Maybe men need to be taught the art of conversation

Helen Coffey, The Independent

I’m going to start with that much-maligned phrase of the 2010s before I take aim at male conversational skills: #notallmen. Not all men don’t know how to hold a proper conversation. Not all men spend the time when someone else is talking thinking about what they are going to say next. Not all men treat any time they’re not talking as a mild annoyance before they are allowed to speak again. Not all men are ignorant of the fact that a dialogue should be just that — a two-way street, something that is constructed together, brick by brick, by dint of asking questions and actively listening to the other person instead of simply monologuing.

But if #notallmen, then #enoughmen have so little awareness of the above that it’s prompted David Mitchell to take aim at another term popularised more than a decade ago: “mansplaining”. The comedian and Ludwig actor said that the portmanteau, historically used to describe a man patronisingly explaining something to a woman that she already knows, is “unfair”, as it’s simply how most men converse.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, he posited that men “do it to each other”, not just members of the opposite sex. “I feel there’s an unfairness to the term ‘mansplaining’, which is taken to be men explaining things in a boring way to women,” said Mitchell, “because they do it to each other and they take turns — that’s what men call a conversation.”

The word “mansplaining” was first coined in 2008, inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s essay and subsequent book, Men Explain Things to Me, in which she described how a man explained her own book to her at a party — not realising that she was the author. It prompted plenty of other women to speak up about similar experiences they’d had and post them on social media. Female academics, for example, shared how they’d had their own papers quoted back at them by men who condescendingly suggested they should expand their research. It clearly struck a chord: in 2010, “mansplainer” was declared a “Word of the Year” by The New York Times; by 2018, it had officially entered the Oxford English Dictionary.

Though Mitchell’s comment was undoubtedly tongue in cheek, it did somewhat resonate. The men I am close friends with have learned, somewhere along the way, what a real conversation should look like — imbued with curiosity and interest from both sides, leading to a mutually beneficial experience where each party feels heard and valued. This can feel the exception, rather than the rule, at times; it’s perhaps no coincidence that I have far more close female than male friends.

A number of male acquaintances still seem to approach a “conversation” as a soliloquy in which they hurl as much information as possible about their day, life and current interests at you, and then expect the same in return — a news update reminiscent of a town crier, round-robin email or bulletin board come to life. Very few, if any, questions are asked; the answers are not meaningfully engaged with, “active listening” seemingly a skill that’s no longer in vogue.

In fact, one of the only tweets of mine to ever go viral, back when X was Twitter, concerned the phenomenon of going on dates that felt more like conducting interviews. At the end of each lengthy answer, the man in question would sit in silence, waiting for my next question, rather than asking anything in return. It was exhausting, the exact opposite of the “yes, and!” founding principle of improv that enables people to create a scene in tandem by building on what the other person has said.

That experience of dating was a good five years ago, but I’m not sure things have improved all that much. Conversationally speaking, the modern world seems explicitly designed to erode our communication skills even as it gives us ever-more mediums through which to get in touch. The increase in working from home has seen many young people enter the job market without the advantage of getting to converse with colleagues in person; voice notes seem to have replaced the phone call, meaning we’re more adept at delivering a solo podcast than engaging with someone in real time.