A Landlord Mansplains Light Switches to His Female Tenant and Now We've Gone to the Dark Side
Published July 26 2023, 11:06 a.m. ET
Landlord mansplains light switches to his female tenant.
According to Merriam-Webster, mansplaining is the act of explaining "something to a woman in a condescending way that assumes she has no knowledge about the topic." Most of the time, a man is breaking down something a woman has more knowledge of, like what is going on in her body.
One of greatest mansplaining hits is when a man teaches a woman how to use a simple, everyday item. For example Erin, who goes by @erinmo007 on TikTok, was educated on how to use a light switch by her landlord. It's peak mansplaining and could not be more condescending. What's next, demonstrating a toilet flush? Let's get into the man pain of it all.
What's a light switch?
Here is an exercise in light switch mansplaining. Don't forget to stretch.
Even if you've never seen a light switch a single day of your life, the modern-day version is pretty easy to figure out. I wouldn't hop into surgery without any medical training, but I feel confident I could eyeball a light switch and make it work had I never encountered one before.
Erin *has* seen a light switch before, and yet her landlord was under the impression that she needed a tutorial on the two different kinds that exist in her apartment. As far as I know, Erin is not the star of the movie Memento, so she wasn't in need of a refresher.
In her TikTok, Erin shares how her landlord proceeded to tell her that one set of light switches is newer. Presumably he means a more recent version of light switches, and not newer as in they were just installed. Either way, this is annoying.
She's gesturing to a set of flat light switches, the kind that you click up for on and down for off. The landlord then makes a wild assumption about what kind of light switches Erin has used in her life. "See how they go like that?" he asks while demonstrating how the light switches work. "This is your average light switch, what you're used to." Sir, you have no idea what Erin is used to. Maybe candles are her ride or die.
Oh, so that's how light switches work!
As if we're in a light switch museum, the landlord shows Erin another set in her apartment that is commonly known as a toggle switch. "Let me show you what light switches used to look like," he mansplains. "These are what light switches looked like in the olden days." He then assures her that these do the same thing. And that thing is, of course, turns the lights on and off.
The comments section is pretty lit.
Apart from the weird mansplaining, ageism also comes into play here. Toggle switches are still in use today and are fairly common, so to assume someone is somehow too young to have come into contact with them is rather presumptuous and strange.
A couple people in the comments shared similar stories. "My husband and I were in an antique store," said Kelly, "We were in our mid-thirties. A lady walks up, points to an object, and asks us if we know what it is. It was a phone." Honestly, this one I can almost believe because I'm pretty sure a whole generation of people have never used a landline phone. Imagine calling your crush without speaking to their parents first. That's the dream!
Predictably, there sure was a healthy dose of misogyny in the comments. To no one's surprise, a person who goes by Bone Daddy suggested that the landlord wouldn't have to mansplain things if Erin just woman-understood them. I'll tell you what women do understand: Men are so afraid of what women are capable of that they try to feel important by explaining things like light switches.
A few folks looked at this through a kinder lens. Perhaps the landlord is simply trying to help and, in going along with it, Erin gave him the boost of confidence he might have needed that day. He leaves thinking he did a good deed and Erin has an amusing story to tell. Everybody wins.