MANSPLAINING AND GATEKEEPING


In this post, I want to touch on these two topics and also give a little insight from my personal experiences with these issues. Mansplaining, as I'm sure many of you know, is when a man attempts to explain something in his own way, often interrupting you, under the assumption that a) you don't know what you're talking about or b) his explanation is inherently more logical because he is a man and women no understand gud. Gatekeeping often happens in the music industry, gaming industry, or any general hobbies that are dominated by men. A man will not grant you access to a hobby, interest, or general group because he feels you are not a "true fan", because you don't know the entire discography of that one super underground metal band that you CLAIM to know but probably don't, or because you haven't committed eight hours a day to video games and can't truly enjoy Red Dead Redemption, which is a video game you probably don't know about, sweetie :-)

Here is my experience. I was interviewing for a receptionist position at a car dealership, and to ease the tension, the interviewer, a male, began asking me about my interests. I said I liked reading, because, shocker, I'm an english major. Which prompts him to bull doze me in the middle of talking so that he can talk about his much more interesting and refined taste in books, in comparison to me, and english literature major. So I sat there, listening to him go on and on about how his favorite author is George Orwell and how Animal Farm truly changed his life and I should definitely read it if I haven't yet, which is likely, because his taste in books is very edgy, but that's okay because not everyone "gets it". At this point, I interject, speaking softly as if I am interrupting an excited child who won't settle down for nap time, and I offer up one of my favorite authors, information he clearly didn't want or ask for, but sometimes it feels good to act like a man operate on the assumption that everyone around me values my opinions on everything. To make the interaction even more enjoyable, he INCORRECTLY corrects my pronunciation of the author's name, and because I am a woman and have spent my entire life with self doubt, I think for one horrifying moment that maybe I am saying it wrong. But in case you're reading this, interviewer, you were wrong. Google proved me right as I was agonizing over the interaction that night. ANYWAYS. Mansplaining at it's finest, and he continues, but moves on to gatekeeping. He names off some obscure author that he probably discovered off some deep reddit feed, and when I, shockingly, don't recognize it, he says "Wow, you haven't read any of his stuff? How can you even be a literature major? You can't be a true fan of reading." Because yes, my failure to recognize this one author suddenly invalidates the thousands of dollars of debt, time, tears, sweat, and commitment I poured into my major over the last four years. I left the conversation in many ways impressed with the blind confidence men stumble through life with.