She Explains 'Mansplaining' With Help From 17th-Century Art

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/books/nicole-tersigni-men-to-avoid-in-art-and-life.html


This story begins, as so many do these days, on Twitter.

Last May, Nicole Tersigni, a Detroit-based writer, logged onto the social media platform at the end of a long day. She was tired and frazzled from looking after her 8-year-old daughter, who was home sick at the time.

“So I go online just to kind of scroll through Twitter and zone out for a little bit,” she said, “and I see a dude explaining to a woman her own joke back to her — something that has happened to me many times.”

In the past, Tersigni had let those kinds of irritating conversations go, but this one sparked something in her. She Googled “woman surrounded by men” (“because that is what that moment feels like when you’re online,” she said) and stumbled upon a 17th-century oil painting by Jobst Harrich of a woman baring one breast in the middle of a scrum of bald men.

She combined that image with the caption: “Maybe if I take my tit out they will stop explaining my own joke back to me.”

*snip*

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R...nt

[Srkdqltr]

2. That is so funny.

I called a place to have the water heater fixed and the guy on the phone started to explain why it pops and bings in the same way my husband did every time it made noise. I called another place.

[2naSalit]

3. Good one!

I can't stand mansplaining. It usually causes me to walk away or leave in whatever way is doable. Usually if I can't just walk away, I do a good job of letting the mansplainer know just how ignorant their stance is and that they are actually, at that point, being put in their place by a woman.

[lunatica]

4. So many times when having things mansplained to me by men I barely knew

I realized I was the more intelligent person. Sometimes, if I felt like it, they would end up knowing that too.