[Ads-l] "Westsplaining"

Nancy Friedman wordworking at GMAIL.COM
Fri Mar 4 22:13:11 UTC 2022


New Republic, March 4, 2022:

“Eastern European online circles have started using a new term to describe
this phenomenon of people from the Anglosphere loudly foisting their
analytical schema and political prescriptions onto the region:
westsplaining.”

"The American Pundits Who Can't Resist Westplaining Ukraine"
https://newrepublic.com/article/165603/carlson-russia-ukraine-imperialism-nato

Built on the example of “mansplaining” (ADS Word of the Year for 2012),
which also begat whitesplaining, privilege-splaining, dogsplaining, etc.

It’s not entirely new. I found earlier usages of “westsplaining” in
reference to Afghanistan and the Balkans as well as Ukraine. And here’s a
citation from 2014:

“I’m tired of a certain faction of Western liberals, especially white guys,
Westsplaining about how anti-Muslim bigotry and Western colonialism and
imperialism and international geopolitics provide *essential context* for
understanding the sources of Muslim problems...”
https://www.theexmuslim.com/2014/04/16/the-racism-of-the-white-wolf-who-cried-islamophobia/

Nancy Friedman
wordworking.com <http://www.wordworking.com/>
https://nancyfriedman.typepad.com <http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/>
Medium <https://medium.com/@wordworking>

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