15 Women Share Their Worst "Mansplaining" Experiences So You Don't Make The Same Mistakes

From Redditor u/Sand_Dargon:

I was in session as a personal trainer working with a woman who was training to compete in high-level weightlifting competitions. A guy walks over to us, smiling a vulpine grin.

He then, without any prior discussion or anything, wants to know if "we ladies" wanted him to show us how to lift weights. Then, before we can respond, he starts in on how to do certain exercises that he can lift. He asks if we want to watch him for a while so we can get a better idea of it.

And then, to top it off, he tells me he is a personal trainer and, if we want, he will give us some free sessions.

Being one of the three personal trainers at the gym at the time, I was quite surprised he wanted to claim to be a personal trainer. I was even wearing a shirt that said "Personal Trainer".

From a former Redditor: 

I've had a group of guys explain the offside rule in soccer to me in the most condescending way ever. Some stupid metaphor that took place in a shoe store where the high heels I want are the ball or some bullsh*t like that. Surprisingly enough I neither wanted nor asked for an explanation. I played for over 10 years myself. I know the f*cking rules.

From Redditor u/JoJoRumbles:

I was giving an informal speech at school and one of my classmates in the audience kept interrupting my speech to explain to me what I was talking about.

And I'm like "Thanks, I know what I'm talking about. That's why I'm up here."

From a former Redditor:

So this was quite a few years ago. I was at a party at someone's house and there were some guitars floating around. I wanted to play one and this guy started mansplaining to me about how to tune a guitar and how to hold a plectrum and how I should try Nirvana's Come As You Are as it's one of the easiest songs to play even though I hadn't asked how to tune a guitar or said I couldn't play. Then he started playing Under The Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, badly, just strumming some rough chords for the intro.

So I asked if I could have a go and proceeded to play an absolutely perfectly rendered version of Under the Bridge.

From Redditor u/GingerDryad:

I was taking my car in to get the winter tires off. I was between services (and couldn't be bothered to do it myself) so I was getting it done at one of those drive-thru places.

One of the guys that work there comes out and tells me that he will drive the car in. Then slowly, like I'm an idiot, mansplains that I would have to drive my car just so to get it over the hydraulics and that there are big holes in the floor for getting under cars that aren't raised up. His mansplaination was that it would be hard for a little woman like me to drive my car into the shop.

So, they finish up with the guy ahead of me pretty quickly (we were the only two there). About ten minutes pass and they haven't brought my car in. I look out the waiting room window and see all six guys that are working there crowded around my car outside.

Now, I started to get really nervous thinking something is wrong with my car. But I opt not to bother them, figuring that they will come to tell me what's wrong when they've got it figured out.

Another 15 minutes pass and someone pulls up behind my car. That's when the guy that originally explained to me how an auto shop works finally comes into the waiting room. It's been 25 minutes since the guy before me left, so I brace myself for awful news delivered in a mansplaination.

But no, buddy politely asks me if I could drive my car onto the hydraulics for them. Turns out of all 6 dudes, not a single one knows how to drive a standard.

So, after mansplaining to me that it would be hard for me to drive my car into the shop, they waited almost half an hour to tell me that not one guy in the shop could even drive my car.

From a former Redditor: 

The time when a data analyst explained to me, the main engineer on the project, that I wasn't qualified to comment on anything in the meeting because I was new and didn't know anything. His boss (who later became one of my good buddies) was STUNNED.

He also asked me to stay behind and "help" him on something after the meeting and after everyone left he started explaining to me how he hadn't wanted to intimidate me and he could tell he had (no, I hadn't been, his boss had actually told him to listen to me before I could calmly destroy his ego), and how he knows it's difficult to be a female engineer and how he wants to be supportive because he has daughters and he's afraid how the world will treat them in the future.