I seem to have pissed off my MP

[davidgillon]

I was checking twitter last night, and noticed a local political feed reporting one of the local Tory MPs, Kelly Tolhurst, had come out against Cummings in a statement to constituents, and that made three of them now. It's mostly significant in her case for her being a junior minister. But I thought I'd see who the other two were, so chased down the posts. The second was Rehman Chisti in the other neighbouring constituency and had remarkably similar wording. Neither of them had ever met the man and both thought his trip to Barnard Castle was 'probably' a breach of regs.

The third one was my MP, and it was really mealy-mouthed, barely condemning anything, not even the trip to Barnard Castle.*

So I retweeted all three, noting on hers: 
"And from my local MP, @tracey_crouch which isn't as clear cut in its condemnation of #Cummings. If she wants an explanation of why his Barnard Castle story doesn't remotely hang together, I'm quite happy to educate her as a Durham lad on why the local roads rip it to shreds"

Which apparently hit a nerve, as I got a reply from her official account stating:

"Yes I would LOVE you to mansplain it to me...or you could simply recognise that this statement was written before his press conference and the whole driving to Barnard Castle thing..."

Second half is a fair point, I'd missed the date. First half?!?** So I replied:

"Can I at least ask for it to be Durham-splaining rather than mansplaining? And yes, I missed the date." And finished up by pointing out equivalent local roads that would make equally little sense to choose/not choose if you wanted to test yourself for motorway driving.

* This is a woman who resigned as a minister on a point of principle last year, so I was genuinely disappointed, even if she is a Tory.

** If it is mansplaining, I'm genuinely missing how, so could someone explain it to me, please?

Comments

[alexseanchai]

"a man explaining something to a woman" is not the actual definition of mansplaining. "a man explaining something to a woman in a rude or condescending manner" is not even the actual definition of mansplaining. (not that I think you're doing that.) if she has better knowledge of the area than you do, then you explaining it to her would be mansplaining. but if you actually know more about the subject than she does…

[legionseagle]

If she were a Barnard Castle native who had written a PhD thesis on "Driving between Barnard Castle and Durham Castle; Specific Problems in Ophamology at the Wheel" and you had never been to Barnard Castle in your life, but had begun your letter, "If you want to talk about eye problems in the County Durham area, then you should have read K.H.Tolhurst's masterly work "Driving between Barnard Castle and Durham Castle; Specific Problems in Ophamology at the Wheel", that would have been mansplaining.

But if you did comment on her statement by referring to other statements, not hers, I can see why she might have been a bit pissed off.

[vass]

In your place, this is not a hill I would choose to die on.

I know it stings to be told you're mansplaining when you were explaining something you know about that she doesn't, and she's your representative and she's being lenient on Cummings, BUT:

I imagine that as both a female politician and a woman on Twitter she already gets many similar offers from random people (especially men) to educate her on various subjects, and perhaps has already had this specific issue explained to her already and has had enough of it.

It's probably less about what you said and more about the cumulative effect.

I know it's frustrating, I've been there too (on both sides of the equation!)

[davidgillon]

No plans to do anything more about it, I was just curious as to whether there was a reasonable interpretation that did add up to mansplaining.