Manterrupting

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About

Manterrupting is an Internet slang term used to describe an unwarranted interruption of a woman by a male colleague in workplace environment. The neologism rose to online prominence after it became widely embraced by feminist bloggers and critics of Donald Trump during the 2016 United States Presidential Election debates in September 2016.

Origin

The term "manterrupting" was coined by writer Jessica Bennett in a TIME magazine article titled "How Not to Be ‘Manterrupted’ in Meetings"^[1] published on January 14th, 2015. In the article, Bennett coined the terms "manterrupting," a portmanteau of man and interrupting, and "bropropriating, a portmanteau of bro and appropriating, which are respectively defined as “unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man” and “taking a woman’s idea and taking credit for it" in workplace settings, to explain such behavioral patterns as surveyed by Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and published by the New York Times^[2] on January 12th, 2015.

Spread

Throughout January 2015, the phenomenon of "manterrupting" was reported on by a number of other news outlets, with many articles offering additional advices on how to deal with such behaviors, including Behance^[3] and Women You Should Know^[4]. On January 16th, 2016, the first Urban Dictionary entry^[7] for the term was submitted by user FeministMiss, defined as the following:

Manterrupting: a sexist display of male "dominance". A trait that has not yet been lost despite decades of evolution. When men interrupt women because they "believe" that what they have to say is somehow more important.

Boy: why aren't you joining in on the conversation any more? Talk wth us!

Girl: I would love to, but anytime I try to say to chime in, but your buddies keep manterrupting me.

On March 8th, 2016, Fortune^[5] ran an interview article with Glen Mazzara, a former producer of The Shield and The Walking Dead, which highlighted his efforts to expand the gender and ethnic diversity of the writing staff while working on the shows, an example that was cited in Adam Grant's study (shown below).

On September 22nd, Glamour Magazine^[6] ran an article titled "Yup, Science Confirms 'Man-terrupting' Is Real"^[6], which further delves into the history and depth of the phenomenon as an everyday example of workplace sexism in modern societies, citing various gender studies published between 1975 and 2014.

Criticisms

As previously seen with "mansplaining," the sexist undertone of "manterruption" has been disputed by critics of social justice activism, anti-feminists and men's rights activists, particularly on Urban Dictionary,^[8] where there are several entries that offer alternative definitions for the term as a bigoted word favored by militant feminists, as well as several communities affiliated with Men's Rights Activism on Reddit.^[9]^[10]

2016 United States Elections Debates

In late September 2016, during the first round of the United States presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, several news outlets and commentators criticized the Republican presidential candidate's repeated interruption of Clinton's responses as a textbook example of "manterruption" in action, including The New York Times,^[11] Huffington Post,^[12] The Telegraph^[13] and Bustle,^[14] among others.