The Sunflower Collective: TSC Poetry | Prathibha Nandakumar

Artwork by Berus Witold

You are a lampshade; I am happy for you. Let me put a bulb up your ass – Katie Hopkins

All this mansplaining

was sounding like Chandrayan

and I said, ‘it’s not rocket science’.

He was, as usual, inaccurate and

oversimplified, like talking to a nursery child.

It is possible for ChatGPT to answer follow up

questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect

premises and reject inappropriate requests,

said the brief.

Unlike its sibling InstructGPT, it is not

trained to follow an instruction in a prompt

and provide a detailed response.

I read it out loud to him. He was still clueless.

I said some men have this habit of

explaining things they shouldn't and

don't hear things they should.

Who said it’s the most creative word of the year?

Mansplaining is the trend and why would he be not trendy?

I did a quick search and took a screenshot and sent him

“keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare;

that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way

harassment on the street does, that this is not their world.

It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as

it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.”

And finally, I showed him this:

“The term has been used as an ad hominem to silence debate.”

And exactly at that point he started to explain ad hominem

“Typically, this term refers to

a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks

the character, motive, or some other attribute of

the person making an argument rather than

attacking the substance of the argument itself.”

I opened the door to walk out, and he jumped at it,

shutting it, screaming, “No, you are not walking out on this”

and I walked out.

***

The Sunflower Collective