lmao

I found mansplain on Merriam Webster, and also on Wikipedia. The Merriam Webster article says “of a man,” and the wikipedia article says “for a man” at the start.

Usually for these things I’d be all for abolishing the gendered nature of the word, but I feel like it would dilute the original meaning. So if anything, instead of gender-normalizing ‘mansplain,’ I think we need to add ‘womansplain,’ which is something I’m very guilty of doing to my partner whenever he’s cooking because I keep forgetting that it’s something he does very well.

But also, my reply still has merit here, because that individual was obviously weaponizing ‘mansplain’ to try and gender me, a woman, when what they likely wanted to convey was that they found me condescending. They shouldn’t be appropriating a gendered word to say something else they mean, so… uh. Sorry for all the extra words. I took my ADHD medication today and language discussion fascinates me.

‘Mansplaining’ requires the explaining person to be a man.

You’re entitled to having an opinion. You’re allowed to share that opinion. You aren’t entitled to people stopping to tell you why they think you’re wrong. Nobody owes you the time to stop and explain things to you.

And receiving downvotes doesn’t necessarily mean someone thinks you’re wrong. It could just be that you’re being needlessly antagonistic. An example of this, is how I’m removing my sympathy upvotes to your previous comments. You obviously didn’t need my sympathy.

::: I spoiler tagged this long ass post in order to hide it from folks who don’t care.

I’m not that person but I had the exact same thing happen to me! And let me tell you, when I was first watching it as a middle schooler, I knew they were in love! I didn’t know that women-who-like-women had a word (lesbian), so I thought, “Well, if you’re in love with someone, they’re probably your friend. Probably your best friend, so that makes sense. But you can’t just call them your girlfriend, because-”

I grew up in rural Oklahoma (and now live in Tennessee). A woman, who has a friend, and that friend is a woman, makes her a girlfriend. I still call women who are my friends, ‘girlfriends,’ even though it obviously could mean something romantic. So Uranus and Neptune probably couldn’t just say ‘girlfriend,’ because all the girls who were their friends were their girlfriends, so ‘best’ friend is probably a friend who is such a good friend, that you’re also in love with them. (This was the logic of a sixth grader.)

It’s one of the reasons that Sailor Moon fans have always been so inclusive, have always stood up for other presentations or orientations. Why on earth would we support people trying to hide this stuff from children, when a not-so-small number of us knew what we were looking at when we were children?

To add to that, I might have had a very unique interpretation of the situation, because I would later learn that I was a demi bisexual (we didn’t even have the word ‘demisexual’ when I was a girl) and what that means is… For me, I usually only want a relationship with the person who is such my best friend, that I also am in love with them!

:::

Friend, you gotta not care about downvotes. If you bring attention to it, you’ll get folks downvoting you just for that. And if you comment a second time, like you did here, you’re going to get downvoted all to hell in the second one. Since it’s obvious that you care, and folks on the internet love to irritate each other over nothing.

Future reference- just don’t look at your comments again after you make them, unless you’ve come back because someone replied to you. No need to obsess over things you’ve said anyway. The internet will hate some, love some, and it won’t always make a lick of sense. Put it behind you and don’t concern yourself with it.