The Internet Is Loving This New Word for When a Man Repeats Your Idea and Gets Credit

Andrea Park
Updated
The Internet Is Loving This New Word for When a Man Repeats Your Idea and Gets Credit

Women rejoiced when "mansplain" was coined nearly a decade ago. Finally, we had the perfect way to refer to the phenomenon of a man patronizingly explaining to a woman something she already knows. Now, the term "hepeat" has entered the lexicon to describe another sexist conversational habit. You know when you share an idea but it's largely ignored, and then a man repeats your exact idea and is praised for it? He's just hepeated you.

The term was introduced by Nicole Gugliucci, an astronomer and professor, on Twitter last week. "My friends coined a word: hepeated. For when a woman suggests an idea and it's ignored, but then a guy says same thing and everyone loves it," she wrote on Friday in a tweet that has since garnered more than 65,000 retweets and 200,000 likes. Gugliucci explained further: "Usage: 'Ugh, I got hepeated in that meeting again.' Or, 'He totally hepeated me!'" She also warned women that calling out hepeating is known to incite rampant mansplaining. "If anyone tries mansplaining why that's 'not a big deal,' you will be publicly shamed. Just warning you. Anyway, enjoy your new word!" she tweeted.

Soon after Gugliucci shared the new term — no man has yet to take credit for the idea, but there's still time — countless women began sharing their own hepeating experiences on Twitter in replies to her original tweet, with the tag #hepeated. "My career is on continuous hepeat," one woman wrote, while another tweeted, "My Mom does this ALL the time- drives me nuts! She asks my advice or a question, blows it off, but listens to my brother's 'hepeat.'" And another Twitter user pointed out that this frustrating phenomenon even happens at the highest level of government: "Sort of like when Collins and Murkowski oppose new healthcare legislation, and McCain gets all the credit," she wrote.

Several people also pointed out that men and especially women of color disproportionately experience hepeating, with one Twitter user introducing another related term. "I'm gonna go ahead and coin 'rewhite' then, for every time a person of color says something and is ignored until a white person says it," she wrote.

One woman offered a solution to the dreaded hepeat. "Love the word, now advice: To beat the hepeat, women must repeat what other women say giving her credit before a man has time to hepeat it," she tweeted. Another noted women in the Obama administration employed similar tactics: Female White House staffers told The Washington Post last year they had gotten in the habit of repeating each other's ideas while praising whoever came up with them to make it harder for credit to go to the wrong person.

In her 2016 book about navigating workplace sexism, Feminist Fight Club, Jessica Bennett calls culprits of hepeating "Himitators." "He’s the guy in your creative writing class who restates your interpretation of a poem in an attempt to clarify what you said, but the teacher remembers him as the one who said it; the colleague who echoes your lesson plan, but then somehow gets seen as the innovator," she writes. As for how to fight them? "If he’s your boss, try asking for advice on how you could convey your ideas better on the first round, because you’ve noticed he tends to restate them," Bennett advises. "If he’s a colleague, tell him you’re worried his attempt to help you might be backfiring." She also recommends stressing your ownership of your ideas with language such as "I’m glad you’re in agreement with me" and "As I said...".

Giving other women credit, confronting hepeaters directly, and emphasizing who developed your ideas (surprise, it's you) can all be worthwhile tactics. Of course, it's unfortunate that any of the onus to thwart hepeating is put on women when men could simply stop doing it.

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