Sometimes as a white male, I feel like a pretzel in a bag of Chex Mix. There are too many of us, we are boring and we ruin the rest of the bag.

There are many things me and my people do that are counterproductive and frankly annoying. Perhaps one of the most egregious things we do is mansplaining.

Despite the overwhelming urge I feel to do so, I am going to refrain from mansplaining to all of you what mansplaining is, but I am sure most people are very aware.

The process to give up mansplaining has been a very difficult one for me. Stopping mansplaining is to a man what stopping flying is for a bird. It is simply what we were born to do.

Part of my strategy for stopping is to pause before I began to speak and ask myself a very important question, “Does anyone care about what I am going to say?”

If the answer is no, and it most likely will be, the process is over. Congratulations! You have refrained from mansplaining.

Unfortunately, this is only a one-time fix. If you want to stop mansplaining for good, a lot more work will have to be done.

Another tip I have is to continuously repeat the phrase “shut up” to yourself in your head over and over again during most conversations.

This mantra can help stop you from chiming in with some useless detail or explaining some blatantly obvious concept. The people in your life will thank you for it.

A third things you can do is recruit your family and friends in your quest to stop mansplaining. Ask them to call you out or tell you to shut your mouth if you start going off.

Mansplaining may be an individual action, but the effort to stop it will require more of a community effort.

It is worth it. Imagine a world where women are free to finish a thought or sentence without being interrupted by a man with nothing useful to add to the conversation.

Adam Tumino is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].