Tired of being talked down by your male boss/friend/relative? Maybe this T-shirt can help.

“Mansplaining” is being regarded as an offence everywhere and fashion is proof. The word, which combines “man” and “splaining”, from the verb “explaining”, refers to that particular kind of talk by men who naturally assume that they are superior intelligence. Therefore, everything else needs to be explained to women.

This kind of “explaining” can be done by adults to children (or vice versa, especially on technology), but is done mostly by men to women.   

The one who is doing the explaining is often clueless about the limits of his ignorance, especially about the person he is talking to. The word “mansplaining” entered into the vocabulary after Rebecca Solnit wrote an essay titled ‘Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn't Get in Their Way’ in 2008. In it she mentioned being at a party where she was discussing her book on Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneering British photographer, when a man broke in and asked her if she had “heard about the very important Muybridge book”.

Solnit later pointed out that she did not use the word; she merely talked about her experience. It was a 2010 New York Times word of the year. But the phenomenon was so widespread that the word just caught on.

Mansplaining also happens very frequently on subjects of politics, finance and sports, even as it is assumed that entertainment or fashion is a woman’s domain. Why one area of knowledge should be superior to another is another question. In a conversation, men are also known to assume that they earn more.

But there is hope as long as there is questioning. And well-designed T-shirts like this. We do think wearing this one will get some work done.