It's funny because "patron" in "patronize" comes from "pater" which means father.

Yeah in my books, "Mansplaining" has never had proper meaning. It was just a way of blaming men for a particular behaviour, which is generally neutral to begin with.

Because it's a specific subset of patronizing, where it wouldn't have happened if the target were not a woman.

Donner–Kruger effect in action.

I have never liked the term. I am also in a technical role and feel like if I say anything to a women at work I will be yelled at.

Like okay I had to go to speech therapy for years the very fact that I can talk at all is a miracle of medical science. Any other time in human history I would be effectively mute. So now I am working with someone, I have to not only figure out the answer to their question I have to spend all this effort to get my mouth to move to say the answer and if I explain it even slightly wrong I am an awful person who deserves to have their life ruined.

I don't know what you don't know. Sometimes I am not going to simplify my answer not enough sometimes I am going to simplify it too much. I am going to make a mistake and for that I am sorry.

Frankly I do avoid it because I don't want to be accused of something. If I don't interact I can't interact incorrectly.

Wow, they sound like some insecure guys lol.

I get what you're saying about interjecting in stranger's conversations, but that actually happens all the time (initiated by men and women, to men and women) here in Canada. It's actually one of my favorite things about Canada! I've got into some spirited discussions with random strangers about all sorts of things, and bonding with strangers with immediate familiarity is something I've grown to really enjoy.

Unless I'm in an introverted mood, in which case I just mumble and run off lol

I definitely agree that you don't just butt into a strangers conversation in public. That's just weird.

When it comes to tech though you have to at least get where those guys are comming from. It's not because you're a woman, it's because it's tech. You can't assume people know anything about tech otherwise you'll be half way through explaining the thing before you find out that the person you're explaining it to doesn't know what a right mouse button is and they think the internet is an icon on their desktop. You can't know what everyone else knows so the easiest thing is to assume they know nothing. If you work in IT or any other tech field long enough it's really easy to wind up talking to everyone like they lick windows just because that's the safest thing to assume until proven otherwise.

As far as the IT guys avoiding you, they may just feel awkward for treating you like a window licker, or they may just be leaving you alone because now they know that you know what you're doing. I work in a different support job now but I still have coworkers that I don't really interact with because I know them and trust them enough to do most stuff on their own. However that also means that if they seek me out then something is very wrong and it's probably going to be a pain in the ass because if it wasn't then they would have fixed it themselves.

sure sure