Mansplainers are an elusive creature, popping into your mentions and disappearing as soon as you know what’s happening. Luckily, one woman set up a perfect trap, and we can learn from her innovation.
1. Set the bait.
Twitter user @voldemortsbicep began her expedition with a basic truth: When it seems like a woman doesn’t understand something, she’s probably just fucking with you.
my favorite game is to act like i can’t understand something very simple when a man is explaining it to me to see how dumb he thinks i am
— kt (@katiecalmdown) April 12, 2016
2. Lure him in.
Soon, she had her prey, Twitter user @grhughes82, whom she attracted by doing the exact thing she said she’d do in her first tweet.
@grhughes82 what do you mean?
— kt (@katiecalmdown) April 12, 2016
3. If it works, more will follow.
In the most generous reading of this tweet thread, our prey was attempting to be in on the joke as well. And yet other men continued to fall into the trap, no matter how much the joke was explained to them.
@voldemortsbicep @grhughes82 how do you not understand that?! It’s such a simple concept!
— Owen Benjamin 🐻 (@OwenBenjamin) April 15, 2016
@ZeroiaSD @voldemortsbicep @grhughes82 this dude’s trying to help her understand something and she’s too dumb to get it.
— Owen Benjamin 🐻 (@OwenBenjamin) April 15, 2016
@voldemortsbicep you realize that just makes you look stupid to people who haven’t seen this particular tweet right?
— Gloombringer (@TeensieFreedom) April 13, 2016
.@voldemortsbicep Of course he thinks you’re dumb. You’re acting like you can’t understand something very simple. Why wouldn’t he?
— Lawrence Pellino (@LancPell) April 13, 2016
4. Now, what do you do with your catch?
If there was a way to mine mansplainers for something more useful than a joke, the raw material is there in spades. There are entire Tumblrs dedicated to men explaining things to women, women who were not wrong, never asked, or who may actually be experts in the fields that men are explaining to them. There are even men explaining why the portmanteau is actually sexist.
On second thought, it may not be worth catching a mansplainer at all.
