Rebecca Solnit’s website describes her as a writer, a historian, and an activist. She has published more than twenty books on topics as diverse as Western and Indigenous history, feminism, insurrection, social change, and popular power. She has won several awards, including the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction in 2018. Solnit was catapulted into the spotlight with the publication of her essay, “Men Explain Things to Me”, which is also the title of a small volume of essays covering topics such as mansplaining, violence against women, global injustice and marriage equality, or same sex marriage.
Use the word “mansplaining” in a conversation and you will get a chuckle, an outright laugh, or an expression of annoyance, reactions usually dependent on gender. The word says it all and it was the NYTimes word of the year in 2010. Solnit is sometimes credited with being the first to use it although she denies this.
Men
Explain Things to Me is a book of opinion
essays which opens with a piece on 'mansplaining'. Solnit is careful not to
include all men in the ‘explaining’ category, perhaps a little too
careful. Wishing not to offend those men who ‘get it’ negates the
overarching point. Solnit lays out the idea that ‘mansplaining’ is offensive
and, not only does it drive women crazy, it also effectively silences us. To
imply “but don’t worry, most of you don’t do this,” is a fatal flaw and blurs
the point. Men, all men, need to look at and examine how they interact with
women in serious conversation. Those that ‘get it’ can then be part of
the solution.
In an
article published in The Walrus, Viviane Fairbank credits Solnit
with saying that “Writing is primarily about gathering.” What Solnit does
not tell her readers in her book are the sources of her gathering. Her articles
are not researched pieces of creative non-fiction. They are opinion pieces
which include the word “I” just a little too often and uses dramatic literary
devices to make her sometimes suspect points. In “Worlds Collide in a Luxury
Suite”, the essay begins: “How can I tell a story we already know too well. Her
name was Africa. His was France.” Dramatic indeed, but without a context, an
uninformed reader may now believe that France colonized Africa! Solnit must
know that Africa is not a country and that France did not go in alone!
Solnit’s
essays are about women being silenced and the myriad of ways men behave
(consciously or unconsciously) that actively contribute to women not being
heard. While Solnit’s writing is entertaining, what the book lacks is analytic
substance and, because Solnit is a self-declared feminist, it would not be
unreasonable to ask for some underpinnings of a feminist analysis. We need
something to think about and debate round the dinner table. It is this lack of
substance that denigrates women’s struggles, says Fairbank. and it reduces them to
common denominators of pop-psychology “without ever explaining what that
conversation will actually produce once its over.” This element
of pop feminism in Solnit’s writing reduces it to points that she subtly works
to negate. As Fairbank says, “this makes feminism more accessible than ever,
while simultaneously trivializing the cause.”
Men
Explain Things to Me is an entertaining read
that is sometimes witty and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. It is also
deadly serious and serves as a reminder to us all that millions of women around
the world live in desperate circumstances, without a voice, without resources
and without personal or political power. However, the book does not
provide us with an accurate context or an analysis of why this is happening and
what can be done about it. Without this context, Solnit’s writing lacks
purpose. Her readers can gasp in horror, weep in sympathy, and stand united in
sisterhood, but that will change nothing. Until we as humans move beyond the
reactive to reach a true and fundamental understanding of why things are
structured this way, the status quo will
not change. Being part of change must be the objective and learning to think
critically about the issues Solnit raises in her essays is how we can
participate in change. But we won’t be encouraged to do so by this book.
