The term "mansplaining" received the high honor of being nominated as one of the “most creative” new words at the American Dialect Society 2012 Word of the Year vote. In addition to being creative, this term, particularly the -splaining part, has proven to be incredibly robust and useful as a combining form in 2013, and it deserves a mention as the Word of the Year buzz escalates.
Before "mansplain" really took off, a Los Angeles Times op-ed titled “Men who explain things,” captured a yet-unnamed interaction that would soon come to be known as mansplaining. The author Rebecca Solnit sums it up as follows: “Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about.”
The following year, Senator Tom Coburn evoked Ricky Ricardo of I Love Lucy when he told Justice Sonia Sotomayor “You’ll have lots of ‘splainin’ to do.”
I'm not quite sold on this term as being specific to men. If we switched out men for women, wouldn't this be considered sexist? Of course, how we use language is often determined by intent. Why is it okay to include a word with potential derogatory implications in the dictionary?
What do you think? Is this term sexist and demeaning to men?
photo credit: Movie-Fan via photopin cc
