explain someone to someone [closed]

Solution 1:

Having a specific person be the direct object sounds odd to me too. I searched COCA for explain _pp to (with the middle term matching personal pronouns) and got the following:

• Many results for it and them, referring to things and not people.
• Many results using reflexives. Reflexive pronouns are undoubtedly idiomatic here.
• Less than 20 results for us/me/him/her/you combined, including a quote by Mark Twain.

Through my own searching, I found an example in the New Yorker, using quotes likely because the usage isn’t very natural:

They talked about how much a part of his community John was, and about trying to “explain” John to the people at D.G.S.—they were sure that if they did those people would understand that the last thing you could say about John Ahearn was that his work was racist.

It does sound idiomatic to say that you can “explain [a group of people]” (eg women) or “explain [an author]” (eg Shakespeare).