Men Explain Things To Me

Mr. Very Important I is the host of a party Solnit attends with her friend. An “imposing man who’d made a lot of money” (1), he insists that she stay and talk to him, patronizingly asking her about her writing. When she begins to talk about her new book about Eadweard Muybridge, he talks over her to asks if she has “heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year” and is soon “telling [her] about the very important book—with that smug look [Solnit] know[s] so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority” (2). It is some time before Solnit’s friend is able to get him to realize that he is actually talking about Solnit’s own book. Several years later, “Mr. Very Important II sneer[s] at [Solnit]” (9) while attempting to correct her on a subject that she has, in fact, thoroughly researched for another of her books. She does not argue with his arrogant assumption of his own accuracy although later confirms that she is correct.  

In both cases, the individual men represent men’s assumption that, by virtue of their gender, they are better qualified to talk about a topic than women, despite any evidence to the contrary. This is a playing out of traditional gender roles. Indeed, it is so deeply rooted in gender roles that, when Mr. Very Important I learns that Solnit is the author of the book he is discussing, he cannot fit this information into his limited understanding of gender. As Solnit notes, it “confuse[s] the neat categories into which his world [is] sorted” and renders him speechless for a moment “before he [begins] holding forth again” (4). The playing out of these gender roles encourages men to adopt the “out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant” (4). This works to reinforce gender roles that expect women to be uninformed and submissive, effectively silencing women. Even Solnit, who has “a fairly nice career as a writer” and has had “more confirmation of [her] right to think and speak than most women,” (5) experiences this. She allows Mr. Very Important I to speak over her, assuming that maybe he is correct and another book on the subject was released at the same time as her own and finds Mr. Very Important II’s scorn “so withering, his confidence so aggressive, that arguing with him seem[s] a scary exercise in futility” (9). Such behavior and its results are part of a wider pattern of men’s aggression and silencing of women. It expresses the same power as that which is expressed through “intimidation and violence” and which “silences and erases and annihilates women, as equals, as participants, as human beings with rights, and far too often as living beings” (15).