Ordinary Banana

An underrated dynamic in the gender wars is that not all conversational tactics are open to everybody. In particular, tactics men constantly use on each other, and laugh off, are seen as crushingly emasculating and humiliating when used by women on men.

ten bonus points for emasculating as something negative toward women which seems paradoxical to a naive observer

oh I switched genders but I think it’s true in that case too

e.g. women seem more “emasculated” by what people call mansplaining than men do for similar behavior

As I was arguing with Sonya, I think that’s rational. If you’re the only female engineer in a team of 50, then any imputed ignorance is much more dangerous for you since the 49 men will draw dumb n=1 conclusions etc. In a majority-women context, the mansplainer would look silly.

women facepalm six times as hard when a woman says something dumb than when a man does but I think it’s not just percentages