For today's Myths Encinitas this tendency will be hereby called, Stocksplaining based on this definition where "person in authority position" is the position of privilege:
Splaining—[Privilege]splaining is when a person of privilege condescendingly tells an unprivileged person something [he or she] already knows, particularly something about [one's] own life and/or identity, e.g. a man mansplaining what it's like to be a woman to a woman. [Privilege]splaining is that delightful mixture of privilege and ignorance that leads to condescending, inaccurate explanations, delivered with the rock-solid conviction of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course [the privileged person] is right, because [he or she is the privileged person] in this conversation."
It would be difficult to cull through all of the videos clips of Jerome Stocks, even when he wasn't sitting in the mayor chair, and find one where he isn't Stocksplaining something to someone. But this last clip is particularly interesting because his Stocksplaining to James Bond enraged Bond who has spent 20 years on the council and was mayor 4 or 5 times. After all, old white men are the master splainers and being treated as an empty vessel needing to be filled by some self-appointed Jerry Jump-up expert is just outrageous for the old politico.
The room last Wednesday was filled with people who have a great deal of experience, they knew about their neighborhood, the project and some were experts in their field. One in particular needs to be heard by more of our community who have battled with the engineering and planning departments, Boone Hellman. Mr. Hellman is just one of many with expertise and in this case real technical expertise. All of the speakers are worth hearing if you haven't yet.
Another aspect of this is how demeaning it is. Women are all too familiar with the problem of men explaining things, and as historian and author Rebecca Solnit writes:
" . . . billions of women must be out there on this 6-billion-person planet being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property, now or ever. This goes way beyond Men Explaining Things, but it's part of the same archipelago of arrogance.
Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don't. Not yet, but according to the actuarial tables, I may have another fortysomething years to live, more or less, so it could happen. Though I'm not holding my breath."In our little Petrie dish that is the Encinitas City Council, a microcosm - like hundreds of thousand of other towns our size across the country, is where we are all trying to advocate for ourselves and our communities in matters of governance. This is a chance to connect the dots and empathise with others who have been marginalized, ignored, silenced, patronized, lied to or abused.
Stocksplaining doesn't rest well with anyone except Jerome Stocks himself, yet it's a feature not a bug. It is obviously a gigantic myth he holds about himself. It's time for him to be voted out of the city council, along with his friend Muir.
