Everyone has at least one. That coworker (or coworkers) who insist on butting in to conversations that they have no part in to correct minor details or explain something that doesn’t need to be explained. There’s nothing you can usually say to them to get them to stop, or to understand that even if you might flub a few small details in your back and forth that it isn’t their job to show you up and act as fact checker extraordinaire. It puts a real damper on the workday.
Now, Sweden has a solution for that issue in the form of a mansplaining hotline that people can use to vent all of their frustrations about office mansplainers. Sponsored by the Swedish workers’ union Unionen, the hotline is only temporary as of now but is open to both men and woman who want to let loose a little bit about the people at work who make every day just a little too filled with fact tweaking. While the men calling might be more inclined to insist that well, actually, they were just providing a little bit of insight to their conversations and no one should be complaining about that, this sounds like a more than overdue option for women to have some stress relief.
The people offering advice on the calls are trained gender experts or come from other fields completely like authors or professors. Women have already been calling looking for guidance on how to speak up in the face of mansplaining, so the “temporary” nature of the hotline may not be so short-liked after all. Just in case it does shut down after one week, women of Sweden should get that venting in this week. Otherwise you might be stuck in the office wanting to blow your top the next time somebody clarifies that Germany is indeed bigger than Poland by 13,000 square miles and that should be reflected in your important vacation story.
(via The New York Times)
