What do you do if someone is accused of mansplaining?
Like anything, we have to start by defining what “mansplaining” means. We always think we know what it means, but how is a person who’s complaining using that term? Is the person who is mansplaining just engaged in that really annoying speech pattern of repeating everything everybody says? Because, if so, maybe the client wants to coach them about how they are annoying people.
But if your complaining party means that the “mansplainer” is engaged in a speech pattern that is degrading women, we need to get that definition from the reporting party. After that, we need to get some examples of “mansplaining” from the reporting party, and then we need to attempt to corroborate (or not) the examples. I would also encourage all of you not to actually use the word “mansplaining” as you get into your interviews because, again, it could be defined in different ways to each interviewee.
