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Okay, okay, that was a dramatic headline. What I’m saying is that a woman with more power and privilege than you can explain something to you that you already know and be just as insulting as mansplainers.
Perhaps I’ll coin the phrase "privilegsplainers" because what this is really about is someone with more power than you who assumes a lack of knowledge on your part and instead of thinking that you have the knowledge, or asking if you if you have the knowledge, she or he demeans your intellect.
Being on the receiving end of a privilegsplaining is suuuuuper irritating. You’re stuck deciding if you can interrupt to end the nonsense noise the privilegsplainer is making, and how to politely correct history to show that your knowledge was not incomplete. What happens most often for me is that I simply nod my head like a teenager being lectured about my curfew for the umpteenth time. I try to give body language clues that I already know what the person is sharing. However, the subtlety is almost always lost. This is because people who privilegsplain are often the people who lack the social cues to recognize another person’s experience. After all, if they could do that, they wouldn’t privilegsplain in the first place.
So perhaps it’s time to change up my approach to these offenders. Share some ideas about you deal with privilegsplainers in the comments below.