'Splaining.

So I guess the hot new word in the blogosphere is mansplaining. Mansplaining is "when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate 'facts' about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does."

My take: I find this sexist. I don't like the idea of a word that can be used against someone who disagrees with you while being male. I know it's only supposed to apply when he's being really unambiguously condescending, but including gender in the word seems unnecessary and inflammatory. Therefore, I propose a new word: "douchesplaining."

I've been 'splained to, there's no question. Just the other day I was changing an oxygen tank, quite happily and correctly cranking away at it, and a man walking by just had to drop in helpful advice like "you're gonna want an O-ring in there," oblivious to the fact that there was already an O-ring in there, and I had done this 5000 times, and it was only my goddamn job, and I'm not an idiot. But this wasn't a gender conflict incident; this was a douchery incident. I've had women 'splain to me too, plenty of times. I've caught myself 'splaining.

Do men and women 'splain with equal frequency? Do men sometimes 'splain for sexist reasons? I don't care. It's the act that's wrong, not the actor's gender. Being condescending is wrong; being a condescending man is incidental. And hey, there are some annoying behaviors that women are more frequently accused of, but I don't think anyone wants to hear them insultingly renamed after our gender. Like if "complaining" was called "bitching"... oh fuck. Anyway. We're better than that. It's fair to accuse a douche of being a douche; it's wrong to accuse a douche of being a man.

Now don't nobody douchesplain to me why I'm wrong.