t began with a tweet. Nicole Tersigni was scrolling through Twitter when she stumbled upon a man explaining one of her friend’s jokes back to her – something she’d experienced several times herself – and decided to make a joke of her own. “I got on Google Images and searched ‘woman surrounded by men’. Because that’s what it feels like when you’re online. That image popped up – the one where the woman has her boob out. I was like, that is hilarious and perfect.” With her caption – “maybe if I take my tit out they will stop explaining my own joke back to me” – that image, a 17th-century painting by the German artist Jobst Harrich, became the first tweet in a thread that quickly went viral. Tersigni kept at it, finding more paintings of men talking to women and women looking vacant, and coupling them with deadpan captions in which men share their insights on topics such as breastfeeding and period pain. Tersigni’s agent, Rachel Sussman, suggested that the thread could be a book. As Tersigni says: “People get it and they want to laugh about it with other people who understand and have been there.” The book is divided into chapters named after certain (not all) types of men: the Mansplainer, the Concern Troll, the Comedian, the Sexpert, the Patronizer. The comedian Jen Kirkman says in the foreword: “If you’re a dude, you may be tensing up right now and wanting to put this book down and tweet at Nicole, ‘Not all men mansplain!’ But then you’d be the guy who is mansplaining to a woman who ostensibly knows men, is related to men, has worked with men, is friends with men, that not all men are bad.” Tersigni pairs contemporary captions with classical paintings partly to reinforce the point that these same misogynistic issues have existed for centuries, and partly because the older the image, the more likely it is to be in the public domain. Is this art criticism? “Life criticism, maybe,” suggests Tersigni, with a laugh. She spent weeks sifting through online museum databases and selecting artworks. Then she came up with jokes and pasted them on top, creating her own collage-like works that toggle between brutal honesty and humour. “I tried very hard to make it funny because that’s what I want to see – humorous versions of awkward or weird or frustrating situations that I’ve been in,” says Tersigni, who has no artistic background, but experience in improv comedy. “I feel like everyone should take a class at some point just to learn how to have a conversation.” In The Mansplainer, Barend Graat’s Company in a Garden (1661), which shows a corseted young woman being steered around a garden in front of a rabble of men, attempts to explain away catcalling: “You should be flattered they find you attractive enough to harass.” In The Patronizer, the top-hatted gentleman in Jean Henri de Coene’s Market Gossip (1827) tells the woman ferrying a sizeable basket on her head: “I can see you’re very busy, but I just had to tell you that you’d be so much prettier if you smiled.” I ask Tersigni if there’s a particular type of man she tries hardest to avoid. “They all kind of bleed together,” she says. “But the one I have certainly encountered the most is the Comedian. He not only explains your jokes to you, he also tells you to lighten up and get a sense of humour when you don’t laugh at his crappy jokes.” And her own gags? Is she more proud of some than others? She is, though that doesn’t mean they always translate. “My daughter, who’s nine, read through the whole thing, cracked up and started quoting it at me, which was kind of cool. Then she told me one of my jokes – ‘I know my butt smells like a hamster cage, but you need to wash your feet thoroughly before I touch you.’ I said, ‘You know what, that’s one of my favourites.’ And she said, ‘That was the only one I didn’t get.’”