No Story Here

For good reasons, I never studied journalism. I have no capacity to anticipate reader interest. It's a flaw in my fiction as well. So I suspect this is a non-story. Fortunately, it's also a personal blog.

Something has been happening to me fairly often lately, and I wanted to express my frustration about it. I keep getting 'splained.

'splaining is short for "mansplaining" - shortened because it's not always men who do it. When a person proceeds to offer a personal lecture on a subject with which you are already very familiar, he or she is 'splaining.

I suspect that 'splaining is another symptom of over-education, especially with people who are accustomed to needing to explain everything all the time because they have become experts in a field so specialized that nobody really cares. 'Splainers don't even think about it anymore; they just assume you don't know anything and proceed to enlighten you.

Particularly pernicious, mansplaining is a form of sexism in which men assume women are ignorant because men (consciously or unconsciously) assume their own superiority on any and all topics. I don't know if it happens between men because I don't eavesdrop on those kinds of conversations, but I know it happens between women, because people do it to me all the time. ALL THE TIME.

I am a certifiable expert on a few topics related to my PhD field. I am also a lay-expert on certain fandoms, though I should hate to be examined by a true geek. My tastes are fairly eclectic (more so than those of most hipsters in this sad time when "eclecticism" is the highest self-encomium), so I am an unexpected lay-expert on many fields totally unrelated to my academic certifications. I won't list them here.

The problem would be easily solved if instead of launching into a lecture, one simply got into the habit of asking "did you know. . .?" and then participating in a mutual geek-out when the person replies in the affirmative. I think it would avoid the stepping on toes.