The Overbearing Know-it-all explains things

My friend Misha Klein recently sent me Rebecca Solnit's article called "Men Explain Things to Me," which is very much worth a read. Here's a tidbit:

…the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men.

Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence…

One of the delightful things about reading is coming upon (or making) connections between disparate sources. Inspired by Laura Miller's list, I've been reading young adult fiction lately, including a book that everyone but me seems already to have read: Norman Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. In that book, as heroes Milo, Tock and the Humbug flee the Mountains of Ignorance—with the Princesses Rhyme and Reason in tow—they are pursued by all manner of demons, who are trying to keep them from attaining Wisdom.

One of these demons is someone Rebecca Solnit would recognize all too well:

From off on the right, his heavy bulbous body lurching dangerously on the spindly legs which barely supported him, came the Overbearing Know-it-all, talking continuously. A dismal demon who was mostly mouth, he was ready at a moment's notice to offer misinformation on any subject. And, while he often tumbled heavily, it was never he who was hurt, but, rather, the unfortunate person on whom he fell. (pp. 238-9)

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