Ever felt like your brilliant ideas were overlooked until a man reiterated them, only to receive all the credit? Well, ladies, there’s now a term for that phenomenon: hepeat.
Nicole Grant, an astrophysicist and educator, shared the concept on Twitter recently. “A new term has emerged: hepeat,” she tweeted. “This is when a woman proposes an idea that gets ignored, but then a guy says it and suddenly it’s celebrated.”
Hepeating differs from mansplaining in that it involves a man taking a woman’s original thought and presenting it as if it was his own. While mansplaining entails a man explaining something to a woman, assuming she lacks understanding, hepeating is an outright appropriation of ideas, which can be just as frustrating.
Nicole explained to HuffPost that she and her friends, who work across various fields, coined this term during a group chat. “We’ve all experienced situations, especially in the workplace, where our ideas gain traction only after a man shares them,” she said.
Having spent much of my career in male-dominated industries, I can relate. Once, a colleague was so brazen he’d rearrange his belongings during meetings. Despite that, nothing is more exasperating than a man claiming credit for a woman’s idea, perhaps second only to hearing someone say, “You’re so fortunate your partner helps with the kids.”
Twitter users are rallying behind the term, and it’s already found its way into the Urban Dictionary. Soon, we might be able to sip our coffee from a mug emblazoned with the term while men borrow our ingenuity.
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Summary:
The term ‘hepeat’ has emerged to describe the frustrating experience of women whose ideas are dismissed until restated by a man, who then receives credit. Coined by Nicole Grant and her peers, this term highlights the ongoing issue of idea appropriation in professional settings.