Men Explain Things to Me

Rebecca Solnit is often credited with originating the now-popular term, “mansplaining”. I love using that word. It's a funny word. It captures an important social injustice/stupidity.

Anyway, I reeeeally disliked the only other book by Rebecca Solnit that I've read and, alas, beyond the first essay (on the dark hilarity of mansplainery), I really disliked this. Her writing just ain't for me. I find it so humorless (excepting the first essay), so self-important, so indulgent; pop intellectualism of the worst kind. I was also a little leery of her occasional notes about the awful fem injustices in those Other Lands. White privileged lady speaking for poor oppressed Arab ladies... gah. Or even worse: just ALLUDING to it, leaving us to fill the blank with our own stereotyped ideas. Gaaah.