How to say your own name? Let me mansplain...
A TWITTER thread spooled out of control last week when an American woman wrote how a man had tried to explain the concept of an airport terminal to her. More than 4,000 women joined in with tales of men explaining the bleeding obvious.
The examples were hilarious, ranging from ‘mansplaining’ the difference between a screw and a nail to a woman who owned a DIY store, to mansplaining calmly and phonetically how a woman should pronounce her own name.
I once had a couple stay with me at my farmhouse in Somerset. The man told me slowly and patiently that my house was in fact located in Devon. I had to produce a utility bill to prove otherwise. Or how about the time I was driving my new Mercedes in Oxford, a boyfriend in the passenger seat. A driver let me into a queue, so I said: ‘How do I thank him?’
The boyfriend opined: ‘You’d normally put your indicators on, or wave.’ Yes, I know that, thank you. I meant, where on earth’s the hazard lights button?
When finding it hard to reverse my Land Rover, due to RSI in my neck, he told me to ‘use the wing mirrors’ – this from someone who reversed said vehicle into a wall within seconds of taking the wheel. He also told me that toast should be served cold, otherwise ‘how can you explain the existence of toast racks?’.
I would love it if men could explain something we all find hard to understand, such as who put black holes into space? Or who is Gavin Rossdale on The Voice? But they can’t. Life to men is a perplexing swirl and so they look to the nearest woman to oppress and bludgeon with the mind-bogglingly obvious. I blame their wives. Women are so desperate not to have to pay the mortgage on their own or stand watching small boys play football in the howling wind, that they lull the big oafs they are shackled to into an inflated idea of their own importance. They push them out of the door at 8am every day (so difficult to Hoover around size 9 feet) so that these egomaniacs come into my path, and inflict their cock-eyed ideas! I once asked my boyfriend’s ex-wife how she put up with him and she replied: ‘I was madly in love!’ Hmm. She wanted his sperm and a big house, more like. She never challenged his strange brand of What Is Right In The World, such as ‘You should really let plaster dry out before you paint it’ (to a female property developer), ‘You should twist the cork of a champagne bottle’ (to a female alcoholic), and ‘If you put wax on the runner of a drawer it will slide more smoothly’ (to a female antiques dealer).
The end result? He was free to venture into the world and mansplain his way into serial singletonhood and a narrow divan.
Even the satnav lady gets patronised by men, who insist that contrary to her advice, ‘the best way to Guildford is…’. They then drive into a cul-de-sac and are forced to perform a U-turn which they try to transform into a James Bond handbrake turn. Just to prove their manliness.
They can never explain anything useful... like who’s Gavin Rossdale?