SEM 112

ACTIVITY/ACTIVITIES 
Name:Jasmin R. Conejero___ Date:April 18, 2021 Section:2 SEDE -1 _
Score:_____ 
Professor: Prof. Orcega 

Quiz 
Find out the Novel (all about SEXISM) 
(Please do not copy paste) 

Format  
I. Title

- Men Explain Things to Me

II. About the Author 

- Men Explain Things to Me is a 2014 essay collection by the American

writer Rebecca Solnit, published by Haymarket Books. Rebecca Solnit is an
American writer who was born in 1961. She has written about feminism, the
world, politics, place, and art, among other topics. Solnit was born to a Jewish
father and an Irish Catholic mother in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and her family
moved to Novato, California, in1966, where she grew up. "I was a broken
youngster. I grew up in a home where all feminine and female, as well as my
gender, was despised "She has expressed her feelings about her childhood.
She dropped out of high school and enrolled in a public alternative junior high,
where she completed tenth grade after passing the General Educational
Development examinations. She dropped out of high school and enrolled in a
public alternative junior high, where she completed tenth grade after passing
the General Educational Development examinations. She went on to junior
college after that. She moved to Paris to study when she was 17 years old.
She returned to San Francisco State University to complete her graduate
degree. She went on to earn a master's degree in journalism from the
University of California, Berkeley in 1984, and has been working as a
freelance journalist since 1988.
- Since the 1980s, Solnit has been involved with environmental and human
rights movements, most prominently with the Western Shoshone Defense
Project in the early 1990s, as outlined in her book Savage Dreams, and with
antiwar activists during the Bush administration. She's spoken about her
passion for climate change and the work of 350.org and the Sierra Club, as
well as women's rights, including violence against women.
III. Theme  
- The novel, which originally included seven essays, has "become a touchstone
of the feminist movement," according to its publisher. The book's key essay
was quoted in The New Republic as the piece that "launched the expression
mansplaining, notwithstanding the fact that Solnit did not use the term in the
initial essay and has since dismissed it. The eponymous essay reflects on
women's silence, with a particular emphasis on men's apparent belief that no
matter what a woman does, a man still knows best. Mansplaining became a
term for this phenomenon later on. In this article, Solnit explains how the
suppression of female voices is a violation of women's rights and a power
assault. Things like violent death, crime, assault, and rape are often
overlooked in the male mind due to a lack of credibility for female voices.
Female silencing, according to Solnit, is a harmful phenomenon in this sense.

IV. Genre 
- In this article, Solnit explains how the suppression of female voices is a
violation of women's rights and a power assault. Things like violent death,
crime, assault, and rape are often overlooked in the male mind due to a lack
of credibility for female voices. Female silencing, according to Solnit, is a
harmful phenomenon in this sense. She concludes with a serious note, but
the real issue is that women who have much to say are silenced, particularly
those who say stuff like, "He's trying to kill me!". This collection includes an
exploration of writer Virginia Woolf's acceptance of suspense, not knowing,
uncertainty, and misunderstanding, a deeply original investigation into
marriage equality, and a frightening survey of the extent of contemporary
violence against women, as well as six excellent complements to the now-
classic essay.

V. Objective 
- The objective of this book was an eye opener to the readers about sexism.
The author uses this to examine how conventional gender stereotypes instill
in men the belief that they are somehow more knowledgeable than women
and therefore deserve the right to speak about them. Solnit connects this to
larger trends of coercion, brutality, and abuse by looking at how this works to
censor women and block out their voices. The readers would necessitate a
proper understanding of how gender stereotypes and masculinity contribute
to the perpetuation of violence.
VI. Five (5) Quote lines came from your favorite (Novel about Sexism) and
Explain with individual analysis) 

- “Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for
explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don't.”
― Rebecca Solnit
This quote means that even though some things are explained to the author
but still no one give for her forgiveness and still they do not have a care for
the authors opinion and feelings.

- “We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognize
that we don’t.”
― Rebecca Solnit
Sometimes we pretend that we do not recognize some things that makes us
know nothing because of that attitude.

- “The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory,
already a revolt.”
― Rebecca Solnit
For the author when we share something she considered as a success and I
agree with her because of our story that we share, we share our own
experience to other people so that they learn from our own mistakes and
somehow educate them.

- “Kindness and gentleness never had a gender, and neither did empathy.”
― Rebecca Solnit
There is no gender when it comes to the kindness. Everyone can show it and
it is free to be kind to someone.

- “Still, even now, when a woman says something uncomfortable about male
misconduct, she is routinely portrayed as delusional, a malicious conspirator,
a pathological liar, a whiner who doesn’t recognize it’s all in fun, or all of the
above.”
― Rebecca Solnit
Until now women are still invisible to the other people. They did not consider
all the opinions of women and still not believe in women and they didn’t
recognize that. Woman’s are still a human who needs to be listen too. As a
woman, we all deserve to appreciate our points or opinion. We also have a
right to tell what is the truth.
 VII. Synopsis of the Novel  
- Seven essays in Rebecca Solnit's new book take readers through what it
means for half of the world's people to be censored, neglected, and
degraded. Men Explain Things to Me begins with Solnit's essay of the same
name, in which she describes her encounter at a dinner party where the host
waxes lyrical about a book that he hasn't read but that she wrote. A buddy
makes several attempts before the host actually gets it. While this could seem
to be a minor incident, it points to a broader social issue: women's silence.
This silence has troubling consequences: in the United States, a woman is
assaulted every 6.2 minutes. And that's all the incidents that have been
published. Solnit is swift to find out that such incidents do not happen to all
men many are proud to call themselves feminists during the course of the
novel. And, even most critically, she comes from a privileged background,
where her voice has been heard louder than the average woman's. She does,
however, see these misogynistic trends as part of a national and global
mentality, even though they are dismissed as outliers. She discusses the
prevalence of sexual assaults in the military, at university, on college
campuses, and, most importantly, at home. She cites a startling statistic:
more women have been killed as a result of domestic abuse between the
years 2000 and 2010. Between 9/11 and2012, more women were murdered
as a result of domestic violence than any of the 9/11 casualties and American
soldiers killed during that time period combined.
VIII. Treatment of the novel analysis 
a. Theory 
- With her new book of essays, Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit is
experiencing a bit of a comeback. Except where the woman is the specialist,
Solnit and women in general prefer to believe that men are more educated on
a
topic than they are, according to the title essay. This essay gives rise to the
word
"mansplaining," which refers to a man expounding on a subject on which he
believes he knows a lot to a woman who knows only as much, if not more,
than
he does.

b. Philosophy (Sexism) 
- This output contains Solnit's influential "mansplaining" post, which examines
the
common pattern of men thinking they know what they're talking about (even
though they don't) and women believing they don't (even when they do).

c. Consequences 
 - Solnit believes that the whole continuum of male-assumed agency, from
morality mongers and conventional marriage dynamics to abuse against
women and rape culture, is failing. Women have a tendency to challenge
themselves, and it is this erroneous modesty that allows mansplainers in all
colors to gain ground.

d. Arguments  
- When men describe something to her, the author misinterprets what is going
on. It's more of a mode of social contact than a means of conveying valuable
knowledge. If you look at guys, you can clearly see this. When do two men
get
together without dreaming about anything they can justify to each other to
pass
the time? Cameras, stereo equipment, weapons, vehicles, sports, boats, golf,
and other topics are common, but none of which they know anything about
compared to a specialist. If you go to a weapons store, you'll find men
debating
whether a right-handed barrel rifling is easier than a left-handed barrel rifling,
even though it makes no difference. It's the same instinct that drives kids to
memorize all of the dinosaurs and call them by name, or to astound you with
their Pokémon expertise, if such a thing exists. You can hear some of the
most
insane thoughts possible on sports talk radio, from men who appear to be
sane
and not drunk, but hey, they're just trying to make contact and get some kind
of
reaction.

e. Final thought 
- This was a stressful, however necessary, read for me. As a feminist, I've had
far too many encounters with men who believe I need explanation. That, as a
woman, I should obviously defer to his manly knowledge. However, I never
thought about the origins of this phenomenon or the true scope of the issue.
The
long-held belief that men are superior to women and thus have power of our
lives. That men have complete authority over our voices, acts, and, eventually,
whether we live or die. This was a thought-provoking book that I would
recommend to both women and men. These days, feminism is often
misunderstood, garbled, or outright degraded from its original meaning:
equality. Solnit gets right to the issue, citing several examples of how women's
words and bodies continue to be contested.

f.       (Analysis/interpretation) 
- The essay that this collection is named after is just the first of several
outstanding
works in this collection. She follows the "slippery slope" from casual misogyny
to abuse against women, arguing that ideas give rise to society, which teaches
 us what is natural and appropriate. Domestic abuse (once thought to be a
private issue), occupational and street harassment—anything built on the
belief
that women lack sexual autonomy—all contribute to the broader societal
epidemic of violence against women. Sexual assault, domestic violence, and
other forms of abuse are not isolated occurrences. "So many men kill them
partners and former partners that we have well over a thousand murders of
that
sort every year—meaning that the death rate exceeds 9/11's deaths every
three
years, despite no one declaring a war on this kind of terror." If we cared about
these kinds of crimes and why they're so widespread, we'd have to ask about
what kind of fundamental change our culture, this country, or virtually every
country wants. We'd be concerned about masculinity, male stereotypes, or
maybe sexism if we thought about it, because we don't talk about it often."

lX. Conclusion and Recommendation 

- In these open essays, Solnit addresses major issues like gender and
influence. This is an essential read that advances the discourse on feminism
and modern culture by being honest and witty. Rebecca Solnit tackled what
sometimes goes wrong in male-female conversations in her comic, scathing
post, Men Explain Things to Me. She wrote about men who believe they know
something and women who believe they don't, why this is, and how this part
of the gender wars works, as well as some of her own hilariously bad
experiences. The other essays deal with the points that men and women's
conversations cross, and those points aren't pretty. I'll concentrate on a
couple of Solnit's other collections of essays. This is a heavy, sparse work
that is saved by the grace of humor. It turns out that the book is a collection of
essays fairly accurately describing the relative positions of men and women in
the world, certainly in America. The first essay, which gives its name to the
title of the collection, describes the problem the second reviewer has, an
inability to recognize the value of women’s thoughts or knowledge, assuming
all wisdom resides in the male of the species. The first article, which gives the
collection's title its name, explains the dilemma that the second reviewer has,
namely, an inability to understand the importance of women's thoughts or
intelligence, believing that the male of the species possesses all wisdom.

References:
Wiener, Jon (10 March 2017). "Rebecca Solnit: How Women Are Changing the
World". The Nation.
 "Granta Books". (16 September 2018). Men Explain Things To Me.