Academic Men Explain Things to Me

I was on a conference about literature and madness and there was a gender panel. I focus on and am very interested in gender studies so it was out of the question not to attend this panel. One of the lectures was given by a male colleague and at the beginning he states (approximately), “I have never done something with gender before but that’s ok, I can do that anyway…” His talk was very confusing and he was just saying bullshit like women have to be mothers and men are born to look at beautiful women…

So, why study gender studies if there are males outside of it who tell you exactly what to do? Especially if they have such profound knowledge about topics?

After seeing the recent dadsplaining entry, I had to submit my own.

Recently, I went to a baseball game with my dad and my brother…but not before an extended argument with my dad about whether I needed to bring a heavier jacket than the one I was wearing.

I explained that I’d checked the weather forecast and would be just fine as I was. He in turn explained that “It gets cold at night” (you don’t say!). I said I didn’t want to lug around a big jacket, and he said I could tie it around my waist. I said I didn’t want to do that, and he said it was a baseball game not a fashion show (again, you don’t say!). The best part is that the stadium was in the city where I live, where he doesn’t live, but of course he knows the weather there better than I do.

We went back and forth on this for seriously ten minutes and then intermittently all the way to the stadium, me saying I would be fine, and him trying to convince me I would be freezing.

By the time we got there, I was actually starting to believe him, and was ready to endure bitter cold without complaint just so he wouldn’t say “I told you so.” But what do you know? The weather was exactly what I had prepared for, and I was completely comfortable! Almost as if I was familiar with the weather in the city where I live and had checked the forecast!

I’ve been taking glass arts for at least three years, and I’m an active member in my art department. I’m not highly skilled at working with glass, but at the very least, I know how the basic equipment works. I also know how some of the more “advanced” equipment works too, if you can believe that, given my gender. 

Today I was in the shop, in part because another friend (also female) had a big collaborative project that was going to require a lot of extra hands. I helped her organize her kiln space, had an extensive conversation with her about her annealing cycle (the process that prevents your glass from cracking as it cools down), and offered a lot of other suggestions as to how to make the project go smoothly. For the most part, the other advanced students agreed with me. 

A guy I’d never seen in there before must not have been paying attention. One of my other friends was making cute animals out of furnace glass, and I immediately claimed it. 

“Sure, as long as you don’t mind that it’s probably going to explode.”

“Throw it in the damn annealer!” I responded. You know. So the glass doesn’t crack as it cools down. This is very basic as far as working with hot glass is concerned. 

“Oh, yeah, that’s a good idea!”

The aforementioned guy who, in my three years there, I had never seen before, targets me specifically and says, very condescendingly, “You have to put glass in the annealer so it doesn’t explode!” 

Admittedly, I was taken quite aback. After a few awkward seconds, I managed, “I know how the annealer works.” I had, after all, just suggested to a friend that he should USE IT. 

Unfazed, he continued. “You have to cool glass down slowly or it will crack-“ 

I cut him off, “-because it’s highly susceptible to thermal shock and as the outside cools down faster, the tension causes it to fragment, and, in extreme cases, explode. I know how the damn annealer works.” 

It didn’t do the trick. He proceeded to explain to me for another 10 minutes about different kiln cycles, how different types of glass have different coefficients of expansion, and how that means you can only load a kiln with like types of glass. This is all stuff I learned my first semester. Eventually, it was time to start the project, which is good, because my temper wasn’t annealing well. 

In his defense, I told myself a lot of the glass students earn street cred by one-upping each other with technical knowledge, so I figured he was just new and excitable. I found out a few hours later he hasn’t ever taken a glass arts class, he’s just roommates with another one of the beginning students. 

Actually, given that most of the students are historically male, maybe glass doesn’t like mainsplaining either?

When I was in college, I worked part time at my residence hall’s front desk. During move-out, I rented out a lot of tools. One particular resident came up to me and asked to rent out a Phillips head screwdriver. I checked it out to him and then started digging through the tool box to find it. As I was locating it, he proceeded to tell me, “The Phillips head one is the screwdriver with the-“ As he was about halfway through his sentence, I stood up, Phillips screwdriver in hand. He finished, “…plus-y end,” complete with hand gestures in case I was too dumb to understand what a plus sign looked like. He at least had the grace to look embarrassed. 

My friend and I were in her kitchen reading a text in ancient Greek, and we were trying to come up with a good translation of a certain word. Her boyfriend walked in and, having heard two seconds of the conversation, starts spitting out a billion synonyms we could use. Note that he does not know what word we are talking about, he does not know anything about the language, and he didn’t even know what we were reading. So my friend pointed out that his input was both unwanted and useless (but, you know, nicely) and that it was actually distracting us from our work. Then he tried to squirm into our conversation about possible proto-feminist themes in the play we were reading: a play that he had never heard of and knew absolutely nothing about. After being shut out of this again, he somehow pulled us into some drawn-out shouting match about feminism (which he is obviously the expert on, as the household’s sole ‘educated’ leftist male) and how we were bad at it. Naturally, we didn’t get any more work done that night.

I always start my new package of birth control on a Sunday. Today, I pulled out a new package and started to open it before realizing it was actually Saturday. I commonly talk to myself, and added an “oops, never mind, it’s Saturday” as I set it down. My boyfriend took this opportunity to educate me on how it “doesn’t actually matter if the pills correspond to the days written on the package” and how it’s all “just the same hormones”. Thanks honey, but I’ve been taking birth control for 6 years now, I think I know how it works.

Backstory for non-New Yorkers: the F and M trains, which run on the same track through most of Manhattan, are separated by a flight of stairs at the Essex stop. This means that if you’re going to Herald Square, as I do very often, you get to wait on the flight of stairs and keep an eye on both platforms to figure out which one is coming first. This unwieldy system has been in place for a while, without improvements, to the point where the NYT actually wrote an article about it. At any given time there are numerous people awkwardly drifting up and down the stairs as they wait for the train. It’s worth mentioning that there were quite a few people doing this when the incident happened.

I too was doing the awkward stair-wait when a young man approached me and asked if I was lost.

“No,” I said, “I’m fine.” 

“You look lost.”

“I’m not, I’m just waiting to see which train comes first.”

He proceeded to explain to me that my plan would not work, because they are different trains that go to different places. I told him he was wrong and that they both went to my stop. He disagreed, telling me that those trains do not go to any of the same stops.

The conversation finally degenerated into yelling. He cursed at me and stormed off muttering about how he was “just trying to help.”

I went on a trip with my boyfriend and his two male best friends this week and between the three of them it seemed I was always wrong about something and needed countless lectures throughout the trip. I will share two stories in particular.

1. When my boyfriend and I started dating he couldn’t cook whatsoever and at his request I helped and encouraged him to grow his skills, particularly by teaching him how to make breakfast items like scrambled eggs. On the trip he was in charge of breakfast and I asked him if he needed an extra pair of hands. He went on to explain that I should “get a medium sized bowl, crack 2 eggs per person into the bowl, get a whisk, quickly whisk the eggs until mixed, get out a pan…” without pausing he in depth explained step by step the minute details of making scrambled eggs, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I taught him how to make these eggs in the first place. Clearly the act of having made them a couple times coupled with his natural manly superiority to make him into a master egg chef. 

2. Today we were just mindlessly eating dinner and decided to watch the second half of the Hunger Games that was on TV. My boyfriend couldn’t remember some detail about the plot and asked a question. I (while not necessarily a fan but having read all the books and seen the movie multiple times) started to answer, but was immediately interrupted by my boyfriend’s best friend, who quickly preceded to lecture me on how I had gotten it wrong, and then went on to explain to me the plot of the movie in a condescending monologue, not stopping to hear me when I tried to tell him: “please, you don’t need to do this I know the story” multiple times. Apparently whether I had seen the movie before was totally unimportant to him. 

I have suffered from endometriosis for the past decade. My doctor had exhausted every treatment option but hysterectomy, but he wanted to send me to a doctor who was would be more aware of whether or not any new treatments had been developed.

The visit with the new doctor began with a drawing of the female reproductive organs. He then started by saying: “these are your ovaries, this is where eggs grow. This is your uterus, this is where the baby grows.” When I told him I knew that (everyone who took high school health knows this), he got angry and yelled at me to be quiet, HE was the doctor, after all.

He then explained endometriosis to me. While I understand that he is the expert and I’m not, I’ve suffered from this condition for ten years, so if your explanation does not contain any information that can’t be found on the wikipedia page for the condition, it’s safe to assume that I, or any long-term sufferer of said condition already knows the information you are presenting.

Then he offered a reinterpretation of his purpose: he was not, as my doctor had suggesting, confirming that everything had been done before something as drastic as hysterectomy, he was going to make sure that I was able to have children someday. I told him that I did not want to have children, that I never have, to which he replied, again practically yelling at me, “That’s what you say you want!” 

I HOPE this has been posted by someone already: 

“Urging Toronto residents again to get involved in local government, Mayor Rob Ford offered on Sunday to personally “explain how politics works” to women who are interested in running for office.

“I’ve had a lot of people who’ve been calling me — I don’t know what it is — the last couple weeks, about wanting to get involved in politics, or you want to run,” Ford said on his weekly Newstalk 1010 radio show.

“I encourage people, I encourage people, I’ve always encouraged people — especially females. We need more females in politics. And it seems everyone says, ‘Oh, it’s male-dominated.’ Well, call me. Call me at home — 233-6934, 416-233-6934 — and [I’ll or we’ll] go for a coffee, and explain how politics works. You have to be over the age of 18, a Canadian citizen, and live in Toronto. And the rest is up to you, how hard you want to work.””

I was at an academic conference with my father (he’s in the same field as I am - he’s a prof and I’m a PhD student). We were heading to a restaurant I had found for dinner that was right beside the hostel I was staying in. As we were walking, my father took a wrong turn (he had never looked at the map as to where it was) and I called after him. He turned around and explained that “this was the way!”. I said that no, it wasn’t. He got angry, dismissed me, indicated that I was being stubborn and was always on his case about everything. Eventually he did follow me, and we got to the restaurant (as I was right). We got into a shouting match on the side of the road where he exclaims “I’m just used to being the leader in my professional life” and I yelled back “THIS IS YOUR FAMILY. YOU ARE NOT THE LEADER. YOU ARE A MEMBER”. He then made some snide comment (just to get a rise out of me) that he was the man, so obviously he WAS the leader. 

I almost threw my shoe at his face. 

I completed my Master’s education in a different province than I am originally from. I was at a party in that different province having a nice conversation with someone who had briefly lived in my home province. I can’t remember exactly how the conversation got into the topic of Members of Parliament, but the fellow made a comment about the political stripes of the MPs from my home that was grossly inaccurate. I politely corrected him, but he was very adamant that I was wrong and he was right. Ok. So let’s put aside that I was in the middle of my M.A. in Canadian Politics, and the fact that I had worked on numerous federal campaigns in my home province. But this was my home. I could name all the MPs from my home. But I HAD to be wrong, and he HAD to be right because he had lived there for, like, 8 months! Obviously he was correct. Ass. 

It’s amazing how many times similar things have happened to me. Had another fellow try to tell me why people vote in elections the way they do (it’s because of the party leader, apparently). I tried to explain that A) that’s not how the Canadian political system works, and B) although some people definitely cast their ballot based on who the leader is, it is not a universal truth. Things like party affiliation and who the local candidate is plays a major role, not to mention a host of other factors. But nope. I couldn’t be right. “Let’s agree to disagree” he says. Umm.. nope. Because you’re wrong. I think an M.A. in political science knows a *touch* more on the subject than Mr. High School Diploma who doesn’t vote. 

The other day I was at a bus shelter waiting for a bus.  This older man (late 70’s, I’m guessing) began talking to me.  He started asking me what grade I’m in and why I wasn’t at school (it was around 2:00pm - but I’m 19 and in University, although I admit I look about 15).  I proceeded to correct him politely.  He asked me what I’m doing in University, and I told him that at the moment I was undecided but trying different courses to figure something out.  He tried to agree - “Oh these days there is so much to do.  You could be a nurse, or a teacher, or…” and then he was stumped.  Absolutely stumped until I got on the bus.

My boyfriend and I run a sales office together, and one of my responsibilities is to train all new hires on how to sell our product. One day I had a new guy come in for training who was about 25 years older than me and had sold this product before for the far less productive sales team that we replaced. We got set up at our work location and I started introducing him to some of our basic sales techniques, in this case, icebreakers, or little innocuous jokes to get customers comfortable at the sales stand. I don’t get two sentences in before he interrupts me:

Him: I’m gonna stop you right there and tell you that I’m not going to do that.
Me: Do what?
Him: Icebreakers. I think it’s highly unprofessional.
Me: I mean, the jokes we use are totally harmless can really only help your likability to customers, which will make you more sales.
Him: Well, if [boyfriend] wants to come out here and train me, then maybe I’ll try it.
Me: That isn’t going to happen. I’m the trainer for this office and have trained every successful sales representative that we have.
Him: Well, if we’re out here today and you end up with twice the sales that I get, then I might consider doing it your way. But, you’re a woman, so I already expect you to make more sales than me, so even if you do double me, that still doesn’t mean your way is better.

Keep in mind that I have never seen any evidence that female salespeople do better than men in this job, and neither has my boyfriend, who’s done this job for all of his adult life. Additionally, while I consistently sell 40-60 units per week, the trainee doing the same job for the old team never sold more than 25.

Later that day, the trainee makes it clear that while he doesn’t think innocuous jokes are professional, he’s very comfortable with grabbing women’s arms as they try to walk away from the stand and then sweet talk them so they can’t get mad at his invasion of their personal space. He is bewildered when I tell him that touching strangers without their permission is not allowed at our sales stand.

I was on my way to an orchestra rehearsal the other day, and on reaching my bus stop, set my double bass down. A guy moved over to make room for me, which was nice, and commented that I must be very strong to carry such a big cello. I thanked him for the compliment, but informed him that it was in fact a bass. He refused to listen, going on and on about how great cellos were and trying to explain to me how much he ‘loved’ cello music and how great it was by going on about Vivaldi and the Four Seasons (not that he knew what it was called) for a while, along with several violinists, and continuing to ignore me when I tried again to explain that he was thinking of the wrong instrument.

When an actual cellist from my orchestra showed up with her instrument, he informed her that it was in fact a violin- the cello was the huge thing I was holding, according to him- and continued to insist as much for the whole bus ride until the cellist and I got off. How exactly he thought said cellist would be able to hold an instrument half her size against her neck and play, he never said.