nobody here is doing any statistical analysis – we are all just going by what we see and have experienced ourselves.
with that in mind, i’m not trying to discount your experience. instead, i was trying to shed light on why a person might want to put their bags on the seat next to them.
if you really need the seat. you should try asking. politely.
as to my own personal experience, while i have encountered rude people of all genders – and while, of course, i’ve had annoying situations with other people’s things, men and women both – i’ve literally never had a woman intrude on my personal space on public transportation, and with men it happens all the time.
One time, my girlfriend was on the subway with her 10-year old daughter, and since the manspreader was taking up the only open seat on the car, she goes in a loud voice with a phony concerned parent tone, "I’m sorry you have to stand, honey, but this gentleman’s balls are evidently so enormous that if he closes his legs, they’ll pop right out of his eye sockets."
The gift of gab-some people have it.
Seriously, the infuriation of deciding whether to uncomfortably stand for an hour with all your heavy junk or risk a socially awkward moment asking the manspreader to make room is just one part.
You’re really between the rock and the hard place when a manspreader sits next to you and starts speading all up on your thighs. Either push back or ask him to stop touching you, which can provoke them to anger and further invasion of your space in retaliation, or let them rub up on your leg, possibly indicating vulnerability to sexual harassment.
(Yes dudes, retaliatory aggression vs sexual harassment are regular calculations in public space. And it always makes me smirk cynically in that requisite scene in the detective shows where they walk the perp through the jail and he gets so freaked out by the sexual harassment in thirty seconds that he confesses to everything. That, for most females, just comes with turning 11.)
It’s easy to understand why other commenters mentioned just not even wanting to sit next to men on planes -the chances of having to fight for your space are ridiculously high. Yet, and relatedly, the ones who have actually requested seat mates be moved because of their gender are ubiquitously male.
So I witnessed a guy take an inside seat in the “carts and strollers” bench, with half an empty bus tonight. As it filled up, he blithely ignored the elderly woman with shopping cart and tall man with 3 heavy bags.
Again, if someone sat on a woman because she was taking up too much room, good ol’ Patriarchy dictates that we get up in arms about her being assaulted.
It’s pretty simple: people need to be assertive. Hey, can you move? That’s easy, right? Oh, you say that men get all assault-y when they’re asked to move? How on Earth do you think they’re going to react to being sat on?
People, whether you’re the one taking up too much space or the one who just wants to sit down and people are taking up too much space, or whatever, SAY SOMETHING. Personally I live in a rural area so I don’t have to deal with this very often, but when I do, I try to take up as little room as possible. Tough to do for a big guy, but I try. And if anyone needs to stand, I will, because I’m still pretty young, still able-bodied, and I try to not be an asshole.
I wasn’t talking about sitting on someone. Women have been assaulted and killed for far less. And if it’s some stranger on a bus or train, how is anyone to know if they will lash out for simply being asked to make room?
Your chosen image isn’t very relevant, considering that there are empty available seats in view, aside from the ones being taken up by the woman’s bags.
As others have previously said, it’s one thing if the extra space being used is not actually needed by other passengers; it’s a whole other if there is a need, and someone ignores it in favor of their own personal comfort.
That said, I actually agree with your point about being assertive and speaking up, as opposed to physically escalating the conflict.
For the record, the story states that she did speak to the man more than once, and after being ignored, sat in the seat that his leg was blocking. It’s not as though she sat down directly on him out of nowhere. I don’t think it could be called assault regardless of the sex of either person, or in the reverse situation.
Did you or anyone else say anything? I think that’s the only way we’re going to change things, if we’re willing to stick up for each other as humans. The campaigns local governments are doing to call attention are nice and all, but the thing I see in Europe that I don’t see in the US is a willingness of regular people to call people out on antisocial behavior. I once saw a guy get scolded for crossing against the light in Berlin. An older German women scolded that he was setting a bad example, there were kids present, waiting for the light. There are more examples, but you get the point. It takes a village to raise a considerate human.
I’ve done it before with mixed results. But never led to violence or anything.
I agree with whoever said above that the man spreading term is fodder for the gender fire, even though it IS a thing. Taking up room when it’s available is cool, and we shouldn’t stigmatize that. The real issue is not taking stock of your surroundings and making room when needed if you’re able. Lets stigmatize that.
[quote=“AndreStmaur, post:139, topic:104631, full:true”]
Really: is “manspreading” (and not move your legs when someone needs the space) that frequent in the USA? I really wonder.[/quote]
Purely by chance, I came across that advertisement on twitter this afternoon:
As you will note, it is a picture of a woman and an advertisement for a US company. I don’t think an European company would use that image or, more specifically, I am not aware of one who did. But apparently leg spreading is fashionable enough in the USA to be used in advertisements.
Or maybe they have particularly uncomfortable chairs in the USA, I don’t know. My chair is from Ikea.
not relevant to his point, but that image is an example of infrastructure that maximizes the effect of human assholery. It’s a B train, one of my commute options that I avoid if I possibly can. Those perpendicular seats that you see there have enough leg room for maybe a medium-sized child. Therefore, all manner of people tend to sit on only the outer one. women don’t want to get trapped, and men want to spread. And they do, or lean across the aisle to their other manspreading friend on the exact same seat on the other side of the train, thereby blocking two poles and creating a bottleneck. plus, the horizontal holding bars are far too high and close to the seats and curve to the wall, rather than terminating in a vertical holding-pole, meaning no one wants to move away from the doors, again, women, for safety, and men, for comfort…
USA, I don’t know. My chair is from Ikea. 
