Spiritual Mansplaining

"This is just your wounds coming through."
"You are projecting."
"You just need to open your heart and forgive."

Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by 'Spiritual Mansplaining'...

Spiritual Mansplaining: When a man uses esoteric language to bypass a woman's somatic reality.
It's a way of saying, 'I'm more aware, therefore I know more than you do about your lived experience.'

It's about power.

Specifically, the use of power to subvert her truth with platitudes that restore his comfort.

The spiritual mansplainer turns her story into his teaching moment—when her truth WAS already the teaching;
It was just strong enough to be disruptive, so they had to dilute it with something weaker.

My recent work conveys that it's both easy and common for an egoic intent (validation, gratification) to hide behind a spiritual goal (evolution, healing).
There's an inarguable power discrepancy in our society that gets weaponized against women, in this specific way, more so than men.

And I can speak on these things both as a woman and as someone who has experienced them.

But some men have been weighing in as if I'm being reactive.
They paint it as trying to offer me a more healed worldview.

This protects their ego from what they're actually doing, which is trying to silence me.

Which is, unironically, the reactive response.
Essentially, they've said, 'Well you can't let one or a couple anecdotal experiences shape how you perceive things.'

For the record, I use personal stories to make my voice visceral. But what I'm sharing is NOT personal.
I'm not seeking a witness to my pain. I'm deconstructing the 'how'—on behalf of the women who have had to do the same.

The message is: There are dynamics within spiritual spaces that embolden and justify harm against women.

But some men are confusing an indictment of a system with an indictment against men.
That sensitivity merely reflects how embedded the two are. And by trying to silence those who speak on it, they are BEING that system.

The system is patriarchy. And it's not something any of us get to choose whether or not we participate in.

What we get to choose is how conscious we are of our level of participation and how we correct those influences before we go out and subject other people to them.

So, strictly for the men that these truths make uncomfortable—you can direct that energy into correcting other men.

Meanwhile, women are done playing the student to a sermon they didn't ask for.