I am the last person to advocate dismissing a potential romantic partner based on a single opinion or any other one thing they said. Most statements can or at least need to be clarified and considered before you know what the other person meant to say and what exactly they had in mind. However, recently a friend told me how after sharing with his date a couple of his rather centrist views on political issues , the girl told him that she doesn’t need him to mansplain anything to her. As expected, that date ended shortly after, as my friend felt unfairly attacked and he didn’t quite know how to handle this mansplaining accusation and where exactly to go from there.
When a woman accuses her date of mansplaining, it isn’t exactly conducive to a positive interaction, even if it was deserved, but all too often it isn’t. And, if the assumption that the guy is talking down to his date is in fact unfounded, then it instantly says so many things about that woman. She is probably part of *that* world of women who bought into the toxic narrative of men hating and being angry at men as a whole just for being men, while having a default assumption that if a guy tries to describe something or explain himself to her, this necessarily means that he is talking down to her.
The fact that she uses that word suggest that she is on the same wave length as the media channels out there who divide sexes rather than bringing them together. This also means that she must have quite a few other views that will make getting along with her an uphill battle. Undeserved accusation of mansplaining means the accuser is probably a radical feminist -i.e. not the one who simply believes in equality of rights and opportunity, but the one who wishes to go on a crusade to defeat men and show them that they are less than they think they are.
I realize that assuming so many things about women who love to use the word “mansplain” while accusing them of making all these assumption about men makes me sound hypocritical. However, when it comes to this specific word -these assumptions might just be fair and usually correct.
So, should a guy who is accused of mansplaining run from that date as soon as possible while feeling lucky, he dodged the bullet sooner than later? Absolutely. There is simply no other option.
And, any single woman, who accuses men of mansplaining because she assumes by default that men think she is not smart as she really is, should take a long, hard and honest look at why she thinks that way, and how it affects her interactions with men on date and elsewhere.
