Mansplaining

Facing mansplaining and what to do

Published on March 04, 2025 by Stefanie Janine Stölting

PostgreSQL mansplaining

3 min READ

Mansplaining

Explanation

Whatever the English version of Wikipedia is telling you, obviously wrongly, mansplaining is a form of sexism.

Women are still too often confronted by men who believe they know more than them. They are speaking or writing in a dismissing and/or infantilized way, always trying to imply their knowledge is far ahead of that of a woman.

The German online encyclopedia for psychology and educational theory explains mansplaining.

You may now ask, what does this have to do with PostgreSQL.

What happened

Some days ago someone shared a blog post on LinkedIn about PostgreSQL. That blog post was wrong in several statement in a way, that people not that deep into the subject would be misguided.

A woman very well known in the PostgreSQL community stepped up and pointed in a comment very detailed, where that blog post was wrong.

To me the normal behavior would have been to change that blog post.

But not this man. He took one of the issues and argued, that he knew better.

I gave a thumps up to the comment by that woman.

Shortly afterwards that man wanted to become a contact of mine. Because of what? I didn’t know him, never heard of him beforehand.

Another man well known in the community stepped up and wrote a comment pointing to where the other man was wrong and explicitly wrote, that the woman was correct.

At this point it should have stopped.

But another man stepped up to the “rescue” of the first man. He claimed that the first man was right, coming up with a possible case to claim his rightness.

The first mansplainer gave a thumbs up to that comment.

At that point I decided to step up and named that a rare edge case, which is statistically totally irrelevant.

The second mansplainer came up with an example to proof he’s right.

My answer was that this is obviously the usual case. Not.

After some time the second mansplainer came back answering, that I was right.

How to avoid it

That answer is simple: There is no chance to avoid mansplaining.

What can be done

Stand up for others

But things you can do, when you see this happening to others is to stand up. Give people confronted by a mansplainer the message, that they are not alone.
If you are not sure about a case, ask other people you know to review it.

The best way is that the person who has been mansplained states silent at least until others step up. These mansplainers often have a higher number of followers and you can expect them to step up. Like it has been in the case explained above.

In addition women are often perceived as aggressive when they dare to confront a man. Obviously men are not seen as aggressive when they correct someone.

If you are targeted

If you are wondering whether you where mansplaining, you probably were. Because it happens all the time and it is so common, that many women do not even register that this is happening to them.

It is absolutely OK to ask friends to review it is OK, if you are not sure.

When you are confronted with mansplaining, ask friends to step up, you are not alone. That helps more, than trying to stand that fight on your own.
And it is a fight, these men never step back or give in they where wrong.

Sources

Big thanks goes to Ayse Bilge Ince, she reviewed the post and corrected my typos. You can find her on Mastodon and LinkedIn, and Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya for adding some ideas to extend the text.


Author: Stefanie Janine Stölting