What got me was your academically induced reaction to "Math's hard". It just doesn't occur to me that such a obtuse oversimplification can be sold to young people. My English teachers in the 50s and 60s - male and female - taught me how subtle verbal communication is. That you had to develop an ear for tone, cadence etc to correctly detect meaning and intent. And how great writers had a genius for encoding those subtleties in written language. Jane Austin anyone? This postmodern version of feminism is mind numbingly reductionist and, I have to say it, totalitarian in intent because it insists on imposing a single interpretation even on the simplest utterances. There is also a counter trend to this ideological hijacking of the evolving relationship between men and women. For me it goes back to the early modern period when women began to be taken seriously. In the Romantic movement and even in medicine when Florence Nightingale introduced the curious notion that it might be a good idea to wash the sheets in field hospitals during the Crimean war. Things progressed by the 20th century with the suffragettes, but a less obvious change came among the women who clustered around the psychologist Carl Jung. In her book Salome's embrace Maggy Anthony observes that women were still second class citizens and "Few creative men, during the first half of that century[ie 20th], took women seriously at all, still less would men take them on as collaborators or assistants as Jung did." In my own family my father did most of the talking but when he got carried away, my mother would stop him say "Oh no dear." And my father would listen. He took her seriously and taught me, by example, to listen to what women have to say. Over all, I think we have come a long way toward a better understanding of each other, despite the ideological cul-de sacs encountered on the way. Sanity is returning one blog post at a time.
Totally fair point. I think my overreaction was something I was uniquely prone to for two reasons -- one, my hearing. I was in my first year of having good hearing tech, and a lot of aspects of interpreting tone were still new to me. And two, I was a lot less far along in my efforts to deal with my PTSD. Something that offered certainty -- a framework that gave me a black-and-white interpretation lens I could feel "solid" in -- was very appealing. At the time, an "algorithmic" way of looking at life was appealing for many reasons and also fit in well with my lack of experience in interpreting nuance.
I love that you know about Florence Nightingale! She made so many contributions to statistics.
Good point. PTSD had a similar effect on me - an attraction to ideas that made me feel 'solid' and safer, but that I had to outgrow if I didn't want to get stuck. One of the curious side effects of the class system is that extraordinary upper class women were sometimes allowed to make serious contributions despite the fact that it may have made the blokes uncomfortable. The earliest example I have found historically that feels connected to our modern culture is 12th century Byzantine princess Anna Komnene, daughter of the Emperor Alexios, who was free enough to become a genuine historian and wrote a history of her father's reign that is still both invaluable and respected today. I was only vaguely aware of Nightingale's contribution to statistics.
Congratulations on being Instalanched. I subscribed to your Substack a few months ago precisely for your insights on dealing with trauma. My wife and our three adopted kids all suffer from numerous childhood traumas. Your writing gives me insight into why they sometimes behave in (to me) totally irrational ways. Thank you.
"I said something like, “Yeah, I’m majoring in math. That’s why I live off these frozen dinners — homework is my life.”
He said, nodding seriously: “Math is hard.”"
The first thing that came to my mind was that he was trying to be empathetic since you had to do so much homework all you had time to eat was frozen dinners.
I appreciate you describing how it could be taken a completely different way.
In my experience, thyroid issues (hypo = depressed, hyper = anxious), low blood pressure, anemia / low blood volume especially in winter all make me want to go into a fetal position and hide. I really can't expect normal mental health if I'm that physically off.
I appreciate simple, clear communication from both sexes! It's too much work for me to have to decode what I think someone else is trying to convey.
Somewhere I heard this and it's helped me: 'They're not doing it TO YOU, they're just doing it'.
Got I interrupted. Blame everyone else misery loves company or view the world as a positive challenge to be your way for happiness. It’s all in your control.
I find myself having frequent conversations with people online (though I don't recommend it) who are convinced that they're the victims of some kind of terrible ongoing oppression. They view (as you hint at Holly with your supermarket story) every interaction as more proof of their oppression. This kind of mindset is crippling. It prevents these people from having normal human relationships with whatever broad swath of society they think is out to get them. (For me, it's the Laplanders.)
It also spikes your fight/flight response which cascades into stress hormones that are actually very tangibly unhealthy for you physically and mentally. And it becomes a kind of fear-tension-pain complex that continually spirals.
My reaction to this kind of phenomena is to try to make these poor bastards realize: someone WANTS you to have this kind of reaction. Someone programmed you to have this kind of relationship with the world. And at a certain point, you have to wonder WHY they would do that - and you should come to the conclusion that only an ENEMY would want you to be so impaired and stressed.
Now maybe the feminist professors didn't intend for their teachings to be so destructive, but again, at a certain point, their intention doesn't matter. The fruits are obvious. If you believe and act as if half of the world is out to get you - the person who taught you to have these beliefs is ruining your life. If they're not doing it on purpose, then they're just callously disinterested in their actions. Either way, they should be disregarded.
Did you know that anemia causes depression? In my junior year of college I found myself crying in the library stacks and had no idea why, since I loved what I was doing. I was diagnosed with anemia, treated with iron, and the depression immediately lifted. That was an amazing introduction to mind-body medicine.
This story really resonates with me. I grew up with four older brothers, went to a male-dominated and very demanding college, choose a tough, male-dominated career path, etc. it wasn’t until my 40s that I was in an environment where there were as many women as men.
Boy was it hard. But it was also great, and with only a couple notable exceptions, never did I feel that the men wanted to thwart or condescend to me. Quite the opposite. They were surprised and impressed to see a woman in their milieu and offered lots of good advice to help me succeed. That’s dozens of talented and caring men.
A very successful female friend of mine, about ten years younger, was complaining not too long ago about the “patriarchy” and I was flabbergasted. There is no world in which she suffered any more than a guy for her success. It just didn’t happen. But, sadly, she thinks it did and she doesn’t have any guy friends. And now one less female friend. Guys are awesome!
Yep. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that lots of women honestly have no idea that things like what they call "mansplaining" are normal, non-hostile, and (mostly) pure-motivation male behavior, which is why I wrote this.
How I viewed this as a graduate (over 40 years ago) of a 4-year physics program, is that "mansplaining" was actually "welcome to the club" behavior. As with most other science/engineering types (male or female), the "norm" is to do a first analysis, then start asking questions. The time to get worried was when no one on the team wanted to get into a discussion.
This also ties into your post about many younger women’s difficulty properly handling conflict. You are spot-on and it’s a phenomenon that has been driving me crazy. Having been raised in a “man’s world” I am usually pretty forthright about what I think, want and expect. That’s no problem with older women; but young women seem to think I’m yelling at them - and rather than listen and respond, they run away from any topic that feels mildly threatening (and apparently they all are!) In the interest of being “nice” their behavior is anything but, as it leads to counterproductive, passive-aggressive BS. It’s really awful, as it compounds whatever difficulty started the conversation. Grow up girls!
Yeah. I am very grateful for my guy friends, since I *really* wouldn't understand anything you just said without them. I suspect that a lot of young women are in a similar situation. The fatherhood crisis has far-reaching implications for sure.
For sure. There are going to be a lot of lonely young people until girls snap out of it. It’s tough having a Gen-Z daughter. Mine was perfectly sensible, and sweet, until she went to college - at the deep end of the woke pool. She had an acronym for me before I’d even expressed an opinion on the relevant subject 🤣
I'm pleased that so many people are responding to it. A lot of women had no idea about the extent of brainwashing that went into their idea of "mansplaining," and a lot of people really didn't understand the definition drifts of feminism, TERF, and other words, and are realizing that they probably don't disagree with some of the people they despise nearly as much as they thought. Which is amazing.
It's funny how no one ever looks at the lack of male doulas and says "that must be because of systematic discrimination against men."
I think you'll get this, Holly.
https://tonymartyr.substack.com/p/competence?r=2jswp
What got me was your academically induced reaction to "Math's hard". It just doesn't occur to me that such a obtuse oversimplification can be sold to young people. My English teachers in the 50s and 60s - male and female - taught me how subtle verbal communication is. That you had to develop an ear for tone, cadence etc to correctly detect meaning and intent. And how great writers had a genius for encoding those subtleties in written language. Jane Austin anyone? This postmodern version of feminism is mind numbingly reductionist and, I have to say it, totalitarian in intent because it insists on imposing a single interpretation even on the simplest utterances. There is also a counter trend to this ideological hijacking of the evolving relationship between men and women. For me it goes back to the early modern period when women began to be taken seriously. In the Romantic movement and even in medicine when Florence Nightingale introduced the curious notion that it might be a good idea to wash the sheets in field hospitals during the Crimean war. Things progressed by the 20th century with the suffragettes, but a less obvious change came among the women who clustered around the psychologist Carl Jung. In her book Salome's embrace Maggy Anthony observes that women were still second class citizens and "Few creative men, during the first half of that century[ie 20th], took women seriously at all, still less would men take them on as collaborators or assistants as Jung did." In my own family my father did most of the talking but when he got carried away, my mother would stop him say "Oh no dear." And my father would listen. He took her seriously and taught me, by example, to listen to what women have to say. Over all, I think we have come a long way toward a better understanding of each other, despite the ideological cul-de sacs encountered on the way. Sanity is returning one blog post at a time.
Totally fair point. I think my overreaction was something I was uniquely prone to for two reasons -- one, my hearing. I was in my first year of having good hearing tech, and a lot of aspects of interpreting tone were still new to me. And two, I was a lot less far along in my efforts to deal with my PTSD. Something that offered certainty -- a framework that gave me a black-and-white interpretation lens I could feel "solid" in -- was very appealing. At the time, an "algorithmic" way of looking at life was appealing for many reasons and also fit in well with my lack of experience in interpreting nuance.
I love that you know about Florence Nightingale! She made so many contributions to statistics.
Good point. PTSD had a similar effect on me - an attraction to ideas that made me feel 'solid' and safer, but that I had to outgrow if I didn't want to get stuck. One of the curious side effects of the class system is that extraordinary upper class women were sometimes allowed to make serious contributions despite the fact that it may have made the blokes uncomfortable. The earliest example I have found historically that feels connected to our modern culture is 12th century Byzantine princess Anna Komnene, daughter of the Emperor Alexios, who was free enough to become a genuine historian and wrote a history of her father's reign that is still both invaluable and respected today. I was only vaguely aware of Nightingale's contribution to statistics.
Congratulations on being Instalanched. I subscribed to your Substack a few months ago precisely for your insights on dealing with trauma. My wife and our three adopted kids all suffer from numerous childhood traumas. Your writing gives me insight into why they sometimes behave in (to me) totally irrational ways. Thank you.
Great piece. When I read this part:
"I said something like, “Yeah, I’m majoring in math. That’s why I live off these frozen dinners — homework is my life.”
He said, nodding seriously: “Math is hard.”"
The first thing that came to my mind was that he was trying to be empathetic since you had to do so much homework all you had time to eat was frozen dinners.
I appreciate you describing how it could be taken a completely different way.
Outstanding.
Thank you!
man-splaining = joy-splaining. Oh yeah!!! I'm a woman and I do it whenever I can get away with it. What a wonderful term for it.
In my experience, thyroid issues (hypo = depressed, hyper = anxious), low blood pressure, anemia / low blood volume especially in winter all make me want to go into a fetal position and hide. I really can't expect normal mental health if I'm that physically off.
I appreciate simple, clear communication from both sexes! It's too much work for me to have to decode what I think someone else is trying to convey.
Somewhere I heard this and it's helped me: 'They're not doing it TO YOU, they're just doing it'.
Got I interrupted. Blame everyone else misery loves company or view the world as a positive challenge to be your way for happiness. It’s all in your control.
You can go through life in one of two ways. Blaming your
I find myself having frequent conversations with people online (though I don't recommend it) who are convinced that they're the victims of some kind of terrible ongoing oppression. They view (as you hint at Holly with your supermarket story) every interaction as more proof of their oppression. This kind of mindset is crippling. It prevents these people from having normal human relationships with whatever broad swath of society they think is out to get them. (For me, it's the Laplanders.)
It also spikes your fight/flight response which cascades into stress hormones that are actually very tangibly unhealthy for you physically and mentally. And it becomes a kind of fear-tension-pain complex that continually spirals.
My reaction to this kind of phenomena is to try to make these poor bastards realize: someone WANTS you to have this kind of reaction. Someone programmed you to have this kind of relationship with the world. And at a certain point, you have to wonder WHY they would do that - and you should come to the conclusion that only an ENEMY would want you to be so impaired and stressed.
Now maybe the feminist professors didn't intend for their teachings to be so destructive, but again, at a certain point, their intention doesn't matter. The fruits are obvious. If you believe and act as if half of the world is out to get you - the person who taught you to have these beliefs is ruining your life. If they're not doing it on purpose, then they're just callously disinterested in their actions. Either way, they should be disregarded.
Did you know that anemia causes depression? In my junior year of college I found myself crying in the library stacks and had no idea why, since I loved what I was doing. I was diagnosed with anemia, treated with iron, and the depression immediately lifted. That was an amazing introduction to mind-body medicine.
I’m not surprised. I’ve understood for awhile that I was operating under a handicap. I dob’t have the physical wherewithal to fight as hard as I can.
Yes, but now you’ve marshaled an army to fight on your behalf 💕
This story really resonates with me. I grew up with four older brothers, went to a male-dominated and very demanding college, choose a tough, male-dominated career path, etc. it wasn’t until my 40s that I was in an environment where there were as many women as men.
Boy was it hard. But it was also great, and with only a couple notable exceptions, never did I feel that the men wanted to thwart or condescend to me. Quite the opposite. They were surprised and impressed to see a woman in their milieu and offered lots of good advice to help me succeed. That’s dozens of talented and caring men.
A very successful female friend of mine, about ten years younger, was complaining not too long ago about the “patriarchy” and I was flabbergasted. There is no world in which she suffered any more than a guy for her success. It just didn’t happen. But, sadly, she thinks it did and she doesn’t have any guy friends. And now one less female friend. Guys are awesome!
Yep. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that lots of women honestly have no idea that things like what they call "mansplaining" are normal, non-hostile, and (mostly) pure-motivation male behavior, which is why I wrote this.
How I viewed this as a graduate (over 40 years ago) of a 4-year physics program, is that "mansplaining" was actually "welcome to the club" behavior. As with most other science/engineering types (male or female), the "norm" is to do a first analysis, then start asking questions. The time to get worried was when no one on the team wanted to get into a discussion.
This also ties into your post about many younger women’s difficulty properly handling conflict. You are spot-on and it’s a phenomenon that has been driving me crazy. Having been raised in a “man’s world” I am usually pretty forthright about what I think, want and expect. That’s no problem with older women; but young women seem to think I’m yelling at them - and rather than listen and respond, they run away from any topic that feels mildly threatening (and apparently they all are!) In the interest of being “nice” their behavior is anything but, as it leads to counterproductive, passive-aggressive BS. It’s really awful, as it compounds whatever difficulty started the conversation. Grow up girls!
Yeah. I am very grateful for my guy friends, since I *really* wouldn't understand anything you just said without them. I suspect that a lot of young women are in a similar situation. The fatherhood crisis has far-reaching implications for sure.
For sure. There are going to be a lot of lonely young people until girls snap out of it. It’s tough having a Gen-Z daughter. Mine was perfectly sensible, and sweet, until she went to college - at the deep end of the woke pool. She had an acronym for me before I’d even expressed an opinion on the relevant subject 🤣
I'm grateful for your generosity Holly!
I'm pleased that so many people are responding to it. A lot of women had no idea about the extent of brainwashing that went into their idea of "mansplaining," and a lot of people really didn't understand the definition drifts of feminism, TERF, and other words, and are realizing that they probably don't disagree with some of the people they despise nearly as much as they thought. Which is amazing.