Men Explain Things to Me: Rebecca Solnit
Overview
My journey with Rebecca Solnit’s book Men Explain Things to Me started a couple of weeks ago, and I had no idea the insurmountable impact this book would have on me and the way I perceive feminism to be necessary. The book is a collection of artistically written and fact-based essays that comment not only on feminism, but also on intersectionality how the patriarchy and oppression can take shape in the form of homophobia, colonization, racism, and even cultural conceptualizations of mental health. She comments on socially accepted structures by means of a continuum- from something as small/individually scaled as slut-shaming to larger societal norms such as capitalism (see pg. 153). Although she does not explicitly state that she is working under the framework of a continuum – the way in which the essays were written and compiled constantly navigates between her individual experience, the experiences of groups of women, and the societal patterns of oppression brought light to the fact that oppression is both small and large scale. Towards the end, she writes, “We tend to treat violence and the abuse of power as though they fit into airtight categories: harassment, intimidation, threat, battery, rape, murder. But I realize now that I was saying is: it’s a slippery slope. That’s why we need to address that slope, rather than compartmentalizing the varieties of misogyny and dealing with each separately. Doing so has meant fragmenting the picture: seeing the parts, not the whole” (Solnit, p. 134). Solnit invites the reader to see the whole and its parts in each of the different essays and draw conclusions for one’s self on their course of action. She encourages women to tell their stories and not be ashamed to bring their narratives of oppression to light.
What makes this book so convincing is that Solnit grounds her arguments about the pervasiveness of violence against women and the need for feminism (and equity for all human beings) in research and historical fact. Solnit draws upon cases in the court of law, historical social movements, present-day stories in the media, other feminist/scientific research, and even the research of Freud coupled with her personal experience to support her arguments. After finally finishing the book, I felt immediately compelled to take action and show this book to everyone, not just the men who have mansplained me in the past (kudos to Google for not putting a red underline under “mansplain”). I have always called myself a feminist, but Solnit drew attention to many of societally structured norms that I hadn’t even thought to consider (for example, the role of marriage in society and what it truly means to change your last name and become “one” with your partner). At times, especially as a white woman of privilege in the United States, it is easy to forget just how normalized gender inequalities and rape culture has become, especially if you are in an environment liken higher education where the people around you (regardless of gender) are constantly thinking critically and challenging the norm (for the most part).
Pedagogical Explorations & Reflections
I believe this book is important and necessary for all humans to read. However, as language teachers we must take consideration into the levels (maturity and proficiency) of our learners. As this book is quite dense in terms of theory and social arguments being made, even if I had highly proficient and mature adults, I would present this book in bite-sized nuggets. In addition, the author refers to many historical & present day incidents that if learners do not have an understanding of – they might miss the point of the essay entirely. For example, I am not familiar with any of Virginia Woolf’s work -and tried as I did- I wasn’t able to interpret the essay about Virginia Woolf (p. 79) to the extent that Solnit had probably intended. Therefore, each essay requires not only language but also cultural scaffolding in order for learners to truly benefit from the texts.
Higher level & Intermediate learners: I would love to teach this book as an entire unit or perhaps as the base for an entire class. If this were the case, I would have the high-level students read this book essay by essay and teach in flipped classroom style. I would invite learners to read a chapter, reflect on the chapter, and be ready for in-class discussion. Or, I would select one or more chapters for them to read on their own.
Lower level leaners: While Solnit uses some artistic language, the essays are quick reads and don’t use a terrible amount of low-frequency vocabulary. Presenting lower level learners with some quotes and maybe adapting them to fit into lesson plans would be great. I would integrate quotes like this into units where gender roles traditionally come into the classroom: units about cooking, about the house, about marriage, ect..the sky is the limit.
Here are some of the themes presented in the essays that could serve as the basis for a unit or lesson plan (in full-form or as adapted authentic texts). I have also included quotes that could be integrated into lesson/unit plans that aren’t necessarily about this book/the essays in particular – and some might be good for lower level learners (all with good scaffolding):
- Mansplaining & Female Credibility (Essays – “Men explain things to me”, The first in the book and what inspired the book)
- Notable quote: “Being told that, categorically, he knows what he’s talking about and she doesn’t however minor a part of any given conversation, perpetuated the ugliness of this world and holds back its light ” (p. 7)
- Violence and Femicide: Essay – “The longest war”
- Notable Quotes:
- “violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender” (p.21)
- “So many men murder their partners and former partners that we have well over well over a thousand homicides of that kind per year –meaning that every three years the death toll tops 9/11’s casualties, though no one declares a war on this particular kind of terror” (p.23)
- Notable Quotes:
- Authoritarianism, Race Issues and Class Differences (Essays: “The longest war,” “Worlds Collide in a Luxury Suite”)
- Notable Quotes:
- “Her name was Africa. His name was IMF. [International Monetary Fund]. He set her up to be pillaged, to go without healthcare, to starve. He laid waste to her to enrich his friends. Her name was Global South. His name was Washington Consensus. But his winning streak was running out and her star was rising.” (p. 43)
- “His name was privilege, but hers was possibility (p. 50)
- Notable Quotes:
- Marriage Equality and The Institution of Marriage (Essays: “In Praise of Threat,” “Grandmother Spider”)
- Notable Quotes:
- [before quote, discourse and excerpts from US law] -> “Throughout much of its history in the West, the laws defining marriage made the husband essentially an owner and the wife a possession. Or the man a boss and the woman a servant or a slave.” (p. 56)
- “Her life was not hers to determine. It was his.” (p. 60)
- “Marriage equality is a threat: to inequality. It’s a boon to everyone who values and benefits from equality. It’s for all of us.” (p. 60)
- [in discussing historical family trees] “Thus coherence – of patriarchy, of ancestry, of narrative – is made by erasure and exclusion,” (p.65)
- All of “Grandmother Spider” talks about historical bloodlines such as that of Christ in the new Testament (p. 65), which does not contain women. It may be interesting to have students look at photos of these bloodlines and ask what is missing.
- “It is easy to name the disappearance of the Dirty War as crimes, but what do we call the millennia of disappearances of women, from the public sphere, from genealogy, from legal standing, from voice, from life?” (p. 70)
- Notable Quotes:
- Rape, rape culture, and victim blaming (every essay)
- Notable Quotes:
- “The ability to tell your own story, in words or in images, is already a victory, already a revolt” (p. 71)
- “[victim] Silence, like Dante’s hell, has its concentric circles. First come the internal inhibitions, self-doubts, repressions, confusions, and shame that make it difficult to impossible to speak, along with the fear of being punished or ostracized for doing do.” (p. 107)
- “Still, even now, when a woman says something uncomfortable about male misconduct, she is routinely portrayed as delusional, a malicious conspirator, a pathological liar, a whiner who doesn’t recognize the fun, or all of the above.” (p. 112)
- “The sense of being owed sex is everywhere.” (p. 131)
- “Many women are told….that something we did or said or wore or just the way we looked or the fact that we were female had excited desired we were thereby contractually obliged to satisfied. We owed them. They had a right. To us.” (p. 131)
- Definition of Rape Culture on p. 130 – Great for analysis.
- “Domestic violence, mansplaining, rape culture, and a sexual entitlement are among the linguistic tools that redefine the world many women encounter daily and open the way to begin to change” (p. 133)
- Notable Quotes:
- Female Hysteria (Essay: Cassandra among the creeps)
- Notable Quotes:
- “Generations of women have been told that they are delusional, confused, manipulative, malicious, conspiratorial, congenitally dishonest, often all at once” (p. 104)
- Notable Quotes:
- Mental Health and Gun Violence (just a few bits, not entire essays)
- “T.M. Luhrmann noted that when schizophrenics hear voices in India, they’re more likely to be told to clean the house, while Americans are more likely to be told to become violent. Culture matters.” (p. 122)
- “When you say lone gunman, everyone talks about loners and guns but not about men–and by the way, nearly two-thirds of all women killed by guns are killed by their partner or ex-partner.” (p. 28)
Essential Questions (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005) to consider for lesson plan and unit formation:
- Does violence have a gender?
- To what extent are women free, and to what extent are men free in the culture you are from?
- How willing are you to speak up when something has happened to you? To someone else?
- How do you listen to others? How do you occupy space in a conversation? [thinking of mansplaining]
- How does history construct gender narratives?
Using photos from the Book as discussion springboards:
Solnit places an artistic photo of a woman before each chapter. Here is an example. It would be interesting to have learners interpret these images. A great framework for using images that would be particularly appropriate here is ACTFL’s High Leverage Teaching Practice (HLTP) of the IMAGE Model (Glisan & Donato, 2017).
From essay “Grandmother Spider, from the series Telaraña.
Image and Making observations
Analyzing Additional Information (Using the essay Grandmother Spider or other data to support the image depending on learner level)
Generating Hypotheses about Cultural Perspectives
Exploring Perspectives and Reflecting Further
I hope that this book reflection was useful and gave you an idea of what I thought were some of the main takeaways from this book. Like any lesson with a social justice motive, the way in which the content of this book is taught must be well thought out and scaffolded. Discussing gender roles and especially having conversation about rape and sexual assault is an incredibly sensitive topic. However, the book has a myriad of topics for students to explore, discuss, and learn about. Whether or not you decide to use this in your classroom, I highly recommend reading the book and reminding yourself of the fact that there is still work to be done in fighting gender [and intersectional] inequalities.
References
Glisan, E. W., & Donato, R. (2017). Enacting the work of language instruction: High-leverage teaching practices.
Alexandria, VA: American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed). Alexandria,
VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Solnit, R. (2014). Men explain things to me (Updated edition with two new essays). Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket
Books.
This books sounds like an excellent compendium of ideas about intersectional feminism. I’d be interested in reading it myself. Also, I totally agree with your idea that it could be effectively used as the basis for a class unit.
Great reflection Kate! I only read the first half so far so I will make a comment before I forget what I am going to say and keep on reading. About marriage and changing one’s last name: In the States, you do have the option to keep your last name. In Turkey you don’t! So I would either be Ortactepe Hart or just Hart. I went for the former of course. But Patrick wanted us to have the same last name, so he wanted to take on my last name, but then that means being Hart Ortactepe – still not the same last name. He was really sensitive about this last name issue and shared with me articles like this one:
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42720646 [Why I took my wife’s last name]. I don’t know maybe we can figure out a way in the end. But this is not what I wanted to share actually but this crazy official, outdated practice in Turkey: So when you get married to another Turkish man as a woman [given that no same sex marriages are allowed], they send all your birth records, paper work etc, to your husband’s birthplace. Let me explain further. Let’s say you were born in Ankara, so there is a state department that keeps all your records there, and that’s where you also vote etc, unless you move. But your birth record regardless of where you move stay at this place. When you get married to someone who was born in a place you had never been before and probably never will [small village in Turkey let’s say], they send all your paper work to his village where he possibly no longer lives either. That’s kind of crazy because that means you don’t belong to your family or your origins anymore and you’re the property of your husband and his family. Hope I managed to explain the practice.
Another comment about this quote:
“violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender” (p.21)
At first read I liked it – but do you think it might be excluding the LGBTQ community? I am afraid so.
Girl, I am SO GLAD you finally had a chance to read this book! It rocked my world when I read it last year and I’ve been advertising it to everyone who’ll listen.
This book would be so great to teach, especially to men who don’t believe in feminism, because it lays out facts. Men love facts. (I’m generalizing, no one hate me).
It makes one confront the rampant gender biases in our country, and globally, and could most definitely be the basis of an entire course.
Thanks for sharing your website are awesome. Regards
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the author refers to many historical & present day incidents
Perfectly balanced between detail and simplicity.
One of the best reads I’ve had this week.
Thanks for simplifying a difficult subject.