Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee Allabest. All of us have heard or used the term

mansplaining. It's that thing that happens when a man explains something to you that he assumes

you don't know when maybe you do know what you're talking about because of your own lived experience

or your professional expertise. And these interactions

reveal that this man thinks that instead of being your peer, he is in the role of maybe your

dad or your teacher or your boss or your ecclesiastical leader. The author Rebecca Solnit

published an essay online in 2008 called

Men Explain Things to Me, which went viral, and it's become a touchstone for feminist thinkers

and for everyday women, and it now appears on many essential reading lists, which is why we're

discussing it today.

This essay is also famous because it inspired the coining of the term, mansplain, although the essay doesn't actually say that word, and Solnett herself says she doesn't use it.

And Solnit says she has mixed feelings about the word, and I do too.

But before we talk more about the word mansplain and about

this essay, men explain things to me and some other essays in Solnit's anthology, I want to welcome

back to the podcast, Malia Morris. Hi, Malia. Hi, Amy. It's so good to have you back, Malia.

Listeners will remember Malia from our very first episode of the whole podcast, the chalice

and the blade.

So we're super, super excited to have you here.

And I'm hoping we can start out by having you just review a little bit about yourself,

maybe tell some new details that you didn't share last time or just help us get to know you a bit,

Malia.

Well, I'm so excited to be back.

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