

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Men Explain Things to Me" by Rebecca Solnit. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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What’s Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me about? How are women silenced by men in personal and professional situations?
Many women have experienced “mansplaining”—when a man condescendingly explains something to a woman that she already knows well. In Men Explain Things to Me, historian, activist, and award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explains that this tendency is the result of men believing they have the right to control women.
Read below for a brief overview of Men Explain Things to Me
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me explains that society has a longstanding pattern of treating the rights of women as secondary to the rights of men. This pattern is the result of a pervasive underlying belief rooted in authoritarianism: that men have the right to control women. This pattern manifests in different ways, from men confidently speaking over women, to violence such as rape and murder. In her series of essays, Solnit describes the many ways society mistreats women—discussing statistics and instances of violence against women, the ideology behind sexism and misogyny, and how this ideology manifests on an individual, societal, and global level.
Solnit is a historian, activist, and award-winning author of 20 books, including Hope in the Dark, A Paradise Built in Hell, and River of Shadows. She also contributes to the website TomDispatch and is a contributing editor to Harper’s magazine.
The Fight for Women’s Rights
According to Solnit, women have long been fighting for basic human rights, including life, freedom, and the right to take part in culture and politics. Despite great progress in recent decades, this fight for equality continues today.
The general message that society sends to women is that this world isn’t built for them and that women’s right to take up space or be heard is dependent on what men want from them. On an individual level, this societal pattern may manifest as irritating but seemingly innocuous interactions, like when a man patronizingly explains a concept to a woman who already knows the topic well—a tendency commonly known as mansplaining. (Shortform note: While Solnit usually avoids this term because she finds it overly general and simplistic, we’ll use it in this guide for the sake of concision.)
However, societal mistreatment of women can also manifest in dangerous, violent ways, such as sexual assault, rape, and murder. According to Solnit, the practice of “mansplaining” and these much more extreme behaviors exist on the same spectrum: They’re all defined by the underlying authoritarian belief that men have the right to control women—whether they’re controlling when and on what topics women are allowed to speak, how they’re allowed to behave or use their bodies, or even whether they’re allowed to live.
Statistics on the Mistreatment of Women
Solnit cites statistics to illustrate her point about the mistreatment of and violence against women, particularly with regard to domestic violence, sexual assault, and murder. She notes that these statistics are often purposely excluded from the news cycle—because if we confronted these statistics, we’d have to talk about the reasons behind them, such as the patriarchy and gender roles. And if we did that, we’d then have to discuss how to prevent this violence, which would require significant systemic change in societies throughout the world.
Assault and Domestic Violence
Solnit explains that, in America, a woman is assaulted by a partner every nine seconds. This makes domestic violence the single most common cause of injury for women in the United States, with 2 million annual injuries, of which over 25% require medical attention. Additionally, the most common cause of death for pregnant women in America is violence from a spouse—approximately three women are murdered by a spouse or ex-spouse every day. Statistics around the world are similarly grim: One global study suggests that women between the ages of 15 and 44 are more likely to be injured or killed by men than cancer, malaria, war, and traffic accidents together.
Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, and Rape
Solnit estimates that tens of millions of women are raped in America every year. A rape is reported every 6.2 minutes—but since most rapes go unreported, she suggests that it’s possible a rape occurs every minute. Sexual harassment and assault are similarly prevalent, and Solnit notes that these in particular often occur in organizations like colleges and universities, workplaces, and the military. In America, 20% of all women are rape survivors; nearly 20% of female college students experience sexual assault; and Leon Panetta—the former Secretary of Defense—estimated that in 2010, nearly 20,000 soldiers were sexually assaulted by other soldiers, with the perpetrators rarely facing punishment. Despite the scale of the problem, rapes are often poorly investigated, if they’re investigated at all—Solnit states that the backlog of untested rape kits in America is nearly half a million.
Rape can also give men continuing power over women, since it can result in pregnancy. Solnit notes that there are 31 states in which rapists have parental rights over the children who result from their violence. This predicament is further compounded by the fact that many politicians have been pushing anti-abortion legislation, including bills that could allow a rapist to sue their victim for having an abortion.
Additionally, the burden for preventing male violence tends to be placed on the victims rather than the perpetrators, explains Solnit. Colleges, for example, often respond to sexual violence by trying to teach women how to avoid being assaulted, rather than trying to teach men not to assault.
Not All Men…But Yes All Women
Solnit explains that her aim is not to villainize men. She notes that an increasing number of men are allies and feminists, who recognize that gender rights are not a competition and that equality for women doesn’t mean men will be more oppressed.
However, she asserts that discussion of the idea that not all men are violent toward women misses the point. It’s certainly true that not all men engage in these violent acts, but enough of them do that all women have to worry about being assaulted.
Where Does This Violence Come From?
Society and the media often blame male violence in the US on factors such as the ease of acquiring firearms, economic difficulties and class struggles, and issues that affect the brain such as head injuries, lead poisoning, and mental illness. However, Solnit notes, these factors affect men and women equally—yet men commit 90% of the nation’s murders.
Solnit explains that the true source of male violence is the authoritarian belief that men have the right to control women. This includes a sense of entitlement—the feeling that a man has the right to harm a woman for any reason he wants. Often, the reason a man chooses to harm a woman is because she rejects him romantically or sexually. A man who subconsciously believes he has more right to a woman’s body than she does will often respond violently when she denies him access to it.
Challenging the Patriarchy: Marriage Equality
According to Solnit, traditional marriage and legal structures also help enable violence against women. Until recently, marriage was a legal contract that essentially made a woman the property of her husband. This unequal power dynamic rendered wives legally powerless against their husbands, facilitating domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and financial abuse (since husbands had control over their wives’ income and possessions). This power structure relies on the difference in status that deems women inferior to men. As such, the idea of a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman posed a threat to this type of legally sanctioned violence—hence the opposition from some people against marriage equality.
Solnit argues that the opposition to same-sex marriage illustrates a drive to maintain the power discrepancy between a man and a woman in a traditional marriage. Opponents suggest that it’s a threat to traditional marriage’s objective of procreation. However, Solnit points out that many heterosexual couples choose not to have children or are unable to conceive, yet their marriages are still considered valid. This suggests that the argument that same-sex marriage is a threat to traditional marriage’s procreative purpose is a smokescreen—hiding same-sex marriage opponents’ real fear of the destruction of traditional power imbalances.

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Here's what you'll find in our full Men Explain Things to Me summary:
- How "mansplaining" comes from a cultural tendency to devalue women
- The attitude of control that motivates the mistreatment of women
- The role that language plays in the advancement of women’s rights