Tips for life

[kaberett]

Don't assume you know what other people know. Don't assume you know more. You will be a better teacher, and you will also be less of a douche.

Don't assume you know less, just because you're not as loud or brash or self-assured. And don't assume that knowing less means you are less valuable: fresh eyes see new things.

(THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY one too many entitled older cis men condescendingly ~explaining~ things to me on account of I cannot possibly understand them, in some cases in spite of the fact that I hold higher degrees in relevant fields than they do in irrelevant ones. And what I said about not assuming I know more? Yeah, that goes out the window at the point at which your condescending explanation to me is incorrect.)

Comments

[kaberett]

Footnote: on the degrees thing? People with approximately equivalent class and educational privilege to me, the particular situations I'm thinking of. I do not think that ~having degrees~ means I know more about shit than people without degrees, but I do find having the scientific method mansplained to me by people holding arts/humanities BAs particularly galling.

[pipisafoat]

blech

[403]

...Ugh.

[shehasathree]

Galling indeed!

[jamfish]

rrrrrrgh

much sympathy.

[liv]

I hope I do take into account your first advice, especially when I'm explicitly in a teaching role.

As for people explaining things I know better than they do, my attitude is sort of borrowed from I think NVC: I assume they're telling me something about them, their world-view, their narrative frames. That's basically always interesting, even if the factual information is wrong or trivial. So when people tell me half-remembered medical factoids because they know I work in a medical field, that tells me something about their relationship to medicine and the medical profession, which these days I can often interpret in the light of what I know about medical sociology. When non-Jews tell me that thing they learned in GCSE RE about Judaism, that tells me quite a bit about their attitude and emotional response to Judaism. Arts grads who try to explain the scientific method to me, they don't make me a better scientist, but they do tell me something about how they construct their idea of "science". Quite often I infer that they're nostalgic for some imagined ideal of the Enlightenment or they are trying to be in some kind of cult of "Rationality", which is a bit tiresome really, but sometimes it's a handle I can use to drag the conversation somewhere interesting.

But that's because I'm so ridiculously extroverted, I nearly always find it interesting to learn something new about other people, even annoying condescending people!

[kaberett]

When it's specifically older men? The message I have on occasion been *explicitly given* is that it's that my opinion and knowledge base are far less important than stoking the fires of their ego. There is a particular communication style - one that involves no listening, and frequently involves telling me that Maths Is The Best And Purest Subject - and if I don't have to? I have extremely limited interest in spending energy on convincing people that it's worth interacting with me as an equal, or at the very least as worthy of respect.

[just woken up, kinda spiky on this one, see & acknowledge your point, think that the fundamental difference between your examples and mine (which I have not very much made explicit!) is that in yours? people are showing an interest in you as a person, rather than as someone to steamroller/who is Clearly Wrong And Needs Correcting. Maybe that's a difference of perspective, too; I don't know.]

[flippac]

Sometimes someone tells you they're an abusive shitbag? In the right environment that can even be worth thanking them for :p

[liv]

This is a really good example of how I fail at gender, and probably some other related things about, what can I call it, awareness of power dynamics, perhaps. The point of my comment was to notice how my experience of life is different from yours, and your clear response really explicates that difference.

If I'm talking to an older cis man who is perhaps acting condescending to me, it normally doesn't occur to me to think, I'm a woman having a conversation with a man here. (Obviously I can't speak to the experience of being a genderqueer person having a conversation with a man, so I'm sticking to what I do know.) I don't think, I'm female so it's my job to boost my superior's ego, and I also don't think, I'm female so I have to convince this man I'm his equal and worthy of respect. I just think of myself as a person having a conversation with another person, I rarely notice anything beyond that. I might notice age, I'm pretty unlikely to notice cis or straight. And I know that I myself am prone to explain things, and pontificate about topics I'm largely ignorant about, and talk people's ears off, so if someone behaves like that towards me, I don't think: he's being a patronizing entitled git, I'm more likely to think: we have similar personalities.

Nobody's ever really told me that my opinion is unimportant, nobody I'd ever pay any attention to anyway (random anonytrolls in internet discussions don't have much influence over me!) My upbringing, which looks a lot more like what feminists call "male socialization" than "female socialization" has led me to assume that most people who interact with me are interested in me, even if I don't really have any reason to believe that. So even if people are actually trying to steamroller me or correct my wrongness, I'm really unlikely to notice it unless they're extremely blatant about it. Simply explaining a topic I know more about than them won't cause me to notice I'm being condescended to.

And the energy-spending thing, that's why I mentioned in my comment that I'm an extreme extrovert. I find that conversations give me energy, rather than taking it from me. And yes, I'd rather have high-quality conversations with people who respect me and talk about stuff that I actually find interesting than the other kind. But I'd rather have low-quality conversations with condescending people than none, at any given moment. Because I'm oblivious I don't find myself spending energy convincing anyone to respect me, I just assume they do (and sometimes I get burnt and find out they're completely incapable of taking women seriously, but I rarely notice that going in).

[You don't seem spiky to me, not at all. I'm just rubbish at gender, and I continue to gain a lot from your patient explanations of the topic where clueless people like me can see them. It may be that my examples are different from yours, but I think it's more likely that I'm talking about similar situations but that you are perceptive and I am oblivious.]

[untonuggan]

THANK YOU.

(My partner and I have a song about this as relates to "mansplainers" -- Note that any sex/gender can "mansplain". Anywho, song is to the tune of "Matchmaker, matchmaker" from Fiddler on the Roof:

Mansplainer, mansplainer 'splain me a 'splain
Please make it plain and say it again!
Mansplainer, mansplainer 'splain me a 'splain
again and again and again!

Words can, obviously, be changed to fit the scenario. It also helps defuse tense situations because if someone starts 'splaining things to you then you can hum the song to yourself or to someone near you who knows it and it will make insidegiggles.)