: Re: How do I justify a mansplainer/misogynist? I have a male character who is coming across as patronizing and mansplain-y. He has several scenes where he tells a (different) female protagonist

@Margaret427

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As apparently evidenced by answers received so far, you might not even need to make an effort..

Your readers will probably do all the hard work for you. Even if he's right by the numbers, a significant proportion of readers will perceive his methodology or character as wrong because they're conditioned to see things that way.

Use perspective and limit information: Man is explaining to woman and character (perspective) only hears part of the explanation, or doesn't understand why the exposition is occurring in the first place (doesn't witness trigger behavior)

Have him use terminology considered inappropriate to modern readers.
(Man from 1940s uses what terminology he has available to him, mulatto doesn't need to be used offensively if he hasn't been exposed to the last x years of justification and counterargument that lead society to arbitarily decide that one word is offensive and another isn't.)

Using perspective (and counterfactuals/retrospectives) you can either (not limited to) reveal the withheld datum in future dialogue, or clarifying 'look back' scenes.

You'll make it harder for yourself by spending time in people's heads (that is to say, if you tell the reader what the character is thinking, instead of what they actually witness and do.)

[A certain viewpoint might see people as individuals, and that any explicit attempt to direct people to act or feel in ways they don't already as contrary to good ethical behavior.

A contrary view might point out that that removes any need for society except in the strictly material sense.]

Your character may offer different advice (or expect different behavior) to men than women, if you want him to be justified but appear (or even be) wrong (but have some measure of justification that can be elaborated or not), this will depend very much on the circumstances and environment.

Physical activity: One might assume that a greater proportion of males than females have climbed a fence within recent memory, and if you're in a hurry or don't bother to take a poll, (or his sister and female friends rarely liked that kind of 'adventure' forming a basis of evidence and any judgement based on evidence is justified, even if one may caveat it after the fact) the knee-jerk assumption might be to task a male with the climbing, only for woman b to go ahead and do it with ease. Simple situations like this will be construed as misogyny, as opposed to what they are, which is simply acting with limited information.

Of course this gets easier if one or more of the characters is motivated to do things just because they think Man doesn't think they'll want to. 'Contrarianism is strong in this one.'

If the Man then appeals to.. what's the term.. reverse psychology.. to achieve ends, he can just simply end up acting the misogynist as a means to an end.

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