An ad outside of Adelaide University in Australia has provided a distressingly accurate depiction of most women’s real college experience. And business experience. And life experience in general. Showing one man talking at a group of women who are very clearly not into his shit, the billboard appears to advertise a course in mansplaining. Most women have sat through enough scenes like this that if there were a degree in the subject, we’d all be on our postdoctoral work by now.
Those poor women. You can see the boredom eating their souls. I’m sure this real-life Guy In Your MFA is sharing what he believes to be Very Important Opinions, likely a reworded reiteration of what had just been said by the woman on the right with the death daggers coming out of her eyeballs.
As you might expect, the comments on that post are a trove of dudes crying “reverse sexism!” and asking why “men aren’t even allowed to talk anymore!” Of course, there’s the classic “If this picture showed five men listening to a woman speak, would that be womansplaining?” Which is a conversation we can consider having when that image strikes the same sort of highly relateable cord with 90% of the men who see it. Until then, their contribution to this conversation is a useless as that dude in the photo.
What makes all of this even more depressingly perfect is that in this image of the ad being removed (I guess they weren’t too happy with the reaction), you can see that its original placement was right in front of the women’s health center. Just to guarantee that as many women as possible are forced to see this guy’s face.
For fairness and accuracy, it needs to be noted that the university says the ad wasn’t theirs but was for Renewal SA, an urban development government organization. But if you were hoping for whatever reason that the University of Adelaide’s mansplaining program was real, don’t worry, they still have plenty of courses that appear to fit that description.
Also … pic.twitter.com/Zt2wITKApt
— Susan McKenzie (@SusanAMcK) June 29, 2018
Whether you pursue a higher education degree, government work, or literally anything else, you can be sure that wherever there is a roomful of qualified, passionate, intelligent women, you’ll also find a man, talking loudly, wondering why no one is interested in hearing his opinions anymore.
(via MamaMia, image: Shutterstock/wavebreakmedia)
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