Academic Men Explain Things to Me

Apparently wearing skirts and being outdoorsy are mutually exclusive. Silly me.

Fri, 24 May 2013 16:10:33 -0400

Last week, I took a resume to a chain sporting goods and recreation store (ever hear of REI?) [yes!! — the Eds.] after submitting an application online.

The sales rep, a man in his thirties, seeing that my last place of employment was a craft/fabric store, said “We usually hire people with outdoor experience.”

“Yes, if you look down the page to recreational activities, you will find an abundance of environmental stewardship internships and volunteer activities, and I’ll also have you know that I know how to sail, kayak, have a lifeguard certification, and have climbed two mountains in the state”, or something along those lines.

The sales rep did not apologize for the obvious misjudgment but instead told me that I wasn’t exactly dressed like I have outdoor experience (I was wearing a floral skirt).

Well, excuse me for dressing nice while on the job hunt.

I promptly left the store, and telephoned the store manager to file a formal complaint, and withdraw my application.

Dr. Mansplainer

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:20:43 -0400

I was getting a series of tests done for a mysterious lump which had appeared on my thyroid, including a biopsy called a Fine Needle Aspiration, where a small needle is painfully inserted into the lump itself. As a mother to a young child, I found the testing process distressing, because I did not even want to consider the fact that I might be sick (turned out I wasn’t, thank God). The first endocrinologist I was referred to for this procedure and other care was a man who’d spent my entire life being celebrated and decorated for his mind-blowing research — but who is so atrocious at talking to people that I don’t know why he ever leaves the lab bench.

He had a med student in his practice with him and was showing him what he was doing to treat me. After being extremely rude and brusque with me when I asked questions directly (I had a lot of questions, as I had been avoiding researching online), he switched to talking as if I weren’t even in the room as he described the test. He turned to his (male) student and said, “This will be hard to do because she’s fat” (which was especially hurtful because I HAD gained weight — as a direct result of my thyroid illness!). He proceeded to jab me twice with the needle and then turned and walked off without explaining what would happen with the test results.

Seeing I was in tears from the brutal treatment, the med student turned and told me it would be okay (was he referring to the tests? The terrible treatment? Who knows, but in any case, completely ineffectual and not comforting). I turned to him and asked if he had children and a wife. He said yes, a wife and three children. I asked him what he would do if his wife were in my place. His face turned pale and he couldn’t come up with a way to defend the treatment I’d received, and seemed ashamed to be called on having treated me likeI was just a lump of flesh devoid of feelings moments ago .

No, That's not Racist (Because I Love Doctor Who)

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:30:52 -0400

I recently posted an article from Racialicious on my Facebook page. The article describes vitriolic hatred being directed at black female characters, such as Martha Jones from Doctor Who, and how this hatred is racially motivated and often has a very gendered tone as well. The article also explains how this hatred has real-world implications on the way black women are treated in society.

Two of my white male friends, also Doctor Who fans, are now explaining to me in comments how Martha Jones hatred is not about race at all. They are making statements that the article’s author actually made but interpreting them in different ways. Neither of them is acknowledging that the author also brought up these points and provided a counter-argument to what they are now saying. Both of these male friends are so confident that they are correct. Here is a lovely example of one of the comments: “I think Martha Jones hatred has far less to do with race, and everything to do with her being written in poorly as basically ‘the companion that followed Rose.’” What is that opinion based on? This friend has never taken a course on race or lived in a diverse setting.

When people refuse to be implicated in systems of injustice, they choose to ignore them and try to convince you to ignore them to, usually via mansplaining.

How to Read a Gauge

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:40:46 -0400

The other day, my boyfriend asked me to inflate his car tires while he fixed something in the engine. I asked him what pressure to inflate it to, and he said 30, then helpfully told me that 30 would be between 20 and 40 on the pressure gauge. Thanks hon, never would have figured that one out.

DANGER ZONE

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:50:33 -0400

At the moment I am doing fieldwork in Vietnam for my PhD in social anthropology. I am 30 years old.

A few weeks ago a (older, male, Western) researcher who was participating in a workshop here, asked me if I am “alone” in Vietnam. First I didn’t understand the question. He clarified: “Do you have a partner?” After I told him that I am single he said “Ah I see, then it is difficult. You know, it is quite dangerous for a woman your age to end up alone, especially in anthropology.” He gave me a pitiful look.

I am still trying to wrap my head around what he was trying to say. It did not occur to him that I maybe chose to be alone and am also not looking for someone.

Not only is being a single woman considered to be a transitory phase that needs needs to be justified or at least, explained. On top it is apparently “quite dangerous”. Just thought I warn everyone in case you didn’t know.

How not to chat up academic feminists

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:10:52 -0400

I’ve just returned from one of the largest conferences that attracts people working in my field. So, lots of fantastic academic papers, opportunities to mix with the leaders in the field, etc. etc.

At a social event, two men started chatting to me and my friends. They set in to talking about how feminists are really getting it wrong. We should call ourselves ‘equalists’, really (because, you know, focussing on women would sound too … well … like we thought there was an actual imbalance of rights going on). And women have too many rights anyhow, they continued. Why, just look at reproductive rights (I should point out, we’re in the US here).

At this point another man chips in to observe that, actually, in certain states there are a few concerns. Such as North Dakota. But this man is just as shouted down as we were.

The men go on to say that if a man doesn’t want a baby, he should be entitled to sign away his paternity responsibilities after conception - the fact he got someone pregnant not being any sign he’s responsible for a baby. And women should not be allowed to abort a baby without consent.

So. At some point in all of this I try to explain, gently, that I am a radical feminist, and that I do not agree with his views. I explain quite politely, because we are in an academic setting where the option of throwing my wine in his face did not occur.

The conversation concludes, some minutes later with ‘…. by the way, you have *great* boobs’.

Let me observe here, fellow readers, that this is *not* the way to pick up a feminist. Nor probably any woman.

I saw these blokes around the conference after this, and I am sure they had no idea that anything they’d said might have seemed offensive or distasteful. It just didn’t register with them.

Vanity tips from a self-proclaimed male feminist

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:20:47 -0400

My friend and I had made a friend through some humanist organization in town. We’d already become quite tired of his “professional atheism” because, despite both being atheists, we didn’t quite understand the need to treat it like a religion. He certainly tried to mansplain that to us, but it was boring.

Anywho, my friend is a big fan of weird nail polish applications and had recently been doing some water marbling method. She is a web developer who works from home so she has time for these things. She was showing off her nails to all of us in the coffee shop when our helpful man friend chimed in to let her know that her choice to paint her nails was a mechanism of her own oppression. As we sat agape, he went on to mansplain how all of these fanciful things that we do for our own amusement are actually the yoke of patriarchy keeping us down.

We didn’t respond much at the time, but when the same man texted me a few days later to ask me out, I explained to him that I didn’t date patronizing men. He went on to call me “dear” while defending his nail polish stance in terms that was less murky so my ladybrain could process it. So nice to have such a great feminist advocate on our side!

Here's a nice medical student for you!

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:30:50 -0400

I’m a medical student and am currently on my internal medicine rotation. Part of my responsibilities as a med student is to call consults, a process that essentially entails calling up a subspecialty service, explaining a patient to them, and asking any questions you may have. Another important note: when someone calls the floor you are on, it is considered good etiquette to let the floor secretary field the call and then overhead-page the person for whom the call was intended.

I had paged one of the subspecialty services and was awaiting their call when I heard one of the residents speaking loudly on the phone with someone and saying, “Patient Doe? D-O-E? Oh, I don’t know them. Well listen, I accidentally picked this phone up, so you’re going to have to call b—”

I ran hurriedly over to him and said, “Mr. Doe’s my patient, is that [service]?” The intern next to him nodded and nudged the resident to hand me the phone.

Which he did, but not before announcing in a ridiculously condescending voice, “Well! Here’s a nice medical student to talk to you!” All this after he’d almost hung up on my consult. Thanks, dude.

Whose selfish carelessness?

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:40:48 -0400

As a student, I was prescribed the contraceptive pill to treat polycystic ovaries. I’d had an ultrasound scan and blood tests, and Cileste [a form of the pill] was regarded as the best treatment for me. However it caused a lot of breakthrough bleeding, exacerbated because you had to take it within a one hour window every day - no more, no less. It would still control the PCOS, but you might spot. My schedule and the lack of medical urgency was such that I would sometimes forget, and I found this a hassle, so I made an appointment at the doctor’s office. My usual doc was away, but no biggie, they can all talk the options over with me, right?

When I explained the issue with the bleeding, he immediately asked if I was taking them inside that one hour window.

“Not every time, no, but….”

He cut me off at once. “You MUST take them within that one hour window. They don’t work if you don’t, I can’t stress this enough!”

“No, they do work for me, because…”

“NO!” Sitting up straight, glaring at me, “NO! They don’t work and you could get pregnant if you mess with that schedule.”

“Um, no, I couldn’t get pregnant. You see…”

He smacked his hand down on the desk for emphasis. “Yes you COULD! I can’t allow such irresponsible, selfish carelessness to go unchallenged! You’ll miss a pill, and then one of these days you’ll be in here asking for the NHS to provide an abortion, and all because you couldn’t be bothered to take the pill properly! It won’t work and you can and very probably will get pregnant, and you don’t appear to me to be in any way, shape or form responsible enough to have a child. Do you understand?”

“How?”

“Excuse me!” He was really pissed off at this point. (I’d not said more than ten words in succession since he’d started ranting, but apparently, I didn’t need to: he’d made up his mind already.) “I have already explained to you that…”

I raised my voice to a bellow. “I’ve been single over a year. I’ve not had sex in that time. I have no intention of having sex in the near future. When sexually active, I take the pill AND use condoms. But I’m on the pill right now solely to control PCOS, so I can’t get pregnant!”

“Oh. Oh, no. No, then you can’t get pregnant.” He hesitated a moment, seemingly flustered, and then regrouped, and said earnestly, “But you really must take me seriously when I tell you that when you do start to have sex again, you must not allow a gap or you could get pregnant.”

I made my excuses, and then an appointment with my regular doctor. Who altered my prescription in line with my medical needs, after taking the time to listen to me so as to ascertain what those might be.

At the time I had this conversation, I was in my mid-20s and a law student at the University of Cambridge. Which he knew, as both facts were on the front of my notes.

Your independence is adorable, but let's be logical

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:50:53 -0400

My friend and I moved to a new city at the same time and we both had trouble qualifying for an apartment. His problem was that he had bad credit. My problem was that I did not have a job yet. He suggested we move in together to make it easier to qualify, and I said that was out of the question.

Suddenly mansplaining mode kicked in.

“Now listen,” he said, “I know you want to be an INDEPENDENT WOMAN. But sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.”

Last time I checked, this move-in-together situation he was proposing would have been *equally* beneficial for us—certainly not a case of me “needing” him and becoming dependent on him while the reverse was not true. I somehow doubt he would have seen this situation as him giving up being an “INDEPENDENT MAN” if he’d leaned on my credit to qualify for a place.

Clue-phone, guys: If your phrasing would sound ridiculous describing a man, you probably shouldn’t say it to a woman. It’s pretty ignorant to insinuate that a woman claiming she can take care of herself is awfully noble but ultimately impractical.

(We ended up qualifying separately with special contracts. I got a job within a month and qualified for a better place the next year. Throughout our friendship he continued to bring up wanting to live together and tried to tell me it would be good for me to quit my job and work on my writing. No thanks.)

Why bother with gender studies?

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:10:32 -0400

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?

The Real American Pastime: Dadsplaining

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:20:31 -0400

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!

Annealing Things

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:30:38 -0400

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?

The one with the plus-y end

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:40:35 -0400

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.

But how is your ancient Greek?

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:50:37 -0400

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 think I know how the Pill works

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:43:40 -0400

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.

Train difficulty

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:25:49 -0400

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.”

1 girl + 3 guys = continual mansplaining

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:01:46 -0400

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.

Yet another mansplaining gynecologist

Sat, 18 May 2013 11:01:41 -0400

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!”

Ready to explain how politics works!

Sat, 18 May 2013 09:01:27 -0400

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.””