Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
I was recently informed that I was mansplaining.
Well, thank God. I’d been waiting my whole life for someone to diagnose what’s wrong with me using a word that didn’t exist fifteen years ago. What a relief. And here I thought I was just “talking.” Silly me. Silly, penised me.
This tracks, I suppose. I am, in fact, a man. And I do enjoy a good splain. I’ve been splaining since before it had a gender prefix, back when it was just called “having a conversation” and people had the decency to either listen, disagree like adults, or wander off to get more dip. Ah, the before times. When words were just words and not tiny little indictments of your genitalia.
But here’s the thing: I wasn’t mansplaining. I was opinionating. Manpinionating, if you must. There’s a difference, and I would explain it, but apparently that’s also mansplaining, so now we’re in a fun little Möbius strip of gendered accusation where a man literally cannot clarify anything without further proving the point against him. It’s the kind of narrative chaos that only real life can produce. Kafka would be proud. Kafka would also be mansplaining. (If you’ve never read The Trial, it’s funnier than you’d think, and disturbingly relevant to this exact situation.)
Mansplaining vs. Opinion: What Is Mansplaining, Really?
For the uninitiated (and I’ll type slowly so you can keep up), mansplaining is when a man explains something a woman already knows. The term traces back to Rebecca Solnit’s now-famous essay “Men Explain Things to Me”, in which a man once explained her own book to her at a party. Which, admittedly, is hilarious and indefensible. But what I was doing was not that. Like telling a female astronaut how gravity works. Or explaining the plot of a movie to the woman who directed it. What I was doing was expressing a viewpoint, badly, perhaps, and with the kind of excessive hand gestures that got me uninvited from a pottery class, but expressing it nonetheless. The fact that my opinion came housed in a male body is not a structural flaw in the argument. It’s just unfortunate packaging. Like getting a Pulitzer delivered in a Pizza Hut box.
And while we’re slapping gender labels on verbal communication like passive-aggressive name tags at the world’s worst HR mixer, let’s follow this logic to its natural, idiotic conclusion. Shall we? Of course we shall. I’m a man. I can’t help myself.
From Squirrelsplaining to Manateesplaining: A Funny Essay About Gender Politics
If a woman does it, is it womansplaining? Ladysplaining? Galplaining? If a non-binary person does it, is it theysplaining? (I spend a truly unhealthy amount of time inventing names for things, but this might be a new personal best.) What if I were a squirrel? Squirrelsplaining: just aggressively chittering at you from a branch about acorn futures and the shocking state of oak tree governance while you stand below, holding a latte, wondering how your morning went so wrong. A manatee? Manateesplaining: slowly, slowly drifting toward you in shallow water to explain, at an absolutely glacial pace, why seagrass is the superior aquatic vegetation, and no, it will not be taking questions. What if my pronouns were messy? Would I be transplaining? And at what point does this whole enterprise collapse under the weight of its own performative absurdity?
Spoiler: we passed that exit six paragraphs ago, and the GPS is now just weeping.
Mansplaining Is Just Name-Calling: The Rhetorical White Flag
Because let’s call this what it is. Accusing someone of mansplaining mid-argument is the adult equivalent of “I know you are, but what am I?” It’s the rhetorical white flag. The verbal equivalent of flipping the Monopoly board because you landed on Boardwalk with a hotel and two mortgaged railroads. It’s what happens when someone is losing an argument so badly that they abandon the argument entirely and attack the messenger’s chromosomes instead. Logicians have a fancy term for this: the ad hominem fallacy, which is Latin for “I have nothing useful left to say, so I’m going to insult you instead.” It’s not a rebuttal. It’s name-calling disguised as feminism and it’s a retreat with a vocabulary word taped to it.
It belongs in the same Hall of Fame of Desperate Conversational Gambits as:
“Well, that’s just your opinion.” (Yes, Shea. That is literally what opinions are. You’ve cracked the code. Someone get Shea a medal and a dictionary.)
“You wouldn’t understand.” (Try me. I once assembled IKEA furniture using only the Swedish instructions, a butter knife, and a marriage that was disintegrating in real time. I understand plenty.)
“Whatever.” (Ah, whatever. The white flag of people who peaked intellectually in seventh grade and have been emotionally coasting on fumes and resentment ever since.)
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” (Congratulations. You just did. That was the response, Brenda. You played yourself.)
“Agree to disagree.” (Translation: I have completely run out of things to say, but I would rather eat a foreclosure notice than experience personal growth in your presence.)
“Must be nice.” (The battle cry of someone who has confused bitterness with a personality.)
“Do your research.” (Said exclusively by people whose research consists of a meme, a YouTube video from a guy in a truck, and a gut feeling they mistook for divine revelation.)
These are the last words of the conversationally deceased, the rhetorical equivalent of a soccer player grabbing their shin and writhing in agony when no one touched them, while the referee of reason just stands there, blowing a whistle into the void.
But I mandigress.
Obfuscation, Manfuscation, and the Art of Losing an Argument
What I was actually trying to do (before I was so chromosomally interrupted) was explain my position in an easily digestible fashion to those operating with a less-than-optimal bandwidth of intellectual horsepower. I was pointing out how people get caught up in the minutiae and completely forget the bigger goal. How we let distractions become the main event. How we mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself, and then spend four hours arguing about the finger’s manicure and whose turn it is to be offended.
The word I was looking for, the word I should have used, had I not been busy mansplaining like the reckless, penis-toting monster I apparently am, is obfuscation. The deliberate act of making something unclear to avoid dealing with the actual point. It’s what magicians do with cards. It’s what politicians do with sentences. And it’s what my accuser did when she swapped “I don’t have a counterargument” for “you’re mansplaining.”
Elegant, really. In a cowardly sort of way.
Next time, I’ll just simply use the word “obfuscation” and skip the whole mess. Of course, then I’ll be accused of manfuscation.
Which, for the record, is something I only do when no one is home and I have an ample supply of hand lotion.
And finally, finally, an unrelated question that has haunted me since childhood and which I will now mansplain into the indifferent void: if a male manatee is a manatee, is a female manatee a womanatee? These are genuinely fascinating creatures, by the way, and they deserve better than to be dragged into my gender grievances. But here we are. And if so, when a womanatee explains something to a manatee, is that womanateesplaining? And if the manatee feels patronized, does he drift slowly (so, so slowly) to the other end of the lagoon to write a resentful essay about it?
I suspect he does.
I suspect he does.
*The author would like to clarify that no women, manatees, squirrels, or Brendas were patronized in the making of this essay. Several were, however, deeply annoyed, which, if we’re being honest, is basically the same thing as being mansplained to, apparently.
Key Takeaways
- The author discusses the concept of mansplaining, distinguishing it from simply expressing an opinion.
- He argues that accusing someone of mansplaining can serve as a rhetorical retreat rather than a valid critique.
- The essay humorously explores the absurdity of applying gendered labels to communication styles.
- The author critiques common conversational tactics that deflect from meaningful dialogue, referring to them as, effectively, name-calling.
- He humorously poses questions about language and gender, using playful analogies like ‘womanateesplaining’ to illustrate his points.
Related Links
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His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his wellbeing). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos. He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
- When God Closes a Door, He Needs to Go Get Some Paprika - March 5, 2026
- Monkey Testicles, Missing Documents, and the Eternal Quest to Stay on Top - March 3, 2026
- Under the Blood Worm Moon, Nobody Has to Learn Anything - March 3, 2026
