I’ve heard of some really fucked up forced birth malpractice of doctors. Sharing for awareness. This is more fucked up than circumscision. This is as fucked up as doctors returning your baby to you with a botched circumcision after you made it clear they are absolutely not to circumsize him (which yes, has also happened, which helps me to believe some doctors are fucked enough to do these things). Doesn’t matter if you’re a feminist or not, this is a human rights issue by any standard. (I don’t know anything about the organization advertising itself here, not endorsing or condemning it). Share for awareness. Medical treatment to requires consent, because the second it doesnt, some really fucked up shit is possible, orders of magnitude worse than even this.
…I have questions, now
This looks like some serious shit.
My mom has a story similar to this about me.
When they found out I was going to have kidney issues (extra ureters, nothing lethal), a secondary doctor demanded my mom have me three weeks early. This was supposedly when my lungs would be ready enough to immediately go into surgery.
After 16 hours of labor, the original doctor was informed and told my mother how that was unnecessary since I couldn’t be operated on until 8 weeks anyway. My mother had me early for no reason, and they had to monitor my lungs just to be sure I was alright.
The secondary doctor also demanded weekly amniocentesis on me. Mom says you could see on the monitor me visibly distressed and wiggling away/trying to push away the needle. It got to the point where my mom grabbed the doc’s wrist and told her no more.
While not as violating as the stories mentioned above, I want to confirm this does happen and if you feel unsure about a doctor at any point that it’s not wrong to switch to one you feel better with. Pregnancy is a complicated thing and the last thing an expecting mother needs/deserves is to be mistreated.
Also Women I’ve seen talk about this often express it as “don’t medicalize birth”. But this kind of thing happens all over the hospital. And it shouldn’t happen to anyone. Ever.
Info dumping is (sometimes compulsively) sharing information about a special interest subject, and if you’re like me then you have a lot of those.
Don’t feel bad for info dumping, you aren’t being misogynistic, you’re just being passionate about what you enjoy!
This is really really important. I see so much negativity when it comes to info-dumping and I figured searching it up on this wonderful website would at least have something good but all I saw was negative posts about men info-dumping. And it made me sad. So yes a hundred times to this.
mansplaining is incredibly rude, condescending and/or patronising, often about simple concepts that the listener (usually a woman) likely already knows. as you say, infodumping is about special interest topics and isnt intended to patronise the listener it’s just compulsively sharing info.
i hope the people who listen to your infodumping dont perceive it as mansplaining
Here’s a simple way to tell the difference.
MANSPLAINING
Me: huh. I really liked Skyfall, and I never expected I’d enjoy James Bond. Maybe I should watch Spectre. Mansplainer: *sniff* ACTUALLY, you should forget the Daniel Craig movies. He’s not a REAL Bond. Now if you want ACTUAL James Bond you should get the Pierce Brosnan movies. Craig was only cast to be eye candy to reel the women in.
INFO DUMPING:
Me: huh. I really liked Skyfall, and I never expected I’d enjoy James Bond. Maybe I should watch Spectre. Info Dumper: *gasp* you liked Skyfall?! Did you know it’s part of a reboot because the original movies started getting really far from the Ian Fleming novels? They’re really good, especially the Pierce Brosnan ones, but they kind of became their own thing, you know? The reboot started with the new Casino Royale and (etc., I’m actually exhausting my store of Bond knowledge here)
One of these people wants to show he’s better than me, a filthy female casual. The other one is hype because HOLY SHIT I LIKE THE THING. TOTALLY different vibe.
Mansplaining tends to come with gatekeeping. “Actually, only Connery is the True Bond. Pierce Brosnan was eyecandy and his movies were so cartoonish they necessitated the reboot, which still doesn’t live up to the Connery movies.”
In which I find out one of my friends actually knows James Bond. Which is WAY MORE THAN I DO, lol.
I also tend to think it’s not mansplaining unless the woman being mansplained to actually knows more about the subject.
An info dump runs that risk – if an autistic dude who really, really loves something a woman has expertise in is talking to her, he may infodump at her and she might perceive that as mansplaining. My son does this to me. (Aside from videogames, I know more about everything than my son does.) But the thing is, when I provide my input and explain what I know based on my expertise, my son is happy to hear it and incorporates it into his next infodump on the subject, because he loves the subject matter and he loves to learn new things about the subject matter. He doesn’t get into an argument with me or try to patronize me after I’ve established that I know more than he does. (And no, doing this to a parent isn’t a male/female thing, it’s an autistic thing – I used to happily do this to my dad on subjects he knew more about.)
The infodumper wants to share everything they know, and secondarily maybe establish themselves as someone knowledgeable on the subject. The mansplainer wants to establish themselves as someone more knowledgeable, and are almost always trying to establish power over the person they’re talking to. Men also do it to other men all the time but are more likely to back down when the other man proves himself to know more (and, if they already know the guy is considered an expert, they might not start); they’re more likely to argue back against women. The infodumper will be fine with finding out that you know more about it than they do because it means they will get more information about their favorite subject. The mansplainer will be very much not fine with it because it cuts off their ability to establish Me Manly Expert, You Appreciative Girl.
And yes. All attempts at gatekeeping are actually a means of trying to establish power over others. Sometimes for legit reasons. (”I don’t think you can call yourself a Christian if you’re more interested in stopping gay marriage than stopping poverty”, says a big Jesus Christ fan who is upset that others in the Jesus Christ fandom seem to be completely ignoring the canon in favor of popular fannish headcanons, because she is a fan of Jesus Christ in canon and wants to see the rest of the fandom actually pay attention to the original texts and follow them. Or, to remove the amusing metaphor, because she thinks that no one who claims to be following Christ should be given the privileges associated with being known to be a Christian if they aren’t in fact doing anything Christ would have wanted them to do.) But attempting to exert power over others for good reasons still counts as attempting to exert power. Mansplaining frequently includes gatekeeping because gatekeeping is a means of establishing yourself as an expert.
you know, I remember, as a recently diagnosed autistic child, researching my condition and finding out that there were debates about whether people like me could feel love
I remember seeing an article about the autism every day video and actually asking my mother if she’d ever thought about killing me (she hadn’t and was understandably distressed by this question)
I remember as an adolescent, looking through literature from the national autistic society and noticing that almost everything was about younger children, and wondering why it seemed like I wasn’t expected to grow up
If you are one of the people involved in spreading these kinds of messages, I want you to use your infamous empathy and think about how painful that would be, and think twice before you do that again. If you are an autistic person, kid or adult, who is just finding out how some people view you, then please don’t despair. There are plenty of people in this world, autistic and otherwise, who realise how wrong such ideas are, and who will accept you for you. You’re not alone.
So ummm my city hates me and they think it’s cool to put this giant mechanical spider on top of a cathedral downtown and tonight it’s going to come down and walk the streets?! LITERAL NIGHTMARE.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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