Mansplaining Examples, According To Women

Buzz Feed

8 hours ago

Well, even though it's 2025, women are still being mansplained to (aka the explanation of a particular subject by a man, typically to a woman, that's considered condescending). So we asked the women of the BuzzFeed Community: "What is the dumbest thing that has been mansplained to you?" and their answers will make you red in the face. Here's what they said below.
"A man once explained to me what an X-Ray image is. I'm a doctor."
—ale8"I learned what an X-ray is from Sesame Street when I was three. I don't think *anybody* needs to have X-rays explained to them, but trying to explain them to a DOCTOR is a whole other level!"—ddaisy
"I was in the process of buying a house, and a male coworker, who never bought a house, tried to mansplain income debt ratio to me. It took our male supervisor, who had bought a house a year prior, telling him I was right before he accepted, begrudgingly, that he was 'mistaken.'"
"A man once yelled in my face that he was the ultimate authority on how to file for a certain type of construction project, and how I, a lowly woman, couldn't possibly understand the complexities of what I was looking at. So, he never got to build his project, because I, the lady who signed off and permitted them, refused to do so until he fixed his dang paperwork. I was LITERALLY the ultimate authority on it."
—renashinoa
"Once, a man explained to me why Avatar: The Last Airbender is an anime, and he kept insisting it was not a Nickelodeon cartoon. I am an animation student. For comparison, this is like calling the original Ben 10 or the original Teen Titans an anime. (Just to be clear, the style is very clearly inspired by Japanese animation because that's what was popular at the time. But it is not considered an anime because its original language is English, and it was made by an American animation studio.)
"I am a residential counselor for male teenagers and have been working in this field for 10 years. I have lost count of the number of times MALE teenagers start lecturing me about my role as a FEMALE and what I should or should not be doing because I keep doing it wrong in comparison to some of my male counterparts, whom I have helped train."
—origamidino44
"When my friend's boyfriend broke up with her, he told her it was because she was bad at sex. My girl lowered the boom on the dicknose by replying, 'Since you were my first, I guess that makes you a bad teacher.' I still miss you to this day, Susan!"
"After I finally decided to get a credit card, my husband frowned and told me, 'You do have to pay the money back, you know.' Duh. Then again, his mother actually thought that the credit card limit meant it was free money."
—thatvillageidiot
"A guy once said, 'I went birdwatching... you know, when you watch birds.' It literally could not be named more literally."
"I work in film and saw my brother for the first time the other week, and he tried to explain the writer's strike to me and why it'd be over soon. He knew exactly one reason they were striking and not the laundry list of others. I've been in the industry for 10 years and had jobs shut down because of this strike, he works at a car rental place."
—deebee2118
"I had a random guy online try to mansplain hymens, and he kept making the usual false claims about how it 'pops' when you lose your virginity, and that it's the way you can tell a virgin from a non-virgin. I tried to correct him and explain that 1) hymens don't pop, 2) you can wear your hymen down with activities other than sex, and 3) you can lack a hymen and be a virgin, as not everyone even has a hymen (and, again, sex isn't the only thing that wears it down). Alas, he didn't believe me. Typical."
"I was selling my old bike, and the guy who bought it spent the whole time he was there explaining all of the features of the bike to me. The features were all included in the listing, since I had bought the bike myself and specifically picked it because of them. He got incredibly offended when I asked if he was there to buy a bike or hold a lecture."
—torbielillies
"I'm not customer service, but I work as a branch (bank) manager in a money kiosk in a mall with an anchor store. A gentleman came in and asked for a completely different luxury store. Think, oh, I dunno, Nordstrom vs. Neiman Marcus. I told him the exact address of where he wanted to go, and he told me I was WRONG. Nooooo, I'm not... but let's pull up that Google Maps, huh? That was when he told me he didn't need to look it up because he knew where he was going, but maybe *I* should? On the quickness, I pointed at the Nordstrom entrance, 'Ya know what, you're right, Neiman Marcus is right inside, so sorry, I don't know HOW I missed that...'"
"When I was a junior in college, I was talking to a friend about some of my classes, and his roommate took our conversation as an excuse to explain to me what linguistics was and what the major program was like. He was a freshman political science major, and I was in my third year of my linguistics program."
—skailyr
"An ex was firmly against any kind of vibrator because it would 'stretch you out like an old T-shirt.''
"Taking my husband to the ER for a kidney stone, the two male-admitting nurses RUSH outside to greet my husband. They say, 'Oh, this is bad. We can tell by how he is walking that it's kidney stones. No disrespect, ma'am, but this is so much worse than giving birth.' Now, luckily, I am married to a wonderful man, who had my side on this, and chuckled through his pain, and said, 'No, you guys are looking at someone who went through 36 hours of labor with a broken tailbone, I got this.'"
—angelaandres
"A man thought he had to explain to me what a square was when I was 22."
"I have an unusual first name. I was gobsmacked when someone asked how to correctly pronounce my name, and Captain Doorknob interrupted me to mansplain MY OWN NAME. INCORRECTLY."
—shazzerz"I once had a man ask me, 'Isn't your name supposed to be spelled with an a?' Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I said, politely, 'You might be thinking of a different name. This is the standard spelling.' He then proceeded to give me a skeptical look and say, 'Are you sure?'(He did run away when I snapped, 'Am I sure about the spelling of my own name? Is that your question?')"—five_star
"On my nineteenth birthday, I got into a car accident that basically totaled my car. The next day, my period started, and I was scheduled to work open to close at the coffee shop I worked at for the 'birthday' event marking the anniversary of the company's creation, with different deals."
"I was a chemical engineering major in college. I tutored pre-med college students who struggled to pass chemistry and/or organic chemistry. Guys came to my grandmother's house, where I lived, for professional tutoring by recommendation of their professors. I can't tell you how many guys attempted to mansplain chemistry to me. It was so frustrating. I'd taken every chemistry, organic chemistry, and biochemistry course the college offered and was a 4.0 GPA student."
"If they kept mansplaining, I'd pick up the phone, call the professor in front of them, and ask the person being tutored to repeat the answer to the question. Then the professor would say: If you're not listening to the person who is tutoring you when you're wrong, you shouldn't be a doctor because you are an idiot without listening skills. It always made me laugh. I probably tutored two dozen pre-med guys in three years. None of them ended up going to medical school."—snarknado
"A guy I just started talking to was really good with cars. I asked him a question about my car, and he asked what I drove. I told him and… he told me I couldn't drive the model I was, because he'd never heard of it."
"I sent in a maintenance repair request to my landlord for a mole issue in the backyard. I explained the steps my husband and I had already taken to mitigate the problem. He responded with a copy and pasted Wikipedia article on moles and how pervasive they are and how difficult they are to remove. He suggested we 'stamp down the mounds.' I responded with 'I own a 6-acre farm, I'm also a maintenance director for an 18,000 square foot facility; I'm familiar with moles, Mike. But hey man, it's your lawn that's starting to get real effed up here. Do what you want.' Two days later, a mole man was out with traps."
—mixedevolutionllc
"I typically wear band or Star Wars shirts to work. This younger guy came up to me and said, 'I like your Billy Joel shirt.' I'm like, 'Thanks. It's Billy Idol.' The same guy comes up to me on a different day and notices I have a Star Wars shirt on. Asks me if I have seen any of the shows. I say yes. He says, 'There's this really good one out called The Mandalorian. You probably don't know about it.' This was a couple of months ago. And he's far younger than I am."
"A patient once responded to my doctor (who is also a woman), telling him he had cavities with 'Well, but I have those black spots under my fingernails sometimes, so I don't think it's a cavity necessarily.' He initially came to us complaining of pain when he eats sugary things. He was convinced the black/brown spots on his teeth were just stains and dirt that could be cleaned off."
—erintrimber
"A man once tried to explain to me what a person can and can't eat when they are breastfeeding. He wasn't remotely correct. I am a mother, postpartum nurse, and lactation consultant. The same man also told me that he was frustrated with his wife in labor because 'she was pushing wrong.'"
"I had a guy DM me in order to mansplain how to take care of my plants after seeing them on Instagram???"
—Pez Fez
Women, share with us your experience with being mansplained to in the comments or anonymously in the Google Form below: