Rune Sigils Versus Mansplaining

I have a pet peeve against mansplaining. It doesn’t serve anyone at all, not even the men that indulge in it! Luckily it turns out to be manageable through the judicious application of sigil magic.

Last night while dining my companions and I were forced to endure the nearby mansplaining monologue of another patron. He held his audience hostage without the slightest clue that he was boring them to death. He was very proud of his love of beer – apparently a gift for which he has been praised at breweries near and far. His primary mansplaining victims were two women, although he was also using it (quite without conscious awareness) to try to impose a pecking order of manliness on another male.

Well I don’t enjoy having to listen to shallow, trivial nonsense be used as a vehicle for imposing social dominance. I suppose a more outgoing chaos magician might have just walked over and politely embarrassed the gentleman in front of his captives. Being an introvert, I did a sigil.

I just started tracing shapes in some puddles of water on my table. The rune ISA came to mind – stillness. Then he mentioned the number eleven (maybe something like “I’ve drunk eleven kinds of craft beer from Massachusetts!” or the like). Well eleven is Isa’s number in the Elder Futhark, so now I knew it was the rune of the moment.

I drew Isa over and over in the water, obscuring and reinscribing it. It was surprisingly easy to access some irritation and attach it to my intention to have his wagging tongue fall still. Then I banged the table, leaned over to my other half, and whispered “does not matter, need not be.” We had a nice little conversation about the merits of this phrase versus “that or something better” as a tool for sealing off a sigil magic episode.

Meanwhile, the loudmouth beer-bore suddenly fell silent, then had to go to the bathroom. His companions looked visibly relieved in his absence, then made up their mind to leave. Oh well. We enjoyed the rest of our meal in peace.

Mansplainers: you aren’t impressing anybody. Stop putting on a front and let your genuine qualities show. You don’t realize it but the more you push your (mostly female) victims to the margins, the more you impede your own genius from shining forth…and the more you miss out on all the wonderful things they might otherwise have shared if you’d only been able to get out of that suit of ‘manly’ armor.