When knowing is not enough May 6, 2008
A recent article articulates the experience of being the recipient of masculine condescension to explain that which one already knows. Although two weeks old, its link is still flying around cyberspace, and I have certainly contributed to the collective gasps of recognition. It’s a familiar variety of painful to discover how many women of authoritative knowledge still find ourselves reluctant to correct or contradict “Men Who Explain Things.” Like the article’s author, I feel obligated to observe, at this juncture, that women can be condescending, that genders condescend to their own members, etc. However, the minicareer of, as one lovely coworker put it, “a lifetime of getting patted on the head by men who assume I know nothing,” certainly seems widely shared. Why is knowledge not enough? What further informs our failures to assert that which we know we know? Granted that my explaining-condescender is an ass, why on earth am I struck with self-doubt in the face of confident assery?
Note that early in the article, a friend speaks up on behalf of the all-too-polite author. This experience, I also share, and the fact that we often more easily assert our confidence in other women makes it all the odder that we so often fail ourselves. An excellent method of pursuing epistemic justice is to use what privilege and power we have to call attention to less privileged women with firsthand knowledge, but at some point, we must also improve our skills of self-defense! Further proof, if I needed it, that one can have duties to oneself - - a position which I’ve held for decades, but doubted when a talented man challenged it at a recent conference. (Sheesh!)
Thanks to Angela Johnson for the link!
Thanks so much for the link! Excellent read.
The link is definitely an interesting read and reminds me of many episodes I’ve lived through. What I was most struck by was how the narrator and her supportive female friend waited until they were out of earshot of the asshole male explainer before they burst out laughing. This seems an occasion to start laughing in someone’s face!!
That in turn reminded me of the intriguing, controversial, and I think brilliant feminist film by Marlene Gorris “A Question of Silence” from 1982. A female psychiatrist investigates why three women who did not know one another wound up working together to kill a shopkeeper at a fashion boutique. In the course of her investigation she discovers this was a political act expressing their outrage at inequality; she learns more about each one’s life as she re-creates events of their respective days up to the murder. In one of the most evocative and memorable episodes, the secretary is at a business meeting with a group of men and makes a remark which goes unnoticed, only to be repeated a few minutes later by a man, at which point it receives praise and recognition. That’s another of those experiences I am sure we all have.
Anyway in the course of the investigation the psychiatrist comes to think that the women were sane and that this is a problem for her because she agrees with them but this finding cannot get them off the murder charge. There is a crucial courtroom scene where all the women recognize what’s going on and burst out laughing at the absurdity and the men present are utterly befuddled.
This is a very poor sketchy account of a quite brilliant and interesting, disturbing film. I found one on-line article with more about it here:
http://pages.emerson.edu/organizations/fas/latent_image/issues/1993-12/allegory.htm
And I would like to thank the brilliant Karla Mantilla for sending me this link in the first place. Thanks for the undeserved shout-out–it still felt good even if it should have gone to Karla!
Okay, you keep thanking your source, and I’ll keep thanking mine, Angela! Karla may be brilliant, but she didn’t take a crazy job building a liberal arts college, get to know me and send me the link, now did she? :-) Be proud of your email-forwarding genius.
I think the issue of defending ourselves is not simple. For a short period of time I asked Mr. jj what he would say - in his understated English way. And then did that. The results were catastrophic. I was experienced as the ultra-bitch in a way that let at least one person try to destroy some work on mine.
So I think it is a very complicated situation, not least because we are often as bad off if we win as if we lose. Also, the game being played may be pretty distasteful.
One thing that recent surveys are suggesting is that depressed people are actually more perceptive and realistic. I am greatly simplifying here, but it occurs to me when I try to capture why this sort of situation has left me feeling pretty crushed. One thing is that they are often solid reminders of one’s irremediably outsider status. Well, as least when I was younger, that was largely a reminder of the reality of the situation.
I expect this also links back to an earlier discussion about how to do philosophy. Negative and condescending remarks are more destructive, I’m willing to bet, if one has the nerve to try to do more than knock down others.
I have adult sons who try to explain things to me.
It is not well received.
Sometimes they catch themselves, and apologize.
That is well received.
JJ, I’m still thinking hard about that earlier discussion, especially as to trying to formulate some tricks that do work. Unfortunately, the bfp fiasco pretty much shocked me out of order; I’m still struggling to overcome anger at this point.
Nonetheless, I’d like to contribute that the explainer behavior has been observed by myself — male — with a trigger seeming to be avoiding typical territory marking behavior: I’m older than most co-workers, and I only get that BS when I act eager to learn from them. When I just have to get things done, I just remind them how I helped them before — being an old hand means I had the opportunity — and reverse the relationship. I know it’s not something everyone can do, but I’m extremely reluctant to pull rank and still find the change in attitude enlightening.
counterfnord: Yes, pulling rank with professional colleagues isn’t very successful. Sometimes one has to do something like that with students who haven’t got things sorted out.
I hear guys doing something like saying “yes, yes, yes” to indicate someone’s saying the obvious. Sometimes something like that will work for me. Of course, one of the bad things about the lecture is it can be so boring, so one may want to stop it for reasons that have nothing to do with status.
Anyway, perhaps we should try to get some ideas together.
I am really sorry to hear you’ve not having the best of times right now.
jj, the best I can contribute is another couple of tricks I usually use to get away from the lectures of “men who explain things”. My general purpose one goes more or less like this: “Wow this is all very interesting but I’m running late on — insert suitable excuse — and I feel bad about wasting your time on explaining all this to me. I think I’d better do my homework first, so I’d be very grateful if you could point me to some introductory textbook or something, and if you don’t mind I will get back to you to clarify what I didn’t understand”. At that point don’t worry about following up on this: either the “explainer” is hitting on you and he’ll be back sooner than you think, or he will have forgotten the whole thing within 5 minutes.
On the other side of the spectrum, I have the evil one, useful to get rid of serial time-wasters doubling as back-stabbing credit hogs. “Oh, thanks so much for telling me all this, but really I think I’m not the only one who could benefit from your insights, I really thing you should arrange for a presentation/submit a paper so that more people can share in your wisdom”. Most efficient when said explainer has been claiming as his own work from some higher status researcher — seems dumb, but actually happens.
If you need experimental data, I have a fine specimen on hand for a month or so: he often calls on me to get him out of technical trouble, and by the time I’m done basically dictating his way out of it, he’s actually starting to lecture me about what I just taught him. He then repeats same lecture to our boss, which I’m content with for other reasons, but he seems like a promising subject for experiments.
But what I’d be really grateful for is some advice about avoiding that offensive behavior myself. I just love teaching what I know, but there have been times when I realized I was way into boring territory. Do you have any tell-tale signs about when one is overstepping in that department?
Unfortunately, I am commenting very late on this thread, but the original article is so interesting that I feel compelled to write something.
The reason it interests me is that I have seen so much of Men Who Explain Too Much. The first in my life was my father. He had little education, but never hesitated to explain things at great length, primarily to women but also men, if the men were younger than he. It was as if, by talking for long enough, he would eventually hit upon the truth, or at least something that seemed truthful.
I also noticed this phenomenon on a European tour that I recently took. There were several male academics in the group (I was the only female academic), and I noticed that they would expatiate at length about various phenomena, often saying things that were clearly false. What I found was that the women in the group would almost invariably preserve an attentive silence while this was going on. Only once did I ever see a woman dare to contradict.
My thought is that this drive to explain is a key requirement of at least some forms of masculinity. That is, to be a real man is to be in charge, to understand, to be able to interpret reality correctly, to know what to do. On the other hand, no real man should be defeated by any issue, or rendered unable to understand it. One must (appear to) know. This requirement of knowing and explaining is not a part of stereotypical womanhood.
Furthermore, in acting out the requirement to know, men render themselves LESS likely to know. They are so busy talking that they are unable to listen. They are so used to the attentive silence of women that they cannot learn from women. They are so used to competing with other men that they likewise cannot learn from other men.
I realize, of course, that not all men are like this. My point is just that some concepts of manhood require this behaviour, and that those who act on it thereby paradoxically diminish their own ability to learn to provide accurate explanations.
Introvertica, I’m just as late reading your thoughtful reply. I have been among the silent ones for long, my experience being that it’s usually not worth the trouble speaking up. Well said overall, but the paradox you speak of in the last paragraph may not be one, as I’ve come to doubt that “men who explain things” care at all about the accuracy of their explanations. Just don’t get me started about those “concepts of manhood”, I’ll just stop at saying that these have been a personal burden to me for years, and most women have been worsening the load.
counterfnord,
I didn’t see your earlier response - I love the idea of recommending that they do more work on disseminating (sic) their ideas.
I don’t know how to tell if one is boring, expect when it’s too late. There might be a formula; perhaps:
assess your general entertainingness and position it on a scale of 1-10, whith 10 being something like “you are flooded with invitations to speak - in informal or formal contexts.”
Divide by 2.
For you answer, n, adopt the rule: never utter more than n sentences at a time, unless you are involved in a legal controversy..