My Airport Mansplainer

I had the pure delight of getting into a discussion with a mansplainer at the Seattle Airport last week!

Let's get the definition out of the way first. There are people who don't believe it happens or that women are making it about gender when it's not. They are wrong. There is a different between explaining and mansplaining. Telling someone how to do something when they are unaware is explaining (someone explaining how a deductible works when I first started in insurance was helpful). To me, mansplaining is a man telling you how to do something/how something works because they believe that they know better than you. Honestly, it's hard to put into words. If it's never happened to you, consider yourself lucky that people think you're smart enough to know about things.

Back to my airport friend!

The conversation started totally normal - he asked me what I was reading, we talked about Walking Dead, and he wasn't even hitting on me or anything. It was a nice conversation! When the bartender came back over, he bought me a drink. Once the drink arrived, that's when it went downhill...

For some reason, he decided we needed to talk about Donald Trump and what is he doing. I said that I didn't agree with anything Trump has done since he's been in office. This guy decided I didn't know what I was talking about.

He spent about ten minutes telling me that it wasn't that I don't agree with Trump's policies! It's that I hate Donald Trump! Jimmy Carter did the same things Trump is doing, and he bets I like him! If Obama were signing these policies I would be in favor! I really just need to separate what Trump is doing from the man himself! These policies are great (and btw he hates Syrians)! No examples or anything, obviously.

Even though I literally sat there and told the guy that it was the policies I disagreed with (I didn't even mention how much I hate Trump because this was going no where good), he continued to tell me that I didn't really think that.

What made that guy think it was okay? To look at another adult and say "You don't know what you think." He barely even tried to tell me why the policies were good (the short version of what he said is Muslims are bad). His entire tactic was to tell me that I'm letting how I feel about Trump get in the way of how great these policies are. On what planet is that okay? Does that ever work?

That beer was good, but it wasn't that good.