A Cultural History of Mansplaining | Lily Rothman @ The Atlantic

Just because it’s been around so long doesn’t mean mansplaining is a necessary condition of male politicians speaking about issues that women experience first-hand. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have avoided it, and eloquently. President Ford, a Republican, spoke in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment, making the point in 1976 that even instances of discrimination that may seem “petty and even ridiculous” to others hurt the people against whom the discrimination occurs. More recently, in his debate with Paul Ryan, Vice President Biden said that he can’t know how a pregnant woman feels about her body. While both men were capable of a thought experiment about what they might do in a woman’s place, they were also apparently capable of retaining the awareness that they could not know for sure.