Men who explain things

[Crux]

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/13/opinion/op-solnit13

[homegrown terror]

i've seen this happen before, not just by male against female, but by old against young, across color lines, and just about every division that presumes superiority over another. it's quite possibly the most condescending shit i can imagine.

[Jimmie Higgins]

While this is a function generally of basic elitism in society, "when you're older, you'll come to agree with me" or "Actually my professor explained..." I think it tends to be much more internalized and normalized in male-female interactions.

It's "polite" and "natural" for women to divert arguments and often it's considered totally impolite for women to discuss politics at all. However, for men, it's considered "unmanly" to be indecisive. The fingerprints of constructed family gender roles are all over this - these attitudes imply/re-enforce the idea that men's opinions matter because they are the legitimate "deciders" whereas women's role in social interactions are "social" to support the activity to keep others happy so they can make the important decisions.

[Crux]

i've seen this happen before, not just by male against female, but by old against young, across color lines, and just about every division that presumes superiority over another. it's quite possibly the most condescending shit i can imagine.
Fair enough, but as the article points out this is also very much a case of gender relations and structural oppression. And we see it happen everyday and, if we're not careful, sometimes we reproduce it. I've certainly seen variants of the "hysteric woman/feminist" argument being reproduced on this forum of supposed revolutionary leftists. Structures are very powerful and if we don't get them from our upbringing we certainly get them from society around us. And they work both ways, not only in men feeling entitled but also in women censoring and second-guessing themselfes. Even inside a revolutionary organization this is hard to get away from, or rather, given that we are not some isolated cell outside of society it's not something we can completly get away from. The only way to deal with this IMHO is continual internal feminist work. Looking historically the feminist marxist women had to fight for a voice not just in society at large but in the movement as well.

[doesn't even make sense]

I dunno, what the author describes does seem to me to be distinctively if not uniquely male. It's like this impulse to just assertively set down your immediate thought or impression as a fact instead of stating your thoughts like a considerate person. I can recall catching myself doing it once in recent memory and it was fucking embarrassing (albeit to a guy who nevertheless backed down). Even though I realized a few moments later how wrong I was and said something to the effect that he was completely right and I was fucking retarded it pretty much killed the discussion. It's corrosive shit and I don't understand why we do it.