Comment by random observer (random-observer) on The Skewed and the Screwed: When Mating Meets Politics · 2020-03-06T04:13:15.411Z · LW · GW

I'm a single late 40s Xer retired from this sort of thing by personal circumstance. I get along easily with female friends and colleagues, so far as I can tell. I grew up, as I thought most of my generation did, at minimum with the idea girls were fellow students and women fellow workers/colleagues, what have you. I've managed to never assault anyone. I've never treated a colleague differently on account of sex.

I occasionally exchange notes with a fairly woke millennial male colleague in which I still find I cannot speak his language. Somehow, in some mysterious way, everything I said in my first para and all implied thereby is not enough and he cannot articulate to me why and I cannot get it.

I have yet to figure out whether or not contradicting a female colleague is always mansplaining. I am aware of the original definition having something to do with explaining something to a woman who is actually the credentialed expert and you are not. I have seen it being applied much more broadly.

In the context of your particular post, I suppose the way I would put it would be-

1. Are there not women across the political spectrum, however distributed?

2. Does being a left of center woman [or man] actually now necessitate thinking and speaking entirely in a language of lumpen-marxist cliches?

Or, should I just be grateful to have aged out.