was similarly surprised that his friend wasn’t aware of this fallacy.
“Now, this is a big myth. I was surprised a woman who has had some experience actually believes that,” he said. “I basically told her this, and then she started getting annoyed, asking ‘how me and my dick knows about that.’ I said the same way I know anything about female anatomy-I’ve read up on it. The whole “women get looser” thing is something sexist dudes made up to slut-shame women. My other friends were silent on this.”
Then his friend shut down the conversation by saying she was “not in the mood for your mansplaining.”
Was the OP wrong to correct his friend? Or did his friend misuse the term “mansplaining” because she was embarrassed about not knowing female anatomy? A lot of Redditors thought that while he could have perhaps have let her know privately, his attempt to educate was in good faith and also important.
“As a woman, I’m asking you to please keep telling it to the girls who don’t know. Women need to understand their anatomy!! Sorry, pet peeve of mine,” said AreYouALavaBeaver.
“You’re right, she’s not, simple as that. Just because you know more about female anatomy than she does doesn’t make it sexist. I always took “mansplaining” as a guy automatically assuming a woman knows less about a topic because of her gender. I’ve had this done to me over computers parts before, and it drove me nuts. However, you weren’t assuming her knowledge based on her gender, you were correcting her on something very wrong, and as as you said, pretty sexist. I don’t see anything wrong there,” shiningdialga13 agreed.
“The tricky part is that in her ignorance from her view he was mansplaining. Maybe he could have looked up something on his phone real quick and showed her or one of the other guys could have agreed but without that it’s not surprising a woman could be distrustful of a man challenging her wrong beliefs about her body.” Nogster noted.
“I’m a woman working in a STEM field and do encounter bona fide Actual Mansplaining™ on a semi regular basis…Actually discussing something — especially when you’re wrong — is NOT mansplaining. I hate mansplaining but I hate even more when people get the definition of it wrong + claim it applies to ‘anytime a man disagrees with me’ because it makes people think that it’s a BS concept made up by misandrists. And it’s not! It’s real, but it’s very specific. But by misconstruing what it is, it makes people likely to dismiss it as something that doesn’t exist,” said bellends from experience.
“I think she got embarrassed and then threw the word ‘mansplaining’ at him as a way to try and gain some moral high ground. I think his ‘are you serious’ line was a bit confrontational, so she went on the defensive. Not his problem of course, but he could’ve shared the information with the group on general, without directing it back at her,” said Jypahttii.
“It’s not mansplaining when someone is perpetuating an actually harmful and absolutely sexist myth about human anatomy. You’re doing the good work,” praised brillantezza.
What do you think? Should the OP have let his friend remain ignorant? Or did he step out of bounds?