Response Essay - Men Explain Things to Me

Vivek Sanghvi

Dr. Katharine Perko

Section 4

In the excerpt, “Men Explain Things To Me,” Rebecca Solnit looks at what often goes awry in discussions between both men and women. She writes about how some men wrongly assume they know things and unjustly assume women don't. Solnit goes on to talk about why this problem arises and shares some of her hilarious personal experiences of this happening to her. Throughout her work she comes back to one reoccurring theme, how the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say. One example of this happening to her was on a trip to Berlin. There she encountered a man who acted as if he knew about a novel that had just been written on the annihilation of time and space and the industrialization of everyday life. Yet he didn’t take the time to listen to Rebecca telling him multiple times that she had written the book; the man just continued in his own thought process. It wasn’t until she repeated it four times that the statement sank in. His “know it all” attitude is what creates the usual problem that Solnit expresses consistently throughout this piece.

In my view, I genuinely believe this to be true. Personally speaking, I cannot relate to this on a first hand basis; however, I do understand her viewpoint on how women are usually oppressed and are treated as subservient figures to men. This can typically be seen more in third world countries where women are forced to follow certain guidelines. However, with the rising global awareness of women’s roles in modern society, I believe Rebecca’s viewpoint is more prominent in developing countries than in comparison to more modernized communities.