‘Hepeating’ is the latest word to enter the feminist lexicon. Following the introduction of eye-rolling gendered terms like “manspreading” and “manflu,” the word “hepeating” has been made popular thanks to social media and countless progressive websites embracing the newly defined term.
Hepeating is supposedly what happens when a woman comes up with a good idea or suggestion and pitches it at the workplace, where she’s subsequently ignored by her colleagues. But, when a male colleague repeats her words and gets a positive response, he is credited for her proposal.
“Good work, John. Mary, you need to put more effort into your ideas.”
The theft of women’s ideas isn’t exactly new in scientific fields—especially decades ago when senior male researchers would lift the ideas of their understudies and claim credit for their work. Female researchers like Rosalind Franklin, who studied DNA, were often ignored and not given recognition for their achievements.
Despite the undeniable sexism in the past, the term “hepeating” has now been coined to claim that women today still receive the same unfair treatment in the workplace. Nicole Gugliucci, an assistant professor of physics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire claims that her friends came up with the term. It quickly went viral on Twitter, as these things tend to go.
Gugliucci gave an example of how to use the term and warned those who try to “mansplain” the issue as “not a big deal” that they would be publicly shamed with her newfound fame.
Fascinatingly, Gugliucci issued her warning well before anyone even had a chance to respond to her, predicting that men would complain about her gendered term.
Terms like “mansplaining” and “hepeating” suggest that women are incapable of committing the same fouls within their own social interactions, and that these actions come solely from men intent on oppressing women.
Ironically, the rise of gendered, anti-male terminology like “hepeating” and “mansplaining” comes at a time when feminists complain about the use of gendered words like “chairman,” which they claim belittle women. Some responders pointed out to Gugliucci that it is counterproductive to use such terms, as they stand in the way of gender equity.
Here are some other words made popular by feminists:
Bropropriating – When a man takes a woman’s idea and claims credit for it.
Brogressive – A left-leaning man who disagrees with intersectional feminism.
Man-flu – When a man exaggerates that their cold might be a flu.
Mansplaining – When a man patronizingly explains a basic issue to a woman.
Manterrupting – When a man interrupts a woman.
Manthreading – When a man posts a series of tweets in succession, made popular by a Gizmodo post mocking liberal pundits Eric Garland and Jeet Heer.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.