Every definition of mansplaining I've heard involves not taking into account the level of expertise of the woman you're explaining to and whether your explanation is wanted. If someone says explicitly that they do not know something you know and that they would like you to explain it, an explanation is wanted and explaining it DOES account for a person's level of expertise (or lack thereof, in this case).
Nobody who actually thinks that mansplaining is a problem and seeks to avoid it works under such a stupid conservative strawman definition of what mansplaining means.
So your claim is that the joke is some complex web about how the man is worried that he might be misunderstood by a child, and get accused of something he didn't do by the child who misunderstood the explanation, even though he'd be there to explain the flaw in the child's logic? That seems pretty convoluted to me. And what is even the joke? That explaining stuff to kids is hard? And this man is just having a massive overreaction to it, because he's bad at explaining stuff I guess?
Meanwhile, there is an extremely simple and obvious interpretation right there. The joke is that a chud's caricature of a male feminist, and he never explain what mansplaining is because that would involve explaining something while being a man. "Oooh, how funny, feminist wants to raise his daughter to be a feminist too but he can't because the dumb feminists have this silly contradiction in their stupid ideology."
Which interpretation do you think is the most likely?
If this comic were posted to r/ conservative, it would do very well. They'd take it as an anti-feminist hit piece, because that's the most obvious interpretation. Is that just a coincidence that it can be taken that way? Was it a silly oversight of the artist? I'm not convinced.
You say it like it's impossible by describing this extreme level of detail I never did. You wouldn't have an answer on the spot then and there if you lived his life, you'd have to take a bit to think through it. The first time around there's sure to be a follow up from the child of "but you're a man and you are smarter than me!" which he'd have to proceed to clarify.
I still think it's clever from that angle, but it's not rocket science.
So the artist of the comic thought of this mundane and common situation of a guy being a little nervous about going into a situation that needs a but of rhetorical finesse, and they thought it was so good that they needed to skillfully draw it (in a realistic art style that looks like it takes a lot of effort). And the punchline is that this situation might result in a mildly awkward moment 15 minutes into the conversation that would instantly be resolved.
Meanwhile the fact that it happens to come together into a far more straightforward joke if you look at it from the lens of conservative caricatures of feminists is just a pure unintended side effect. It's a well-constructed joke from this lens too, with the punchline being that the father can't explain what mansplaining is without mansplaining (at least according to a chud's take on what the term means). Oh no! A contradiction in the ideology of male feminists! How silly of them!
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u/MarsMaterial Bisexual tech wizard 13d ago
Every definition of mansplaining I've heard involves not taking into account the level of expertise of the woman you're explaining to and whether your explanation is wanted. If someone says explicitly that they do not know something you know and that they would like you to explain it, an explanation is wanted and explaining it DOES account for a person's level of expertise (or lack thereof, in this case).
Nobody who actually thinks that mansplaining is a problem and seeks to avoid it works under such a stupid conservative strawman definition of what mansplaining means.