Manterrupting is about to trump mansplaining

IF a man mansplains in the forest, do the trees roll their eyes? 

The absurd pertinence of such a question, asked by Salon.com in 2012, has not gone away. It’s gotten worse. You’ll have seen what the Washington Post dubbed the Mansplaining Olympics — the Clinton / Trump debate, where, to be fair, Hillary did most of it to her blustering, fact-free orange opponent — but this is a rarity. Mansplaining is a man thing. Allow me to womansplain. Or as one mansplainer put it, to womanipulate.

The word — but not the concept — was born in 2008 (the reality has been around since we fell out of the trees). In a Los Angeles Times essay titled “Men Explain Things To Me”, writer Rebecca Solnit recounts being at a party where a man tells her all about a very important book on the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge. She has briefly mentioned she has written about Muybridge.