I had a confusing experience on Women’s Day. I was on Facebook (a mistake, I know) and made a comment about the Wage Gap on a friend’s status. A crapstorm of decent proportions followed. What ended up happening was that I was informed that my point of view, the links I provided, and most everything that I had to say weren’t worth hearing. Instead, I had to listen to women (even though the links quoted women- perhaps they weren’t the right sort, or something) and basically just let them talk and I, and other men, should just keep quiet.

This confused me for two reasons: a) these weren’t normally extremely progressive women and b) when a man does that it’s “mansplaining” and reprehensible. The discussion only got more emotional from there and they walked away thinking much less of me, especially as I tried to respond to their emotional stories with facts and figures. I already know that that doesn’t work with emotional arguments, but I didn’t think that it had started out emotional. Oh, well. I learned another lesson about Facebook- it’s better not to go, especially if it’s remotely political. Oh, and, some people are really bad at debating, which I already knew.

I hope that your day was better.

Very ragefully,

Operative JS