Men Explain Things To Me summary
In this collection of essays, established non-fiction author Rebecca Solnit covers a range of feminist topics. From mansplaining (before we had a word for it) to sexual violence, to the overall progress of the feminist movement, Solnit covers her themes with extensive research, thoughtful connections and carefully chosen examples.
My Thoughts on Men Explain Things To Me
Men Explain Things To Me is a collection of 7 essays by Rebecca Solnit. Solnit has written a whole host of other nonfiction books on a range of topics, including but not limited to feminism.
The essays in the collection are:
- Men Explain Things To Me, which doesn’t really need explaining
- The Longest War, which is about sexual violence, rape and rape culture
- Worlds Collide in a Luxury Suite, also about rape and sexual assault, but also more about power and accountability
- In Praise of the Threat, about the conflict around marriage equality
- Grandmother Spider, about the erasure of women historically, their lineages and their contributions
- Woolf’s Darkness, about the limits of what can be known or explained
- Pandora’s Box and the Volunteer Police Force, about the progress of feminism
The collection is a very short read, which I think works both for and against it. I found some of the essays didn’t really grab me, but with them being so short it wasn’t hard to get through them anyway. On the other hand, maybe part of why some of them weren’t that interesting was because a lot of the ideas felt very superficial.
I enjoyed some essays from the collection a lot more than others
My favourite was the first essay, Men Explain Things To Me. When originally published, this was the accidental origin of the term ‘mansplaining’, although Solnit didn’t actually coin the word herself. I enjoyed the fact that there was a personal story to attach to what she was saying.
With that said, it might have been nice if the author had explored the ideas she was raising in more depth. It didn’t feel like the essay went much farther than pointing out the issue in an anecdote. And this was a recurring theme in many of the essays, I thought.
There were definitely some interesting points and ideas within the collection. I thought some of the ideas raised around marriage equality were intriguing. There was also a lot of talk about Virginia Woolf. I think a lot of that went over my head. Although it did remind me how much I want to read some Virginia Woolf. I enjoyed her discussion of the progress of feminism in Pandora’s Box, the last essay in the collection.
Solnit made some deeply flawed points too. One quote which seemed particularly ill-thought-out was, “Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”
This is seems pretty clearly false; violence often has exactly these dimensions. Solnit even seems to contradict herself on this with some of the other points she makes in later essays.
Some of her points and metaphors feel quite blinkered. There’s a deeply uncomfortable moment where she comments on mistaking a veiled women in an Afghani family photograph for “drapery or furniture”. She says, “Whatever all the arguments may be about veils and burkas, they make people literally disappear.” It feels reductive and unnecessary.
I felt that some of the essays and points may be outdated now
The collection was published 2014. Some of the essays written even earlier than that, and I do think some things have changed in the last 7 years. Not as much as I’d have liked! But at least enough that none of these feel like particularly radical points or ideas.
I probably would have found it more engaging if I’d read it when it came out. When I was newer to feminist literature and ideas in general, and when the examples she used were still fresh. Or fresher, anyway. As it is, a lot of it covered concepts I’ve read about a lot elsewhere, often with more compelling stories or writing underpinning them.
Additionally, the collection felt unfocused. I think this is largely because the essays weren’t written to go together. This isn’t inherently a problem, but it does mean there are some where Solnit has used the same points and examples (which feel redundant when the essays appear next to each other like this), and a lot of ideas that don’t feel like they’re progressed over the course of the collection.
In the end, I found Men Explain Things To Me a little disappointing
It wasn’t personal enough to interest me on a personal level. Not radical enough to inspire, too dense and depressing to be a fun read. For me, that left it at ‘tolerably interesting’. There wasn’t much obviously wrong with it from a writing point of view, but it certainly didn’t grab me.
I’d love recommendations for other feminist literature to check out though, whether more recent or more personally engaging. Share any personal favourites in the comments, or let me know if you feel like I’ve done this collection a disservice!
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