In mid-November, one of Sweden’s foremost Trade Unions set up a week-long hotline for women who were tired of being the victim of what’s now been termed mansplaining. A crime only now being recognized, mansplaining occurs when women are subjected to an unnecessarily long or irrelevant explanation by a man, that has no purpose other than the unimportant sharing of the decibel range of said man’s voice.
Courtesy of ABC
While he might be this season’s heart throb, Alex Karev, who has been on the Grey’s cast since the very beginning was once the class misogynist we all hated back in Season 1, when both he and Dr. Burke lead many-a-mansplain to our leading ladies Meredith, Izzie and Christina over the course of the first couple of seasons. His behavior and general air of chauvinism had TV skeptics pipping him to be one of the first cut from the female-forward show in what has now become the infamous Grey’s kiss of death. Shonda Rhimes, show creator and writer, had other ideas and has since transformed his character into one of the most thoughtful and likeable men on the show, who is perhaps the most in tune with the womanly ways of the Grey-Sloan memorial world. Broody Burke however, was not so lucky.
Game of Thrones
Power
Courtesy of Starz
Tasha Saint Patrick, or ’T’, may be a fierce mom, wife and businesswoman, but when it comes to making decisions regarding her husband’s underground crime network, her sex makes her persona-non-grata in husband Ghost’s male-dominated inner circle. Her opinion is veritably null and void when he and co-conspirator Tommy are making big-boy decisions that are continually explained to her in elementary-esque language. Both Ghost and Tommy are guilty of mansplanation to their ‘girls’ Tasha and Holly respectively yet while Holly(spoiler) perishes after taking too much into her own hands, T is very firmly holding her own in the empire, with trailers for the new season indicating she may even be running the show.
Friends
This timeless sitcom may star some of our best and brightest women from the Nineties, that does not however mean they were exempt from mansplaining perpetrators, and Ross Geller, resident know-it-all and serial divorcee was easily the worst offender. Having Monica as a lifetime punching bag for condescending mansplanations and pontificating did not mean that when manhood came around he was done with his would-be female victims.
Given his eventual proximity to ditzy Rachel and Phoebe his mansplaining only got worse over time and by the end of the entire series had nearly lost him his relationship with his child’s mother and would-be love of his love. It was only Rachel’s acceptance of him — warts, mansplaining and all — that brought her back to him. We’d like to believe she’s harassed the annoying trait out of him at this stage in their alternate Friends universe.
WRITTEN BY
Amy Corcoran