Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Heh. Yeah, that’s me…at times (via Instapundit).
The mansplainers don’t take into account what the person they’re speaking to might already know, especially since they’re often talking to students who may not in fact know all that much. Mansplainers often start with first principles. They take the conversational podium with ease and entitlement and stay there for as long as they please. They don’t notice when their listeners are nodding off, or trying to say something, or picking their cuticles until they bleed. On and on they go, merrily enchanted with the sound of their own voices, and the thoughts issuing from their overstuffed heads.
We’re all like that. Aren’t we? I know in the midst of my own misadventures in mansplaining, if someone accused me of failing to assess the knowledge level of my audience accurately, or of not bothering to assess it at all, I wouldn’t offer a defense because I usually wouldn’t disagree. Like many among us, I find it thoroughly baffling. Like letting an arrow loose from a bow, trying to hit another arrow someone else let loose from a bow, in mid-flight. Heck I can try, but that’s all I can do.
I have noticed, watching others interact with me, and others, that hitting the arrow seems to be a matter of perception: “I feel like he knows me.” And on the few occasions when we get to go back and compare that perception with reality, in love, war, diplomacy, salesmanship, it is seldom correct. It’s just a feeling. This leaves me to doubt anyone, anywhere, truly has the ability.
I think we’re all mansplainers. To some degree, to some extent, every now and then. It’s provable with mass-communication, isn’t it? The speaker can’t lift and then respond to some emotional vibe coming from the listeners; it’s strictly a one-way forum. All he can do is utter throaty magical incantations that arouse the mendacious feeling that he’s in sync. But the reality is that he’s just guessing about what questions the audience wants answered, and what they want to hear next. Guessing, and subtly guiding.
We’re wanting and lusting after something in our dialogues, something that never has been and never can be. Perhaps the trend we need to be noticing should be called “femlistening” or some such?
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I dunno. This sounds like a case of a bug really being a feature. Everyone who has ever sat through a meeting knows there’s always at least one knucklehead who just doesn’t get some core concept. Nothing productive can come out of the meeting until that idiot is brought up to speed (if that’s even possible). What has the rest of us rolling our eyes at the “mansplaining” is vital prep work for the weakest link.
Surely politics works that way. Imagine how fruitful discussions could be if we didn’t have to stop and re-litigate seating arrangements in the Parlement of Paris or the labor theory of value or whatnot every five minutes.
- Severian | 04/27/2014 @ 09:45