Although it is very likely that this is not basically due to biological differences, it is clear that, today, men and women’s behaviour is different in many ways. Some of these differences, moreover, allow one sex to dominate the other and make it easier for it to impose its views and purposes.

Mansplaining, as a psychological phenomenon of domination , is an example of how men, statistically, tend to try to take the lead in dialogues with women, regardless of the topic being discussed.

Let’s see what it consists of and what relationship it has with sexism and cultural machismo .

What is mansplaining?

The term “mansplaining” is a neologism from the English language that in its original language is composed of the words “man” and “explain”. It is normally used to refer to the statistical tendency (and the action through which this tendency is expressed) of men to explain things to women in a paternalistic and condescending way , as if their interlocutors were especially bad at understanding, even if what is being talked about is a subject that the woman knows more about than the man.

For example, a man with no university education who explains to a biologist what hybridization between dog breeds consists of without even letting her speak is a relatively clear case of mansplaining.

What would characterize the mansplaining is not that a man talks about certain topics related to femininity or feminism (after all, a specific man can know more than a specific woman about any topic, and vice versa), but that, in a systematic way, it is assumed that the woman’s role is to shut up and learn .

The hypothesis based on machismo

The concept of mansplaining has begun to be used relatively recently, and it is believed that not even a decade has passed since it appeared, although its origin is little known.

It has been enthusiastically welcomed by associations and organizations linked to feminism and gender studies for obvious reasons: it can be interpreted as a micromachismo, a subtle form of expression of patriarchy and cultural machismo that from this perspective would reproduce a system of domination of men over women.

In the end, in practice, mansplaining has a clear effect on power relations: it makes women’s views invisible and nullifies them and makes this assumed to be normal. In other words, “mansplaining” is a word that many women have needed to refer to a problem that until recently no one knew what to call it, despite the fact that numerous scientific investigations have taken note of its existence over the last few years.

Mansplaining towards other men

The previous one is the interpretation of mansplaining based on the idea that this is one of the consequences of a system of male domination. However, there is also another possible interpretation of this phenomenon. An interpretation based on a fact that may be surprising considering what we have seen before: men also perform mansplaining when they relate to other men .

This is the conclusion reached by an investigation conducted by Elizabeth Aries. After analyzing more than 40 hours of conversations, Aries found that men and women had very different styles of relating to other people.

Men tended to compete more to dominate conversations regardless of who was in front of them, while women showed a greater willingness to connect with others through symmetrical relationships and did not try to control the direction of the conversation.

For them, conversations about the most trivial issues were also a stage where power and influence could be gained, and they tried to gradually escalate through their interventions, struggling to gain the attention of others.

In this way, in the groups composed only of men there were also a number of individuals who, when some time had passed, became invisible to a minority that ended up capitalizing on the conversations , something that occurred much less in the groups of women.

A much more aggressive style of interaction

These conclusions fit in very well with findings found through other research in psychology that do not focus primarily on dialogue: men tend to be more competitive and many more types of interactions, even though there may not seem to be a concrete or recognizable reward to be gained by doing so.

Thus, mansplaining would not be so much a way for men to try to nullify women, but a reflection of their style in relating to everyone .

Of course, these results always focus on statistical trends. A man doesn’t have to constantly fall into mansplaining, and a woman doesn’t have to always be submissive or avoid fighting to extend her power in conversations either. Simply, mansplaining is much more widespread in one of the two sexes and stands out more and more often when the people talking to each other are of opposite sexes.