Every day is a new day, and some days you learn something new and you wish that you didn’t. That was my day yesterday. I learned about that thing called “Mansplaining.”
You see, prior to talking to the man with the white beard trimmed in a short but bushy way that surrounded his jaw like some sort of jaw protector, I didn’t really know what mansplaining was. I had made it thirty-five and a half years in this world and had never had a man mansplain to me, and it was a beautiful thirty-five and a half years.
I had heard the term in passing before, but really paid it no mind, because it had never really happened to me. Not until yesterday, with all its soft mist and smooth grey skies, and the white bearded jaw-protected man with beady green eyes that were a window to a soul inflated with self-importance.
In fact, while it was happening I thought to myself: My god, is this mansplaining?
In an attempt not to be sexist, I can say that I have had men and women speak to me in a condescending way while explaining something they didn’t know everything about like they claimed to. But that is a bit different, because none of those previous condescending men and women did so with the undertone of Oh you silly, stupid little woman, thank god there are men in your life.
I was fairly confident it was mansplaining when I felt my rage bubbling up from somewhere lower and rapidly rising to my mouth – that's a pretty common reaction to mansplaining. I counted to ten mentally and checked it. I wondered how well that stupid jaw protector worked, and maybe he ought to grow one for his nose as well?
It’s wrong to hit people, I reminded myself.
Or is it? What if every mansplaining jerk had been punched in the face by a woman every time he started to do it at an early age, like say eighteen? Surely by the time he had reached an age that would cause white colored beard growth, he would have learned not to.
That’s the rage talking – violence is not the answer, I further reminded myself.
Besides, it is more complex than that. To choose to mansplain is a symptom of a deeper problem. It is a symptom of a very faulty personality that is very insecure, full of the desire to be better at the expense of anyone deemed weaker, and that’s pretty disgusting.
He continued running his mouth while a thought washed over me like a cool breeze on a muggy summer day, and it released the tension in my jaw. Just think of all the men out there that aren’t like this. My husband, my brother, my father, my neighbors, various husbands of friends, plenty of man strangers I haven’t even met yet, and they can all discuss things without mansplaining. This was one jerky raindrop falling into a big puddle of good men, and that's all. An isolated incident, that hopefully will not be repeated before another thirty-five years.
It’s all going to be fine.
When that conversation started and the rage bubbled up I had instantly poured gasoline all over the bridge that metaphorically connected me with the talking jaw protector. But I decided not to light it. There just wasn’t really any point. My rage was abated, and someone at his age isn’t going to learn that he is a jerk. It’s too late. There would be no convincing him no matter how carefully explained or how sharp the words.
And so I said two short polite sentences and released a breath into the smooth gray sky. It was breaking up nicely to the west, with perfect smatterings of blue poking through.