Solnit's "The Archipelago of Arrogance"

Solnit, Rebecca. "Best of Tom Dispatch: The Archipelago of Arrogance." TomDispatch. TomDispatch.com. 19 Aug. 2012. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.

This essay expands on Solnit's earlier essay, "Men Explain Things to Me," by adding a new introduction which contextualizes the writing of the piece and her response (n. pag).  The original essay was cited as a reason behind the neologism "mansplaining," though Solnit never used the term herself.

Solnit explains that women, often silenced, end up "fighting on two fronts": they not only fight for the cause they believe in, but also fight for the right to speak up about it at all (n. pag). Solnit writes that some men believe that women lack sufficient credibility to testify to their own experience (n. pag). 

Solnit gives several examples of situations in which men explain information to her that she understands better than they do, and also give examples of how this affects women in life-or-death situations, or women whose accounts of being raped do not hold up in a course of law (n. pag).