This seems like an apt title for this week! I am an unabashedly HUGE Eagles fan and I have been, according to my mom, since birth. It helps that her father, my grandfather, played for them briefly in the 1950s. We are an Eagles family, we bleed green. And nothing, well, almost nothing, frustrates me more than when I am trying to answer one of my female friend’s questions about the sport and a man feels the need to jump in and explain what’s going on to both of us.
Synopsis
In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters.
She ends on a serious note – because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!”
This updated edition of the book features that now-classic essay as well as Solnit’s recent essay on the remarkable feminist conversation that arose in the wake of the 2014 Isla Vista Killings.
Review
The great reckoning, in terms of sexual assault, had been bubbling beneath the surface of society for years, decades, even centuries, before it burst through the surface and made headlines in late 2017. The most important aspect I want to make sure that I state in regards to this review is that Men Explain Things to Me is not an essay collection that bashes men.
Rebecca Solnit’s purpose in collecting together the essays that make up the book Men Explain Things to Me is, like any good journalist’s intention, to make her readers aware of things that are going on in the world today. Each essay in the collection deals at least in some small way how we interact with each other, both as members of society and within personal, intimate relationships. It is about encouraging women to find their voices and encouraging men to think about how their words and actions are perceived and interpreted.
For a fairly short book (less than 200 pages), it took me the better part of three weeks to read. Not because it was dense, or because I didn’t like, but because I wanted to make sure that I remembered Rebecca’s words and used them to do good in the world. One of the biggest strengths and challenges with the written word is that they can be interpreted in many different ways. Reading Men Explain Things to Me can be twisted and turned to make anyone’s point, and I don’t want to do that. I want to take what Solnit writes and make myself a better contributing member of society. And I have to believe that’s what she would want as well.
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars
Celebration of Books 
4 thoughts on “Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit”