Mansisting and Shesisters

Mansplaining and manspreading have been around for several years now, with not unexpected debates about whether the terms are fair or part of generalized trashing of male behavior by over zealous feminists.

Whatever. If you’re a woman, you’ve likely experienced both, as well as hepeating. That’s a phenomenon familiar to women who spend time in group meetings. A woman suggests an idea that’s ignored, then a man says the same thing and everyone loves it.

But what about mansisting? David came up with the term recently after listening to a friend describe an experience with a man who kept making his point over and over without listening to any arguments or counters to what he just knew to be true. My definition: a man who insists, particularly to a woman, his point of view regardless of his own or the other person’s expertise or knowledge. Yes, women do it too, but men do it more, and besides, the term for someone who does it is a great word. He’s a mansister.

Donald Trump is a constant mansister. He’s not particularly skilled at it, given that his vocabulary consists of about 100 words, too many of them adjectives that he over uses. Without any knowledge, facts or even common sense he routinely insists that something is “terrific” or “terrible” or “tremendous” or “dangerous” or “bad.” He repeats his assertions, as if saying something multiple times will make it true. He mansists.

Actually, mansplaining isn’t an option for Trump. He doesn’t really know anything, so how could he mansplain anything to anyone? Hepeating is also tricky for him. He certainly does repeat what others say (like whatever he hears on Fox & Friends), but hepeating requires repeating what a woman says. Does Trump ever really listen to anything a woman says?

Beyond having to endure the idiotic and insulting assertions of Trump, mansisting can be a real problem for women. How do you convince a man that you know more about a topic than him, or that he’s wrong, or that your vagina actually doesn’t make you less intelligent when he mansists instead of listens?

But we persist, right? “Nevertheless, she persisted.” Remember that, Mitch McConnell shutting down Elizabeth Warren because he didn’t want to hear the truth she was speaking? A recent study of interruption patterns during oral arguments before the Supreme Court Justices, published in the Virginia Law Review concluded “that judicial interactions at oral argument are highly gendered, with women being interrupted at disproportionate rates by their male colleagues, as well as by male advocates.”

Surprised? I thought not. The study found that seniority also plays a role, but mostly from “female Justices learning over time how to behave more like male Justices, avoiding traditionally female linguistic framing in order to reduce the extent to which they are dominated by the men.”

Do we need to behave more like men in order to get them to stop dominating us with mansplaining, manspreading, hepeating and mansisting?

I propose that as many of us that safely can become shesisters: a woman who persists and resists in the face of the verbal tactics men use to dominate her.

Onward, shesisters!