Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit is a book I chose to read simply because the title really caught my attention. A slang term I’ve heard thrown around here and there is “mansplaining” which essentially means that a man is explaining something to you that you probably already know and they just want to appear knowledgeable. Check out this Urban Dictionary definition if you want a little more detail.
The book is a collection of essays written by Solnit who is a fairly well known author. She writes about a lot of subjects but her main focus is, you guessed it, feminism. The first essay in the short book is what gave this book its title, Men Explain Things to Me. In this essay Rebecca tells a few stories about some “very important” men she has encountered that have had a tendency to over explain. They feign knowledge that they don’t actually have to appear superior to the women they’re conversing with. A quote I liked was “Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don’t.” She provokes you to remember that knowledge is power but it isn’t always used correctly.
A second portion of her book discusses the scandal with the head of the International Monetary Fund. More information on the scandal itself can be found here. Strauss-Kahn was charged with sexual assault of a hotel maid while on business here in the US and his career went completely downhill thereafter. A lot of countries don’t take sexual assault seriously enough. But in this case, the US did.
This beginning of this book was easy to follow and something everyone should take a stab at. It got hard to follow towards the end, but I challenge you to read the essay itself. I will link it right here to make it easy on you. And comment below how you might respond to Mr. Very Important in Aspen.
