Men Explain Things To Me summary

Mansplaining is frustrating, but women face much more threatening forms of gender discrimination.

Women are perpetually at risk of falling victim to physical or sexual violence from men. A rape is reported every 6.2 minutes in the United States, and it’s estimated that about four-fifths of rapes go unreported. That means there could be a rape occurring almost every minute.

On 23 May 2014, a 22-year-old man’s hatred of women induced him to murder six women at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Women have to fear this kind of hate everyday, no matter what men think. That's why the hashtag #YesAllWomen, which began trending soon after the shooting, became so powerful. It served to counter the typical responses men give when the issue of violence against women comes up, like “Not all men are rapists,” or “Not all men are out to get you.” These responses only allow men to distance themselves from the problem.

Do you know the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”? Women experience that story in reverse when it comes to sexual violence: they cry and cry and no one believes them.

Men psychologically and socially silence women as another form of control. Some of these controlling mechanisms are even built into our legal and political systems.

We’ve made a lot of progress in the fight against gendered violence but there’s still a lot to do.

The recognition that misogyny and sexism are societal problems that don’t exclusively affect women was a big step forward. Consider the 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in New Delhi, for instance. She was a 23-year-old physiotherapy student traveling with her boyfriend on a private bus. Six other passengers, including the driver, raped and killed her and then beat her boyfriend.