Yes, Manterrupting Is a Real Thing (and It Happened at Last Night’s Debate). Here’s How to Deal With It.

Did you hear the one about the man who couldn’t stop interrupting?

If you’re a woman — and especially if you’re a woman named Hillary Clinton — the answer is probably yes. Clinton was, after all, interrupted by her opponent, Donald Trump, 25 times (!!!) during the first 26 minutes of the presidential debate.

During that same period, Clinton was interrupted by moderator Lester Holt an additional 15 times.

So yes, you did the math right: Clinton was interrupted 40 times in 26 minutes, or about once every 39 seconds, during the first segment of last night’s first presidential debate of the general election campaign.

But of course Clinton is far from the only woman to have faced the contagionlike levels of the manterrupting epidemic. Because, no, it’s not all in your head. And yes, if you’re a woman, you really do get interrupted by men a whole lot every time you try to open your mouth.

The effects of this constant interruption of women have troubling real-world implications. Research published last year by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In foundation found that male executives who speak up more than their peers are thought by their supervisors to be more competent, while women who speak up more than their peers are thought to be less competent.

Worse still, a new study released today that was jointly conducted by Lean In and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found that women are less likely to receive promotions, more likely to receive pushback during workplace negotiations, and less likely to receive feedback and guidance from their supervisors when compared to their male peers in the workplace.

The combined effects of these repercussions create a self-reinforcing dynamic wherein women simply can’t move up in the same way men can in the workplace. Without feedback, they can’t hone their performance. With more pushback during negotiations, they are less likely to act on their instincts and see their ideas manifested. And without feedback or support for their ideas, they fail to be promoted at the same rate as men. The study found that for every 100 women promoted from an entry-level job to a manager position, 130 men receive equivalent promotions. So, from the start, more men are in management — and, most likely, interrupting and not mentoring women employees.

Can’t a girl catch a break? Apparently not — at least if men have anything to say about it. (Cue Kanye’s infamous, “Imma let you finish, but —” VMA speech, in which he interrupted Taylor Swift, who was just trying to accept her damn award.)

Which is why many women are taking matters into their own hands — in the White House, for example, where female staffers have made a point of repeating the points raised by female colleagues in meetings and crediting them by name for their ideas.

Efforts like these hardly seem over the top based on the kind of behavior on display during last night’s debate alone, in which Trump repeatedly boasted about his “temperament” being his best attribute (and implying that Clinton’s female one leaves something to be desired), mansplained that when he said Clinton didn’t have a “presidential look” he meant to say that she had no “stamina”; congratulated himself for not making misogynistic, “inappropriate” remarks to Clinton during the debate (seemingly about the alleged infidelities of her husband, former President Bill Clinton); and chose to revisit a decade-old feud with Rosie O’Donnell to justify having called the former host of The View a “degenerate,” a “pig,” a “slob,” a “loser,” “dumb,” and “fat.”

Yes, these were all things that a man found to be worth interrupting his debate partner for in order to present his case to be the next president of the United States. Yes, this is why women in all environments often feel unable to speak up, unheard when they do, and thought of unkindly when they dare to take up airspace otherwise occupied by the opinions of men.

So what to do if — like Clinton performing solo in a debate arena and not in a White House conference room where a group of female staffers can support one another — you find yourself the only woman vying to have her voice heard in a room full of men? Play the strategy employed by Clinton herself last night, of course, and remind all present that she who prepares, wins.

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