I feel like when you reach your late-30’s you should1 stop saying things like, “when I grow up I want to be like… [fill in the blank],” but really, when I grow up I want to be like the author of this week’s #spellbooksaturday feature…
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters.
(source: bookshop.org)
She ends on a serious note– because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!”
This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf ‘s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women.
I have long admired Solnit’s writing, but rereading Men Explain Things to Me at this moment in time felt very… profound. I remember reading the titular essay over a decade ago, in what “should”2 have been a halcyon era (my mid-20’s), but was, in reality, a time of experiencing frequent “mansplaining” and sexual discrimination without the (albeit limited) mental/emotional/social resources I had cultivated by my mid-30’s. Not only was it time different on a personal level, it was different on a societal level— the Obama years, pre-Trump, pre-covid, pre-the end of Roe v. Wade, etc. But to read Solnit’s incredibly supremely eloquent text now feels no less relevant— indeed, the discussion is that much more timely.
Have you read Men Explain Things to Me, or any other books by Rebecca Solnit? What were your thoughts? Share in the comments!
- This is where my brilliant therapist would tell me to “stop should’ing all over yourself!” ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
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