Word of the Day: Mansplain

Often clueless men try to mansplain to women who are more intelligent than they are.

Listen to ArtisanEnglish.jp posts & lesson intros here.

Yes, it’s true.

When men mansplain, they explain the obvious to a woman, often a more intelligent woman, and that woman thinks he’s an idiot.

As you can see, the word mansplain is made up of two words ‘man’ and ‘explain.’

If you are a woman reading this right now, I am not mansplaining.

I write a blog for English language students, albeit higher-level English language students.

For this reason, I need to be as clear as possible.

Full disclosure here, I have been guilty of mansplaining.

I’m trying not to repeat it, so please bear with me.

In the past, I have mansplained Japanese politics to my Japanese wife.

My lovely and brilliant Japanese wife.

As I was talking, she looked at me with pity on her face.

I stopped blabbing on and asked, “What?”.

She looked at me like a mother looks at a small child and said, “You do realize that I am Japanese, right?”

I said, “Yeah.”

She said, “Well, I know this country better than you ever will. It’s my country.”

In a moment of clarity, I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

She said, ‘It’s OK. You can’t help it. Sometimes, you don’t know when to shut up.”

There you have it.

I’m very open and honest with you here.

If you’re a man, don’t ever mansplain.

Even if you feel an overwhelming need to explain the obvious to a lady, don’t do it.

You must learn to overcome this incredible urge to make yourself look like an idiot.

When you mansplain, it indicates your unfathomable inability to understand the modern world.

Mansplaining shows how out of touch a man is.

I said it at the beginning of this post, and I’ll repeat it at the end.

When a man mansplains, they explain the obvious to a woman, often a more intelligent woman, who thinks he’s an idiot.

This post is understandable by someone with at least a 6th-grade education (age 11).

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.