Of the many blows exchanged between Tory leader hopefuls Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, perhaps the most surprising has been accusations of “aggressive statements” by the former chancellor from the Foreign Secretary’s camp.
Sunak’s interruptions in Monday night’s head-to-head debate, his intervention on Truss, his general “private school behaviour” were condemned as “desperate” and “inconvenient” by Truss supporters .
Sunak’s team rallied. Yes, the debate was lively. But it was “insulting” to suggest Truss could not look after herself in a “raucous” debate, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab insisted. Sunak, according to others, was only explaining the shortcomings of the fiscal policy proposed by Truss. Nothing sexist about it.
So when does just explaining become the much more charged “mansplaining”?
According to the OED, the verb “mansplain” is defined as “Of a man: to explain (something) unnecessarily, overbearingly or condescendingly, esp. (usually when addressing a woman) in a thoughtful manner to reveal a paternalistic or sexist attitude”.
Or, as Catherine Mayer, co-founder and president of the Women’s Equality Party, journalist and activist, put it: “In its strictest sense, hand-wringing is men telling women things that women they already understand perhaps better than the person speaking.”
“Mansplaining can be quite funny. I know we get angry about it. But one of the dangers of being a co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party is the amount of men who are quick to tell me what to do, or not to do , feminism,” he said.
“However, the denunciation of hands is a huge and constant thing. And there are a lot of them at the moment”.
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss go head-to-head in the second televised debate – video highlights
The term was first coined in 2008, following an essay by American author Rebecca Solnit called Men Explain Things To Me in the Los Angeles Times, in which she described a time when a man explained a book to her without acknowledging that she had written it herself. This gave rise to the term, which was initially adopted in feminist blogs, with steadily increasing usage. Now it’s mainstream.
Mansplaining, Mayer said, is “very much part of the larger culture that places a different value on what men and women say. Men get to have big ideas, and what they say is given an importance that may or may not no. Whereas women with great ideas are told they’re pushy or talked down to, and their ideas are co-opted or ignored. And the structural exclusion of vital ideas and perspectives is one of the reasons why politics is so broken.”
He didn’t watch the Sunak-Truss debate, but thinks both are “hopeless candidates.” And that being the case, he said, “potentially confounds the issue of hand reporting” in this case. “Trussanomics” – or Truss economic policy – was unworkable, Mayer believed. “And so it is likely that he gave Sunak room for explanation and also for hands-on explanation.”
Tory MP Jackie Doyle-Price had no hesitation, tweeting: “Most women MPs have been the subject of allegations and debate. Never a worse example than right now on the BBC.”
Mansplaining goes hand in hand with “manterrruption”. And Sunak definitely interrupted.
Asked on BBC Breakfast, Truss MP Simon Clarke said: “I was certainly interrupting Liz a lot”, although he refused to use the word “mansplain”, saying only: “I’m not going to label”. Sunak supporter David Davis, however, saw it as the cut and thrust of a healthy debate, saying, “Sometimes it’s important to weigh in on debates.”
Disruption is “certainly part of the culture itself,” Mayer said. “Asserting yourself is great. Talking about other people is not. It’s on the verge of denunciation.”
Robert Lawson, associate professor of sociolinguistics at Birmingham City University, said the Sunak-Truss debate would inevitably see an increase in Twitter use of the hashtags #mansplaining and #manterruption as such events drive debate on the issue .
“Then it becomes a debate about ‘what is whistleblowing?’ Was it definitely reported? Is it just a case that he was explaining something and that he is a man? And so this debate becomes about what constitutes mansplaining and what does not,” said Lawson, co-author of an academic paper called Gender Politics and Discourse of #mansplaining #manspreading and #manterruption on Twitter.
The sociolinguistics definition of mansplaining is “a condescending, condescending explanation” for someone who “we might reasonably expect to have some degree of experience or knowledge in that field,” he said.
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“These kinds of ‘man’ terms are part of a larger strategy of how we talk about and call attention to some of the more problematic elements of how men communicate, and if they communicate that way, what can be done about it?” “.
But while he believes that could mean a positive outcome from Monday’s debate, Mayer is less sanguine.
“One of the other things I’ve learned from activism is that it’s incredibly important that people know about things so that you can change them. But that’s just the first step. You also have to make them care about it, and in the our polarized world, these kinds of hashtag debates, instead of making people care. [an issue] in terms of having a moment of revelation and thinking I’m going to change my behavior, it tends to reinforce people in the behaviors they already had.”