I haven’t been posting lately because, you know, the world fell apart. I also finished a draft of my dissertation, which is pretty good given that the world fell apart. I’ll try to get back to it by writing something short today.
I was recently mansplained analytic philosophy at a departmental Zoom social, which is not very uncommon and usually amuses me. Basically, I explained that I dropped out of a reading group because I didn’t like the reading because I found it confusing, and that triggered the guy to launch into a lecture about how analytic philosophers are lazy when they don’t engage with readings they find confusing. Long story short, after one friend’s failed attempt to salvage the conversation through empathy and another friend’s failed attempt to salvage it through reason, I decided to leave, which I feel more comfortable doing now that I’m older, and which is a lot easier to do over Zoom than in person.
As a woman of colour in philosophy, I get mansplained a lot. Sometimes something that’s not in my expertise (but not in the speaker’s expertise either) and sometimes something in my expertise. I’ve developed strategies to recognize the signs early and to remove myself from the situation when it ceases to entertain me. But I’ve been thinking about it more in this case, because some of the exchanges were quite rude. (Including the man fake-crying “it’s so hard” to demonstrate how analytic philosophers are lazy & scared of difficult philosophy. If nothing else, watching an unfamiliar grown man fake-crying is pretty gross.)
I kept thinking about this because I kept thinking: nobody would know he does this sort of thing because I would have nowhere to tell people. Being disrespectful to a colleague in a professional setting has zero professional consequences for him.
Not that this is new to me, but I don’t always think about it as a big problem. I suppose I’m usually focused first on getting through this myself and second on making sure younger women around me are aware of this. I don’t have any energy left to think about what it means for him. Perhaps it’s a good sign that now I’m so good at dealing with the first two issues that I am able to come to the third.
In any case, the question remains: what to do? To allow a little bit of himpathy, it does seem wrong to socially condemn a person to eternity just because of that one thing they did. But it seems more wrong to have zero consequences associated with (what is almost definitely) repeated social offenses.
Suggestions welcome.
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