Men Who Explain Things

Excellent op-ed in the LA times about gender, authority, and confidence.

A week or so ago, my boyfriend/bandmate/best friend and I went to meet with a guy who will be recording his album.   For the record, a very nice guy who obviously knows sound and is going to do a great job.

Andrew’s band consists of him (obviously), me (bass/vocals), our friend ChAka on keys, and this awesome girl named Courtney who plays the drums.   The biggest thing we were discussing that day was drums, so Andrew said a lot of sentences like this: “My drummer Courtney __________”, “She will probably want to record with the bass player there,” “I’m not sure if she has ever played on an electric drum kit…”

Our recording friend couldn’t get it through his head that Courtney was a female.  Andrew continuously referred to her with a litany of female pronouns,  and the guy would throw the same sentences and ideas right back at Andrew as if he had never said “she” and they were both talking about a guy.  “Your drummer, does he play with ___?” “He’ll want to ____” etc.

Kind of harmless and amusing, and again, the guy seems like a real good guy.  It was a funny story for Courtney the next time we had practice.

Still, this shows two things:
1.  Certain men have a complete inability  to conceive of females in  what they view as  Male roles, to the point where they actually are unable to process information that is repeatedly given to them.

2.  Certain men are so sure of themselves that they will doggedly pursue their own line of thought even when it’s painfully clear to everyone else in the room that they don’t have all the facts.

I think this is totally a gendered thing.  I think men are brought up to act confident whether or not they’re actually sure of themselves, and women are brought up to be willing to hear others’ points of view, even when we already know we’re right.  I further think that it’s so ingrained in male culture that they’re not even really aware it’s happening (someone needs to write The Masculine Mystique, like whoa).

The lady who wrote the op-ed discusses this all in a much more eloquent fashion than I have here.  Read it.