These are arguments people make all the time — today. Check out any comments section on an article about women in STEM, or the gender pay gap… or better yet, don’t. Unless you’re feeling particularly masochistic.
…that sort of came the hell out of nowhere. He’s very willing to rant on a moment’s notice. Most people with those sort of opinions need at least a pretense of a debate first. Is his superpower the ability to jump the gun in a single bound?
Yep, when I was seventeen years old I mansplained to my girlfriend in IM before it was even called mansplained. After she answered my question on why she liked to dress sexy, I countered with something like, “I watched a documentary about sex that states women tend to dress skimpy when their hormones are high. So basically they dress skimpy because they’re horny.”
After she shamed me with silence, I apologized immediately.
I had a girlfriend one time that did use to dress that way when she was ‘interested’ and she told me that herself so that’s not always true either.. I guess it depends on the person involved.
Exactly! Women are people, not a fucking hivemind videogame boss that you need to find the right single cheat code for, and we’re sick of being treated like it!
Particularly by men who claim to love us. That shit hurts.
I have to admit Gyno-Star is taking this a lot more coolly than I expected. I suppose that’s a good thing, saving her anger for people like that machismo villain with the phallic-shaped weapon or the housewife who wanted to brainwash people (sorry, I’ve already forgotten their names). After all, those people were the “bad guys”; these are her teammates and she has to get along with them. What a shame they seem to miss even on subtle sarcasm she dishes out to them. Maybe she should have that talk with Dynamo.
Thank male God we have all of these prominent, pompous, blowhard, old white men to explain to us what’s wrong with the inner female psyche. Really, where would we be without them?
I can’t decide whether that reaction’s for the repetition of that bullshit claim, or if it’s because of flashbacks to that time when I trawled through a linkdump that “proved feminism wrong” which was full of nothing but op-eds and think pieces… oh, and at least one other linkdump full of the exact same links. THE EXACT SAME LINKS! I would know for sure whether there were more cloned linkdumps, but I stopped going through at that point; intellectual honesty is one thing, but there’s really no point giving them the benefit of the doubt if they’re going to make whatever shiny diamonds of truthliness that they really, honestly do have, honest, impossible to find amongst the trash.
Ok, I think I’ve worked out which it was for.
AUGH!
I am a broken man! Your comic has destroyed me! You monster! D’:
Srsly tho, I have an amazing number of annoying memories based on giving people the benefit of the doubt when they say they have evidence of the natural order of “things,” so I’ve learnt to deal with the headache – you place your head in your hands, and imitate a wounded moose, and then everything is right with the world again.
My superpowers include patience and intense masochism. I am the almighty Irked Man! *strikes a pose*
Is there ny way of determining the natural order of things? By observing things and their interactions, presumably. I observe that human behaviour is (naturally) significantly culturally influenced, there are (naturally) rebels, and (naturally) cultures change.
To be fair, know-it-alls know no gender. I’ve done my share of ‘splaining in the past. Thinking about mansplaining has actually made me better about it, though. Now sometimes I stop and think about whether this other person might know something I don’t. I’m not proud of it, but I did have to train myself to ask that question!
And then we all remember that female bullies are the worst, females can handle stinking poo factories called ‘babies’ without killing it and LOVE to pride how THEIR child won at the spelling bee, Martha, you should KILL yourself because you didn’t even enter this completely useless by telephone and e-speak competition! And kill your child too. The world doesn’t need your shitty genes that can’t spell ‘gynaecologist’. There’s an A in there, DUUUUH.
The point is, just because they avoid MAN competitions doesn’t mean they don’t have a flair for wanting to feel superior and rubbing it in. Or being harsh, mean and life-destroying.The just prefer to break someone mentally, which is much harder to heal than a broken back, even with super powers.
Nuts! I was hoping he would be one of the less-douchey characters in the League, after his “giant hair dryers” line. He’s probably gotten flack about his size, so you think he’d be a bit less cavalier about understanding where others are coming from…
You’ve gotten mainsplaining all wrong! Let me correct your misunderstandings in full, time-wasting detail….maybe you will appreciate my help so much that you will let me touch your woo-woo!
When you care more about competition, winning at any cost and punishing your opponents then those quality of life issues just sort of fall by the wayside.
Traditionally this had been a women’s concern because you aren’t a “manly man” if you enjoy life in any other way than competitive mock combat.
As a guy I enjoy not being part of the “high pressure” sort of work environments that machismo seems to thrive on. Plus I sort of get evil when I’m competing to win, I don’t want to be that guy.
I just love Gynostar. Superhero powers would be great. I have a degree in Emergency Management and Disaster Planning, but when I was hired by the federal disaster agency, they put me in social work along with most of the other women in the agency. Social work is for women. Planning and real disaster stuff is for men.
He was right in the third column. Many women do make different choices than many men. He was wrong in the second, though: women don’t lack a competitive instinct and they don’t necessarily tend to avoid high-pressure environments. Anyone who thinks women lack a competitive instinct obviously hasn’t watched the movie “Mean Girls”. :p
I’m wondering if the epilogue to this arc involves the hero club saying they learned their lesson about sexism…and then Gynostar makes a joke to wrap things up, and one of the guys explains her joke to her.
Argh! Curse you, Rebecca Cohen! I was planning to skim my usual comics this morning and get on with some studying. But I clicked on Gyno-Star, and you, yes YOU, have stolen my morning and gotten me addicted to your excellent comic. How DARE you make me laugh at my chauvinist self?!?!
In addition, you’ve caused me to quote some of the better lines to my wife, who nearly snorted tea on her computer monitor.
So just had to comment on the fact that this honest to goodness happened to me at my work. So the scenario was that our teams were being required to work 4 hours overtime each week because our branch of the company killed a project (rightfully so, it was something we would not have been able to sustain, so we decided to go with a third party solution who could sustain it for much cheaper), meaning we had all this money that we had promised to spend, but now could not, so all the overtime was not because we had work, but because we needed to burn as much money as possible in order to get close to our “promise” to our business partners. This somehow would make us “trust-worthy” and let us ask for more money next year. It’s a stupid system (very similar to how the government works, as I’ve been told by family members who work in it) whereby even if you make the right business decision and save money, that’s “bad” because the money amount you asked for is now off, so you’re automatically disallowed from getting as much the next year, even if you really need it for a new project.
So I had a one-on-one with my manger and challenged him on why all the overtime. The reason being two-fold:
1) The system sounds stupid (all in IT think it is), and I was hoping he could find a business person to shed some light on why it is the way it is in a way that made sense and I hadn’t heard. This is exactly what my first manager (who I am realizing was the best boss EVER) would have done when I asked (and he was also a dude, fyi).
2) I was looking out for my colleagues, most of whom have families, so those hours are significant to them.
Now I had started off the conversation by making clear I had no beef working the overtime. I’m not long out of college and have no family. I have also pulled a couple all-nighters at work and come in at 5AM before to finish up code, no prob. But that’s fine and dandy for someone still rocking the college lifestyle. Pretty uncool for peeps with kids waiting on you.
So I challenged my manager. He’s a nice guy, don’t get me wrong, but a “don’t rock the boat sort” for sure. When pushed, he panicked and said to me, “Well, I guess it’s because women just aren’t as competitive. And when women run the company, maybe that will change.” Totally straight-faced and completely clueless as to how inappropriate this was.
He says this to me not two weeks after I was commended for working the most overtime on my entire team. And on top of that, I had stayed after work for over an hour the Friday before because a co-worker and I were playing QWOP and I HAD to beat him before leaving.
It was like his brain exploded. “Challenging system! Does not understand! Quick! Find reason! OOH! OHH! She’s female! Let’s blame it on that!” Le sigh.
…..is this the 1950’s? Seriously? What the everloving fuck?
These are arguments people make all the time — today. Check out any comments section on an article about women in STEM, or the gender pay gap… or better yet, don’t. Unless you’re feeling particularly masochistic.
…that sort of came the hell out of nowhere. He’s very willing to rant on a moment’s notice. Most people with those sort of opinions need at least a pretense of a debate first. Is his superpower the ability to jump the gun in a single bound?
I find that some mansplainers eagerly seek out chances to mansplain, and will jump on the slightest opportunity.
Yep, when I was seventeen years old I mansplained to my girlfriend in IM before it was even called mansplained. After she answered my question on why she liked to dress sexy, I countered with something like, “I watched a documentary about sex that states women tend to dress skimpy when their hormones are high. So basically they dress skimpy because they’re horny.”
After she shamed me with silence, I apologized immediately.
I had a girlfriend one time that did use to dress that way when she was ‘interested’ and she told me that herself so that’s not always true either.. I guess it depends on the person involved.
Exactly! Women are people, not a fucking hivemind videogame boss that you need to find the right single cheat code for, and we’re sick of being treated like it!
Particularly by men who claim to love us. That shit hurts.
Captain Cannonball … OK maybe Rebecca prefers The Tick to Venture Bros.
Fire me boy!!
*Corporal* 😀
… Damn it. In my defense it was way early in the morning when I posted that. Not enough caffeine yet.
I have to admit Gyno-Star is taking this a lot more coolly than I expected. I suppose that’s a good thing, saving her anger for people like that machismo villain with the phallic-shaped weapon or the housewife who wanted to brainwash people (sorry, I’ve already forgotten their names). After all, those people were the “bad guys”; these are her teammates and she has to get along with them. What a shame they seem to miss even on subtle sarcasm she dishes out to them. Maybe she should have that talk with Dynamo.
Vlad and The Stay at Home Mommy.
Formerly the “Happy Homemaker”
That’s pretty great. Thanks for sharing it!
Thank male God we have all of these prominent, pompous, blowhard, old white men to explain to us what’s wrong with the inner female psyche. Really, where would we be without them?
/sarcasm
Gynostar’s expression in the fourth panel is deeply perfect.
Thanks 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn6hhrX34Pw
I can’t decide whether that reaction’s for the repetition of that bullshit claim, or if it’s because of flashbacks to that time when I trawled through a linkdump that “proved feminism wrong” which was full of nothing but op-eds and think pieces… oh, and at least one other linkdump full of the exact same links. THE EXACT SAME LINKS! I would know for sure whether there were more cloned linkdumps, but I stopped going through at that point; intellectual honesty is one thing, but there’s really no point giving them the benefit of the doubt if they’re going to make whatever shiny diamonds of truthliness that they really, honestly do have, honest, impossible to find amongst the trash.
Ok, I think I’ve worked out which it was for.
AUGH!
Hahah oh dear, sorry to have brought back such painful memories for you!
I am a broken man! Your comic has destroyed me! You monster! D’:
Srsly tho, I have an amazing number of annoying memories based on giving people the benefit of the doubt when they say they have evidence of the natural order of “things,” so I’ve learnt to deal with the headache – you place your head in your hands, and imitate a wounded moose, and then everything is right with the world again.
My superpowers include patience and intense masochism. I am the almighty Irked Man! *strikes a pose*
Is there ny way of determining the natural order of things? By observing things and their interactions, presumably. I observe that human behaviour is (naturally) significantly culturally influenced, there are (naturally) rebels, and (naturally) cultures change.
Mansplaning is something I’ve been guilty of in the past. I am trying hard to not be that guy.
Don’t worry, it gets easier with time. At least, I think it does… nobody’s called me out for it recently, anyway, so I’m pretty sure it got easier.
To be fair, know-it-alls know no gender. I’ve done my share of ‘splaining in the past. Thinking about mansplaining has actually made me better about it, though. Now sometimes I stop and think about whether this other person might know something I don’t. I’m not proud of it, but I did have to train myself to ask that question!
Odds are, he has a point somewhere. SOMEWHERE.
And then we all remember that female bullies are the worst, females can handle stinking poo factories called ‘babies’ without killing it and LOVE to pride how THEIR child won at the spelling bee, Martha, you should KILL yourself because you didn’t even enter this completely useless by telephone and e-speak competition! And kill your child too. The world doesn’t need your shitty genes that can’t spell ‘gynaecologist’. There’s an A in there, DUUUUH.
The point is, just because they avoid MAN competitions doesn’t mean they don’t have a flair for wanting to feel superior and rubbing it in. Or being harsh, mean and life-destroying.The just prefer to break someone mentally, which is much harder to heal than a broken back, even with super powers.
Nuts! I was hoping he would be one of the less-douchey characters in the League, after his “giant hair dryers” line. He’s probably gotten flack about his size, so you think he’d be a bit less cavalier about understanding where others are coming from…
His size is one of his greatest strengths. No-one would dare give him flack about it, unless they want to be rolled into flattened dough!
You’ve gotten mainsplaining all wrong! Let me correct your misunderstandings in full, time-wasting detail….maybe you will appreciate my help so much that you will let me touch your woo-woo!
Oooh mansplaining about mansplaining. That’s a very high level of dudebro achievement.
Meta-misogyny. It takes an especially large lack of intellect.
When you care more about competition, winning at any cost and punishing your opponents then those quality of life issues just sort of fall by the wayside.
Traditionally this had been a women’s concern because you aren’t a “manly man” if you enjoy life in any other way than competitive mock combat.
As a guy I enjoy not being part of the “high pressure” sort of work environments that machismo seems to thrive on. Plus I sort of get evil when I’m competing to win, I don’t want to be that guy.
The only way to win is not to play the game.
My friends have told me I go through something of a Jeckyll/Hyde transition whenever we’re playing a boardgame or similar… poor dears 😛
(I hasten to add, I don’t get violent or rage-filled or anything; just a little bit of a ruthless bastard in-game).
I just love Gynostar. Superhero powers would be great. I have a degree in Emergency Management and Disaster Planning, but when I was hired by the federal disaster agency, they put me in social work along with most of the other women in the agency. Social work is for women. Planning and real disaster stuff is for men.
He was right in the third column. Many women do make different choices than many men. He was wrong in the second, though: women don’t lack a competitive instinct and they don’t necessarily tend to avoid high-pressure environments. Anyone who thinks women lack a competitive instinct obviously hasn’t watched the movie “Mean Girls”. :p
Is this comment facetious, or are you actually sincerely mansplaining in response to a comic about mansplaining? :p
I’m wondering if the epilogue to this arc involves the hero club saying they learned their lesson about sexism…and then Gynostar makes a joke to wrap things up, and one of the guys explains her joke to her.
Ha! That would be appropriate! It wasn’t what I had planned, but maybe I’ll steal it.
Argh! Curse you, Rebecca Cohen! I was planning to skim my usual comics this morning and get on with some studying. But I clicked on Gyno-Star, and you, yes YOU, have stolen my morning and gotten me addicted to your excellent comic. How DARE you make me laugh at my chauvinist self?!?!
In addition, you’ve caused me to quote some of the better lines to my wife, who nearly snorted tea on her computer monitor.
Didn’t you know I feed off the hours stolen from your life and grow strong like some kind of time vampire?
But seriously, thanks! I’m glad you’re enjoying the comic!
Excellent comeback! I yield to your awesomeness, and your time-sucking life force. LOL!
Wait. Does that mean you have similar powers to Stay At Home Mommy? She does look a bit like your avatar, y’know.
I have now finished the entire archive. I am hooked, and at your mercy as I wait for the next instalment.
Stay tuned!
Foolish Gyno-Star! As a fellow member of the team, you should already know that the Corporal’s Chrome Dome repels sarcasm!
So just had to comment on the fact that this honest to goodness happened to me at my work. So the scenario was that our teams were being required to work 4 hours overtime each week because our branch of the company killed a project (rightfully so, it was something we would not have been able to sustain, so we decided to go with a third party solution who could sustain it for much cheaper), meaning we had all this money that we had promised to spend, but now could not, so all the overtime was not because we had work, but because we needed to burn as much money as possible in order to get close to our “promise” to our business partners. This somehow would make us “trust-worthy” and let us ask for more money next year. It’s a stupid system (very similar to how the government works, as I’ve been told by family members who work in it) whereby even if you make the right business decision and save money, that’s “bad” because the money amount you asked for is now off, so you’re automatically disallowed from getting as much the next year, even if you really need it for a new project.
So I had a one-on-one with my manger and challenged him on why all the overtime. The reason being two-fold:
1) The system sounds stupid (all in IT think it is), and I was hoping he could find a business person to shed some light on why it is the way it is in a way that made sense and I hadn’t heard. This is exactly what my first manager (who I am realizing was the best boss EVER) would have done when I asked (and he was also a dude, fyi).
2) I was looking out for my colleagues, most of whom have families, so those hours are significant to them.
Now I had started off the conversation by making clear I had no beef working the overtime. I’m not long out of college and have no family. I have also pulled a couple all-nighters at work and come in at 5AM before to finish up code, no prob. But that’s fine and dandy for someone still rocking the college lifestyle. Pretty uncool for peeps with kids waiting on you.
So I challenged my manager. He’s a nice guy, don’t get me wrong, but a “don’t rock the boat sort” for sure. When pushed, he panicked and said to me, “Well, I guess it’s because women just aren’t as competitive. And when women run the company, maybe that will change.” Totally straight-faced and completely clueless as to how inappropriate this was.
He says this to me not two weeks after I was commended for working the most overtime on my entire team. And on top of that, I had stayed after work for over an hour the Friday before because a co-worker and I were playing QWOP and I HAD to beat him before leaving.
It was like his brain exploded. “Challenging system! Does not understand! Quick! Find reason! OOH! OHH! She’s female! Let’s blame it on that!” Le sigh.
So anywho. Yeah. Sadly accurate comic. 😉