Article here. Excerpt:
'Junior Gillian Friebis said she usually does not speak in class, but that when she decided to raise her hand one day in her politics course, she was shut down by a man in the class. It was an experience she feared would occur after seeing other women being interrupted in the same fashion by other men.
During a class discussion about the political relationship between Catalonia and Spain, Friebis spoke only to be immediately and repeatedly interrupted by a man who said he was trying to play the devil’s advocate to her point.
“After he kept talking over me, I didn’t keep trying, because I knew it was going to happen again, and it reminded me, ‘Oh yeah, this is why I don’t talk in this class,’” Friebis said.
Women at Ithaca College, like Friebis, said they have experienced and witnessed similar scenarios in their classrooms where women’s thoughts are disregarded, shut down, re-explained and interrupted by men, and in some cases, male professors. Friebis’ experience is an example of sexist behavior in the classroom, which is commonly dubbed as “mansplaining:” when a man comments on or explains something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner, according to Dictionary.com. While mansplaining is one form of sexist behavior in the classroom, men interrupting women and re-explaining their thoughts also reinforces societal gender hierarchies.'
