Which woman hasn’t been bombarded by unsolicited help from men?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/20/rebecca-solnit-unwanted-approval-men-unsolicited-help

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‘Sometimes it just wipes me out’: the unwanted approval of men is exhausting to deal with

A few years ago a friend of mine got married, and when I pulled up to the rustic wedding site, a man I didn’t know positioned himself behind my car to make dramatic hand signals. I didn’t need or ask for help, but he was giving it, and I’m sure he thought the credit for my success in parking my small car in this very easy spot was at least partly his. In a very minor and undoubtedly unwitting way, he was trying to rob me of my sense of competence to bolster his own.

It’s not impaired by one clown, but I’ve had hundreds or maybe thousands of experiences like this, of unwanted, unsolicited intrusion in the form of help, advice, and granting approval (or its opposite). It all too frequently takes the form of some man saying “correct” when I or other women say something aloud or online, as if we needed their approval, as if they were the authorities in the room, as though it wasn’t true or right until it had their imprimateur. When I wrote a social media post about the phenomenon, the response was like that scene in Giant when they drill for oil and it spouts skyward. Torrents of stories from other women gushed out.

Professor Sarah Detweiler told me, “I’m an artist. I often need to use hardware stores. I’ll ask, where are the caulk guns or some other such item. I didn’t ask how to use them, wasn’t running my project by anyone, and inevitably I’ll get ‘whatcha gonna do with that’ or ‘what you need that for’ and I’ll smile and say ‘what aisle?’ Male workers have gone so far as to walk me to them, stand in front of them blocking my way asking again what I’m working on as I couldn’t possibly know. I’ve had it happen nearly everywhere and hear it happening to other women all the time.”

They discussed the defensiveness belittlement generates, the sense that you need to brandish your credentials and qualifications in the face of this, which happens when you’re treated over and over as incompetent, and of how a lifetime of it can breed undeserved self-doubt. One wondered if other women get, “an additional sense of demoralised deflation afterwards, even though the intellect tells you to ignore the subtle put down?,” adding that “sometimes it just wipes me out even though I know I’m capable and accomplished”.

A distinguished scientist told me about the men who feel the need to repeat what she’s said as though it’s their idea or not valid until a man says it or cite other sources that repeated what she said in her area of expertise. It’s exhausting and demoralizing. Obviously there are worse forms of oppression out there, and other categories of hostile assumptions specific to other categories of people – for example, I can think of a Latina head of a literary non-profit assumed to be the maid at a gala, of way too many Black men assumed to have stolen their car or bicycle. But this pervasive misogyny does have an impact.

Writer and editor Meredith Jacobson told me, “Aside from the millions of instances of dudes bizarrely taking the time to comment ‘You’re correct’ on social media, what it brings to mind is the time when, as a young grad student, I had a flat tire outside my apartment. I dug out the car manual, read the instructions on changing a flat, pulled out the spare and the jack, and began working through the steps, feeling capable and proud of myself for doing it. Just as I was tightening the last lug nuts – in the proper cross pattern, just like the manual said – my middle-aged-dude neighbor came out and gestured for me to hand him the wrench. I kick myself for it now, but at the time I automatically responded to the gesture by handing him the wrench, and he proceeded to go through the motions as if tightening the bolts himself, though they were already fully tightened. He said, ‘Good job’ and handed me back the damned wrench as if he were a priest conferring some kind of patriarchal benediction I never asked for. Decades later it still rankles, because it was the first time I’d ever changed a flat and I was enjoying the feeling of accomplishment before he inserted himself.” Like the man playing air-traffic-controller while I parked, he was pretending to help her in ways that helped himself, or his self-conception, and undermined her.

Fourteen years ago I wrote the essay that prompted the birth of the word mansplaining, about when men assume they know when they don’t and women don’t when they do, or operate on that basis, which can be a minor annoyance at a dinner or a sabotage of a career or a life-and-death situation when a woman is saying stuff like, “he’s trying to kill me.” That phenomenon has a sibling or a cousin in the men who bestow approval, instruction, and aid unsolicited. It’s a bit like having a volunteer parent, a boss, a supervisor who is also often a complete stranger.

I sometimes cringe at doing the simplest things in public, bracing myself for some guy to come along and supervise me tying my shoes or instruct me on locking my bicycle, both of which they have, by the way. In recent years I’ve run into it a lot on hiking trails, where I have been instructed on the correct route by men who didn’t inquire if I already knew the way, or inspected for whether I’m doing it right, graded on how far I’m going.

There’s a deep incuriosity behind this. They apparently don’t want to bother with the inquiry that would ascertain whether the person in question has the knowledge or expertise in question, let alone whether they actually want help, advice or approval. I see it all the time in the incidents I file under the rubric Mansplaining Olympic Tryouts, men explaining vaginas to female gynecologists, running regimens to one of the world’s top marathoners, a graphic novel character to its author, the stock market to former Morgan Stanley executive Amy Siskind, recommending women scientists read the studies these women in fact authored themselves.

They could lead with questions, or at least not clobber with assumptions, though that would require taking some modicum of interest in the people with whom they’re interacting. Virginia Woolf once noted, “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” These men use women as those mirrors, casting them as best supporting actress to their leading role. They don’t seem to notice that the script is a farce or a black comedy and also a royal pain, and the people around them are starring in other movies with better scripts

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses