Here’s why we can’t get rid of ‘mansplaining’ | Letters

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Zoe Williams’ articles are often insightful, but her suggestion that the word “mansplaining” is no longer relevant is a disappointment (‘Mansplaining’ was once a contender for word of the year. Here’s why we should stop using it, 1 December). The foundation of her argument appears to be in the last paragraph, in which she notes that occasionally the term is unfairly applied to men who know what they are talking about.

No one is arguing that there are not many men who do indeed know what they are talking about. That is not sufficient justification to attempt to essentially gaslight women generally into believing that the phenomenon does not exist.

Indeed, after Rachel Reeves used it, The Conversation published an excellent research-based article by two professors at Queen Mary University of London, who documented why mansplaining is a genuine phenomenon and why Reeves was right to use the term. As Louise Ashley and Elena Doldor state: “Men and women can be both perpetrators and targets of mansplaining. However, the term has particular force because it reflects deeper cultural patterns in which authority is still coded as male and, more specifically, white and middle or upper class.”

My own research shows that implicit bias in the way we judge other people’s authority or expertise is so common that it can be demonstrated with even very small sample sizes. “Mansplaining” reflects a real phenomenon, and the term will remain relevant so long as humans in general continue to see authority as the domain of men.
Dr Amanda Nimon Peters
Professor of leadership, Hult International Business School

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