It is immensely tempting to say that the Democratic senators questioning Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearing this week are engaging in quite a lot of mansplaining. The condescension is there. The unnecessary, longwinded lectures. The interruptions. They’re even using poster boards and other visual aids. The only reason I will not call any of this mansplaining is that the term is vapid and stupid, and used unironically only by people whose simple minds have been warped by politics and ideology. Still, by the Left’s rules, applied equitably, it must be concluded that Barrett’s inquisitors are sexist bullies — even the women, who are apparently infected with internalized misogyny. Or some such nonsense.
But if the meaning and application of “mansplaining” changes according to the political needs of the moment, at least the word is contrived and meaningless from the start. The Left invented the term. I suppose they can do what they like with it. The far more disturbing thing is to witness how real words, words that existed before our era of Woke politics, are now redefined with rapid speed, on the fly, with coordinated efficiency. The hearings have provided us with perhaps the most glaring and striking example of the Left’s language manipulation scheme that we have yet seen.
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