When men like Matt Y post something that is a bit of a howler, people jump in to assure us that it’s a “bit”. Because smart men are never wrong. Smart is a binary from which men can not fall. But if you do fall, it is permanent. Being wrong once means you are not smart.

Now the truth is, anybody as high-profile Matt Y is going to be wrong about something. I am not here to speak up for him, he’s a big boy. I want to talk about the gender dynamics of humor and being wrong on social media.

When I actually do a “bit” I get dudes jumping into my Timelines and DMs to splain how wrong and dumb I am.

I don’t get people crowding into my mentions to say “she’s doing a bit” in response to the firehosing.

Now that @TamikaButler and @DrDesThePlanner have shared some of the dumbass racist garbage that shows up in their DMs, mine seem pretty tame by comparison,but it is still really othering to make a joke and l face a solid wall of splaining.

Let alone the absence of the army of people that Matt Y seems to have who go forward assuring one-and-all that he wasn’t being obtuse, he was being funny. Literally nobody does that for me

Now part of that is that speaking over or for me is not necessarily anybody’s job. The absence of “bit support” for me is less the issue; the availability of excuse makers and fixers for men IS the issue.

Think of allllll the excuses made for Donald Trump’s purposeful ignorance. Being smart or dumb is a matter of context, so let’s jettison that. Donald Trump had every privilege available to a human being on earth, yet his grasp of basic concepts is abysmal...

And yet he is still portrayed in conservative media as wily, crafty, mostly right, wittily owning the libs with performance art, etc. Take him figuratively not literally...one explainer after another.

This is to no small degree possible because of the investment that people have in maintaining the connection between smartness and the color of his skin and his gender.

IOW we should normalize Expecting men explain theirs own ideas instead of appointing ourselves their guardians and fixers that always seeks to maintain a knowledge/epistemic hierarchy by making male thoughts fit into the “smart” “right” boxes.