Olivia: The term 'mansplaining' is everywhere, but what if the woman who inspired the term never even used it? And what if the real story isn't about annoying men, but about a form of silencing that can be a matter of life and death? Jackson: Hold on, the person who basically launched the word 'mansplaining' into the stratosphere doesn't even use it? That feels like a plot twist. And connecting it to life and death seems like a massive leap from just being condescended to at a party. Olivia: It is a massive leap, and that’s exactly the point. We're talking about the 2014 essay collection Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit. And you're right, she’s been critical of how the term 'mansplaining' can sometimes oversimplify a much deeper issue. Jackson: Who is Rebecca Solnit? I feel like I know the term, but not the person behind it. Olivia: She's a fascinating figure—a historian, writer, and a dedicated activist for environmental and human rights issues since the 1980s. This book isn't just a collection of thoughts; it's rooted in decades of her work. The title essay, which is based on a real, and frankly, absurd personal story, accidentally gave a name to a universal female experience and sparked a global conversation. Jackson: Okay, I'm hooked. You can't just leave it there. What's the original story that started it all?

Olivia: Alright, picture this. It's 2003. Solnit is at a lavish party in a chalet high up in the mountains of Aspen. She's there with her friend Sallie, and they're surrounded by older, very wealthy, very distinguished people. The host, an imposing, rich man, finds out she's a writer and insists on talking to her about her books. Jackson: Oh boy, I can already feel the cringe coming. This has all the ingredients for an awkward conversation. Olivia: Exactly. So he sits them down and asks what she writes about. She starts to tell him about her most recent book at the time, which was called River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. It’s a pretty specific, deeply researched topic. Jackson: Right, she’s the expert on her own book. Obviously. Olivia: You would think. But before she can get more than a sentence out, he cuts her off. He asks her, with this air of great importance, if she has heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out that year. Jackson: No. He did not. Olivia: He did. He then proceeds to hold forth, explaining the significance of this book to her. Her friend Sallie, seeing what's happening, tries to jump in. She says, "That's her book." But the man just talks right over her. Sallie has to repeat herself, getting louder each time. "That's her book." She says it three or four times before the information finally penetrates his cloud of self-assurance. Jackson: What was his reaction? I need to know. Olivia: He was stunned speechless. Just for a moment. His face went blank. And then, without missing a beat, he just resumed his monologue on a different topic. No apology, no acknowledgment. Just… moved on. Jackson: You can't make this stuff up! It's the perfect, almost comically perfect, example of this phenomenon. But okay, it's an absurd story, and I'm sure many women listening have a similar one. Why is it so important? Isn't it just one arrogant guy being, well, an arrogant guy? Olivia: That’s the question Solnit wants us to ask. Because it's not just about one guy. She writes, and this is the core of it, "It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world." Jackson: Wow. "This is not their world." That phrase really lands. It reframes it from a personal annoyance to a form of exclusion. Olivia: Precisely. It's a pattern. She tells another story about being at a dinner in Berlin with a very important male writer. She, an expert on the topic, mentioned the role a women's group played in bringing down the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The man just sneered at her, aggressively insisting she was wrong. He was so confident in his scorn that she just… fell silent. She knew she was right, but the fight to prove it felt too exhausting. Jackson: So it's not just about explaining things, it's about a kind of conversational bulldozing. It's about creating an environment where it's easier for a woman to be silent than to speak. Olivia: Exactly. It's a power play. And that presumption of authority, that silencing, is the very beginning of a spectrum that Solnit argues leads to something far more terrifying. She calls it 'The Longest War.'

Jackson: Okay, 'The Longest War.' That's a heavy title. How does she connect a condescending conversation to a war? Olivia: She does it with data and stories that are impossible to ignore. She argues that violence against women isn't a series of isolated incidents, but a pervasive, systemic pattern. And she hits you with this staggering statistic: in the United States, between 9/11 and the time she was writing in 2012, the number of women killed by their partners or ex-partners was more than 11,700. Jackson: Wait, say that again. Olivia: Over 11,700 women. That number, she points out, is greater than the number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks and all the American soldiers killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined during that same period. Jackson: That's a gut punch. It completely reframes domestic violence. It’s not a private tragedy; it's a public crisis on the scale of war. Olivia: It is a war. A war happening behind closed doors. And this is where she draws the direct line from silencing to violence. How? It's all about credibility. Jackson: How do you mean? Olivia: Think about it. If society is conditioned to believe that women are unreliable, that their knowledge is questionable, that they're emotional or hysterical, what happens when a woman says, "He's trying to kill me"? Jackson: She's not believed. Olivia: Exactly. Solnit tells this chilling story from when she was young. Her boyfriend's uncle, a nuclear physicist, was telling a story about a neighbor's wife who ran out of her house naked in the middle of the night, screaming that her husband was trying to kill her. Jackson: And what was his take on it? Olivia: He dismissed it. He said they were "respectable middle-class people," so the husband couldn't possibly be trying to kill her. The implication was that the woman was just crazy. Solnit, even as a young woman, asked the crucial question: "How do you know he wasn't?" The physicist had no answer, because for him, the woman's testimony had zero credibility. Jackson: So credibility isn't just about winning an argument. Solnit is saying it's a basic survival tool. Olivia: It's everything. She writes, "Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty." The ultimate act of silencing someone is to take their life. And she gives the tragic example of Marine Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach. She was 20 years old and pregnant, waiting to testify that a higher-ranking colleague had raped her. Jackson: Oh no. Olivia: Before she could testify, he killed her. Her burned remains were found in a fire pit in his backyard. He silenced her permanently to destroy her credibility and her story. Jackson: That's horrifying. So the line from the Aspen party to that story... it's not a leap at all. It's a continuum. It starts with questioning a woman's knowledge, then her perception, then her sanity, and finally, her right to exist. Olivia: That is the brutal logic of it. The dismissal of women's voices creates the cultural soil where violence can grow, because the perpetrator feels, on some level, that he won't be held accountable, because she won't be believed. Jackson: This all sounds so bleak. It feels like an impossible, deeply ingrained system. Is there any hope in Solnit's view? Olivia: Absolutely. And that's where she brings in the myth of Pandora's Box. Because once an idea is out, you can't force it back in.

Jackson: Pandora's Box? I thought that was about releasing all the evils into the world. How is that hopeful? Olivia: Solnit flips the script on the myth. She says, "What doesn’t go back in the jar or the box are ideas." The feminist movement, she argues, opened the box and released the radical idea that women are people. Fully human. With rights, voices, and value. And you can't un-release that idea. Jackson: The genie is out of the bottle. Olivia: The genie is out of the bottle. You can have setbacks, you can have legal rights rolled back, but you can't erase the consciousness that has been raised. You can't make millions of women who now see themselves as equal suddenly un-see it. Jackson: But there's definitely a backlash. Solnit talks about a 'volunteer police force' trying to push women back into traditional roles. What does that actually look like? Is it just online trolls? Olivia: It's everything from online trolls to subtle cultural messages. She points to a fascinating example. A writer noted that if you Google "female careerism," you get a ton of articles about the problems with women's ambition. But if you Google "male careerism," Google asks if you meant "male careers." Jackson: Whoa. So the very language suggests that ambition in a woman is a pathology—'careerism'—while in a man, it's just a normal 'career.' Olivia: That's the volunteer police force at work. It's the constant, subtle reinforcement of old norms. But Solnit's point is that these are reactions against a change that has already happened. And she sees immense hope in the way new generations are fighting back. Jackson: Like what? Olivia: She wrote about the Slutwalk movement, which started in 2011. A Toronto police officer told a group of university students that to avoid being sexually assaulted, they shouldn't "dress like sluts." Jackson: Classic victim-blaming. Olivia: The absolute definition of it. And the response was incredible. Young women organized these "Slutwalks" all over the world. They took to the streets, often dressed in whatever they wanted, to protest this idea. They were refusing to be shamed, refusing to be told that their safety was their responsibility, and reclaiming public space as their own. Jackson: They were changing the narrative. They were refusing to be silenced. Olivia: Exactly. They were demonstrating that the ideas of bodily autonomy and the rejection of shame were out of the box, and they weren't going back in. It's a perfect example of what Solnit means when she says a revolution is, first and foremost, a transformation of ideas. The laws and structures might take time to catch up, but the change in consciousness is the real engine of progress. Jackson: So even with all the online backlash and political negativity we see today, Solnit would probably argue that these movements, these loud, unapologetic voices, are a sign of profound progress. Olivia: I think she would. She sees feminism not as a completed project, but as an ongoing endeavor. It's a long road, but the direction of travel is clear because the core idea—that women are people—is too powerful to be contained.

Jackson: It's really powerful how this all connects. It starts with a seemingly minor act of dismissal at a party, but that dismissal—that erasure of credibility—is the thread that runs all the way to systemic violence. But the counter-force is an idea that's now too powerful to contain. Olivia: That's the whole arc of the book. It's a journey from a personal slight to a global struggle, and from despair to a very clear-eyed, determined kind of hope. It’s not a naive optimism; it’s a hope rooted in the power of ideas and the courage of those who speak them. Jackson: The book was highly rated by readers, and I can see why. It gives language to experiences that so many have felt but couldn't articulate. It validates their reality. But it also faced some criticism, with some readers feeling the tone could be alienating. Olivia: And that's a fair point. Solnit's style is sharp and unapologetic, which can be both empowering and challenging. But her goal isn't necessarily to comfort everyone; it's to illuminate a truth, no matter how uncomfortable. There's a quote from the book that I think sums up the entire struggle she's describing. Jackson: What is it? Olivia: She writes: "Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being." Jackson: Wow. Fighting a war just for the right to enter the conversation. That's exhausting to even think about. Olivia: It is. And it makes you wonder, in our own lives, in our workplaces, in our families—when have we seen someone fighting that second war? When have we, perhaps without realizing it, made someone else fight it? It's a question worth reflecting on. Jackson: A powerful question to end on. We'd love to hear what our listeners think. Have you had a 'Men Explain Things to Me' moment? Or have you seen this dynamic play out? Share your thoughts with the Aibrary community on our social channels. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.