“Men explain things to me.”

A comment to my blog post this morning included a reference to an article by Rebecca Solnit.

I hadn’t read it before, although it was published in 2008. Wrote my reader,

“I agree. All these yahoos with no experience in education think they can “explain” to experienced teachers how to do their jobs simply because teaching is a pink-collar profession. Rebecca Solnit explains the attitude in her wonderful essay ‘Men Explain Things to Me.‘”

You can read the entire essay here.

Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don’t. Not yet, but according to the actuarial tables, I may have another forty-something years to live, more or less, so it could happen. Though I’m not holding my breath.