Mansplaining tampons
Last week, my friends and I were on holiday at the sea. We’re going to college together (age 20-30). Our house had a small swimming pool, so we would go swimming each evening. One of my male best friends had a bag packed with everything you could only imagine to need, such as bandaids, pain meds, lighters etc., so one of the girls asked him if he’d put a tampon in it. He had. We were sitting with another guy.
“So”, my male friend said. “You’re on your period?”
“Yeah”, she said. Because, duh.
“Well”, he said, “a pity you can’t come swimming.”
Him and the other guy started laughing. When the girl and I, puzzled, wanted to know what was so funny, they explained to us: “You know, when you’re on your period, you can’t go swimming. Your tampon will swell.” And the other guy turned to me because I snorted in disbelief, spilling my drink everywhere, and said: “Well, have you ever worn a tampon?”
It was comical. We sat there, thunderstruck, listening to two guys explaining to us girls how not only we couldn’t swim with a tampon, but how they imagined wearing a tampon felt, and how they couldn’t understand why women couldn’t just take pain meds because the cramps would “go away instantly, why the fuss?”. Needless to say, one they had finished their little explaining, we had a good laugh and kindly explained to them what Mansplaining is and why they had just delivered the most ridiculous example one could imagine.
When we had dinner, we retold our little conversation to our other friends and alltogether had a really good laugh – the two Mansplainers sat embarrassed and ashamed.
In which a male undergrad calls out mansplaining!
I was enrolled in a Digital Signal Processing course in grad school. The professor explained part of how an interesting algorithm worked and asked the class to explain another part of it. I raised my hand, he called on me, and I explained it correctly. He said “No” and called on another student, a male this time. The male student repeated what I said, almost word for word. The professor said “Yes, well done.”
And then, the glorious thing happened. The male student replied “But that’s exactly what SHE said!” while gesturing at me. Anytime I’m down, I think of that one person, that one guy, who took an opportunity to illuminate an unfair situation.
I do not think that means what you think it means
I am friends with some of my former students on facebook. One of them, a woman, posted a comment about the recent resignation of Benedict XVI, and tagged me in it to get my thoughts. I talked about the historical context of the previous resignations, and why they had resigned, and what my take on the resignation was.
A male friend of hers chimed in, telling me that I was entirely wrong about the historical context (he claimed that Gregory’s resignation came about because of the Protestant Reformation) and that “obviously” I was getting my information “from somewhere like Wikipedia.”
I then corrected him on his timeline (after all, the Council of Constance is a good hundred years before Luther’s Wittenburg moment), and proceeded to provide a brief history of the Great Schism.
He then corrected me again. At this point, my former student commented that I had been her professor….for medieval European history. His response? ‘oh.’
