Men Explain Things To Me

I've been a fan of Rebecca Solnit since I read [b:A Field Guide to Getting Lost|76479|A Field Guide to Getting Lost|Rebecca Solnit|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1422984723l/76479.SY75.jpg|2756721], which astounded me with its exquisite language, deep learning and fascinating connections.

Men Explain Things to Me had all of this, but it was a much more challenging book.

I had read the title essay once before. But reading it again was another reminder to try to spend more time listening than I do talking. This is one essay that I think most men would benefit from reading again and again.

In fact, I think that this is a book most men should read at least once. Most of the rest of the essays had me questioning what it means to be a good man. Many of the essays resulted in difficult and honest self-reflection, examining failures and looking for ways of improving.

The final two essays were stunning, and both are essays I know I'll be returning to.

"Wolff's Darkness" was a felt like a return to everything I loved about A Field Guide to Getting Lost. It was an examination of how to find a way in an uncertain by relying on hope rather than false certainties.

Perhaps the most challenging essay was "Pandora's Box and the Volunteer Police Force." It fundamentally changed my idea of what a revolution is. This is an opinion I've held for almost 30 years, so changing my mind was no small task.

This is about as far from a self help book as you can get. There are no easy solutions or magic roads to happiness here. Nevertheless, I'd recommend this to anyone interesting in becoming a better person and working towards a better world.

Rebecca Solnit started out to write a humorous essay about those men (and she's clear that it's not all - or even most - men) who automatically dismiss the knowledge, opinions or expertise of a woman even about topics they themselves have no knowledge of, but as she thought it through she came to realise that such behaviour is only one point along a societal spectrum that historically has meant women had no legal rights, even to life itself. One of the points she makes is that the gender-aspect of any violent crime is usually overlooked - for example, we stress the fact that mass shooters are often loners and often have mental health issues (which, incidentally, is not as 'often' as people assume), but we tend to skate over the fact that they are almost always men as if that has no significance. Even when the motive is clearly misogynistic (like the guy who wanted to shoot up a sorority because women would not give him the sex he felt he had some kind of right to), that part of it tends to be handled with kid-gloves. When it comes to rape, which is almost always a gender-power crime (though Solnit is careful to stress that not all men are perpetrators and not all victims are women), society treats each incident as an aberration, an isolated event, at best a horrible tragedy or a misunderstanding - but probably the victim's fault, or else the fault of a seriously defective perpetrator. It's too threatening to the status quo to recognise that sexual violence is the primary method society has used to keep women in their place, and that it continues to be used that way even as remarkable progress has certainly been made. She concludes that although most men are not violent or even necessarily misogynistic, most women live their lives to some degree in fear of the few who are, and the result of that is that all women are thus subordinated to all men. She also points out the double standard that most of us simply take for granted (for instance, why did the suggestion made once that a college's men should be told to stay inside after dark as a way to prevent rape bring such an angry reaction? Why is it more reasonable for women, who are not the perpetrators of campus rape, to be restricted? Why is someone who reports a stolen bicycle immediately believed, but someone who reports a rape immediately doubted?) It's understandable that men who would never dream of harming - or even disrespecting - a woman can feel defensive when these conversations start, but this is an indictment of a social reality, not of men as individuals, and by becoming angry that the subject is raised, rather than angry about the crimes being discussed, innocent men themselves become part of the problem. This is a powerful and important book, in a format that makes it a fairly quick read.

This book is a short collection of essays by writer and historian Rebecca Solnit. I was interested in reading the title essay, "Men Explain Things To Me" which became quite famous a few years ago and indirectly led to the creation of the term "Mansplaining". The author relates some of her experience at a party, when the host found out she was an author and asked what she'd written, only to repeatedly interrupt her to explain to her all about the "best" book on the subject -- which is the book she had written, not that he gave her time to point that out to him. Using this and other similar entertaining examples she discusses how there is often a certain expectation that men need to portray themselves as always having the answers and knowledge to everything, even when they don't and it may lead to them ignoring the actual expert on a subject right in front of them. As the author points out, while not all men do this, pretty much every woman has experienced this phenomenon many times in her life (and I certainly found myself nodding along with most of her examples). It's an expectation that isn't good for either men or women.

The rest of the short book is a collection of other essays on the general topic of women's experiences and/or feminist history or issues. Some I liked more than others (the Virginia Woolf analysis pretty much lost my interest) but they were all an interesting read and made good points and raised good questions whether or not you agreed with all of the author's conclusions. She's very careful throughout to be clear that there is no black and white, male vs female; and she always calls out there are many men who don't do whatever she's talking about in that particular essay, but she nonetheless highlights concerning trends. Some of the book is a pretty depressing look at the problems our society is struggling with, but she somehow manages to end on an optimistic note nonetheless. This quote is from near the end of the book and sums up well her overall message:

"Feminism, as writer Marie Sheer remarked in 1986, is 'the radical notion that women are people,' a notion not universally accepted but spreading nonetheless. The changing conversation is encouraging, as is the growing engagement of men in feminism. There were always male supporter. When the first women's rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, thirty-two of the one hundred signatories to its Declaration of Independence-echoing manifesto were men. Still, it was seen as a women's problem. Like racism, misogyny can never be adequately addressed by its victims alone. The men who get it also understand that feminism is not a scheme to deprive men but a campaign to liberate us all."