男人们 你挡到我们的世界了

If you are a woman, do you sometimes get annoyed when a man assumes you are an ignorant little girl and tries to explain something to you? And it often turns out he knows no more on the subject than you do.

如果你是一名女性，你是否常因被男人当作无知小女生来说教而感到恼怒？而通常，他在这个问题上懂的并不比你多。

Now you have an English word to describe this irritating behavior — “mansplaining”. The word has been included in Oxford Dictionaries’ online database and is defined as: “v. (of a man) explain something to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending and patronizing.”

现在，你可以用一个英文单词来形容这种令人生厌的行为了——男人说教（mansplaining）。该词已被收入牛津在线词典，其定义为：“（一个男人）以一副居高临下的姿态向别人，通常为女性，解释某件事情。”

According to an Atlantic article tracing the cultural history of “mansplaining”, the word began its life in 2008 when writer Rebecca Solnit wrote an essay titled “Men explain things to me” published in the Los Angeles Times. Solnit described the time a man explained a book to her without realizing that she wrote it. Solnit didn’t coin the word “mansplaining” herself, but she drew attention to the problem. In her words:

《大西洋月刊》曾有一篇文章追溯该词的历史渊源：它出现于2008年，源自作家丽贝卡•索尔尼发表于《洛杉矶时报》的一篇文章，题为“男人们向我侃侃而谈”。该文讲述了一个男人向索尔尼侃侃而谈一本书，却不知道这本书正出自索尔尼之手。“男人说教”一词并非索尔尼所创，但她的文章引起了人们对这一问题的注意。在文中，索尔尼写道：

“Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”

“女人们一定都深有同感。因为这样的假设，每个领域的女性都举步维艰；她们缄口不言，即使有人大胆发声也无人倾听；就算在路上遭到了骚扰，也只能忍气吞声，因为人们认为世界不属于她们。这样的假设让我们怀疑自己、限制自己，却让男人们毫无理由地过度自信。

Gone viral

病毒式传播

Solnit’s essay struck a chord with so many readers that “mansplaining” popped up in the comment sections of many websites. It entered the mainstream, and it began to be used not only in the workplace and academia, but also in politics. In the US media for example, you will often read stories criticizing Republicans for “mansplaining” birth control to women. There are also headlines such as “GOP (Republican party) tries to woo women voters by mansplaining that they shouldn’t care about equal pay” and “Is Congress guilty of mansplaining to Janet Yellen?”

索尔尼的文章引起了众多读者的共鸣，而“男人说教”一词也在诸多网站的评论区乍现。该词随之进入主流文化，不仅被用在职场或学术界，还被用在政治领域。以美国媒体为例，批评共和党人像“男人一样说教”女性节育的文章比比皆是。还有这样的标题：“大老党（共和党）为赢得女性选民支持，劝其不在乎男女同酬”，或者“国会是否应对‘男人式说教’ 珍妮特•耶伦（美联储百年历史上首位女主席）而感到愧疚？”

After “mansplaining”, a group of “man”-prefixed words appeared to shame men for their bad behavior. There is “manspreading”, the habit some men have of taking up too much space in public places, especially spreading their legs when sitting on public transit. There is “manterrupt”, coined from “man” and “interrupt”. The latest “man”-word is “manslamming”, coined recently by New York magazine to describe “the sidewalk M.O. (modus operandi) of men who remain apparently oblivious to the personal space of those around them.”

在“男人说教”一词之后，一系列“男人”为前缀的词语应运而生，用以讽刺男人们的不良行为。比如“大爷式占座”，比喻男性在公共场合占用过多空间的行为，尤其是在交通工具上张开双腿而坐；还有 “男人（man）”和“插嘴（interrupt）”组合而成“男人插嘴”；以及最新出现的“男人式碰撞”，它来自《纽约客》杂志最近的一篇文章，用以描述“男人走人行道时只看自己周围的个人空间（如果你不先让道，他们会直接撞过来）”。

These words tend to catch on because they describe behaviors that men usually adopt unconsciously and that women find annoying or sometimes offensive, says Megan Garber in The Atlantic. According to Garber, these words point to forms of privilege that men think they are rightfully entitled to. These words are descriptive as well as prescriptive. Garber says: “They both describe a behavior and strongly advise against it. They hint at that the troubling fact that privilege tends to be highly apparent to everyone except the people who enjoy it.”

梅根•加伯尔在《大西洋月刊》的文章中写道，这些词语的流行正是因为男性对这些行为毫无意识，女性却早已恼怒不堪、时常感到不适。在加伯尔看来，这些词语都指出了一种共同的现象：男性认为一些特权是他们生来就有的。这些词语既是描述性的，也是规范性的。加伯尔说，“它们既是对一种行为的描述，也是对这种行为的告诫。它们反应出一个不容乐观的事实：人人都能看到这种特权的存在，而享受它的人却对此浑然不觉。”