Member Since: 5/10/2012
Posts: 10,996
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Men need to close their legs
Quote:
I live in Boston without a car, so I take public transportation if I want to get anywhere. This means that on any given day, I am interacting with no less than, say, 15 to 20 strangers who are being complete assholes.
They come in many forms, of course. But out of all the various types of the public-transportation asshole, manspreaders are by far the worst.
Manspreaders are those dudes (OK, it's pretty much #AllDudes ) whose signature commuting posture is a wide-open-legged, slouched, and relaxed "I-own-this-space" form that spreads across no fewer than two seats. Manspreaders can be spotted on buses, subways, park benches, and even on your very own couch if you dare let one into your home. Any surface existing for the sake of sitting, especially publicly where that space is expected to be shared, can fall prey to a manspreader.
"What's wrong with a little manspreading?" you may be asking yourself. Well, I urge you to take a look around the next time you're on public transportation. The difference between how men and women are sitting is likely to stick out to you; women will often be tightly wrapped into themselves, while men sprawl out comfortably and enjoy their occupation of space.
This enrages me because gender inequalities run deep. So many women have been taught not to be any sort of imposition on space. We are encouraged to be as small, quiet, and complacent as possible, while men are taught to be loud and commanding. Men seem to believe they deserve the space they are offered and feel no shame taking up as much of it as they'd like, while we coil ourselves uncomfortably to adapt to whatever small bits of room that we happen to have been left with afterward. This happens both figuratively (in life) and literally (when their bony knees are poking me in the thighs while they splay themselves across the train).
Look, manspreaders, I get that you have some extra hardware between your legs that your sitting posture has to accommodate for. But does that mean you deserve to encroach on my personal space because my organs are inside my body? I don't want your gym shorts touching the side of my thigh. I don't want your feet outstretched in front of my legs, oblivious to how likely it is that I will trip over them when I get up at my stop. I don't want to get caught standing with my arms full of groceries because a handful of men are taking up an entire car's worth of subway seats by spreading out so there's no extra space. I get it, you're physically bigger and need a little extra room for your longer legs. Tall women seem to figure this out all the time without imposing on other people's spaces.
I'm not sure what the best method for combatting manspreading is. As women, we can command our personal space, and insist that men get their appendages out of our way and stay in their own damn seats. We can also, in general, stop letting men get away with things we are uncomfortable with. Tell them to get their legs out of your way. Tell them they're invading your personal space. Maybe even tell them it's incredibly unbecoming to slouch.
But maybe, if we complain enough about why this behavior is so obnoxious, eventually manspreaders will "get it" (or feel so embarrassed that they admit defeat) and start acting like actual, polite humans. A girl can dream, right?
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http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyl...-manspreaders/
Hmm, thoughts?
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however, whenever I realize I'm spreading my legs so much I'm closing them.
no lies 
