Feminists are logging another attack on men, and this one might mean the death of feminism.
Feminist hate “manspreading.” If you don’t know what this is, don’t feel bad. But “manspreading” happens when a man opens his legs too wide while sitting in a seat on the subway, or in public.
I’m guessing in honor of the Patron Saint of Modern Day Feminism, the lovely Sandra Fluke, feminist ladies want the ability to spread their legs as widely as men…in public.
As for “manspreading,” who knew this to be a problem? Yet according to the New York Times:
It is the bane of many female subway riders. It is a scourge tracked on blogs and on Twitter.
And it has a name almost as distasteful as the practice itself.
It is manspreading, the lay-it-all-out sitting style that more than a few men see as their inalienable underground right.
Too bad men do not go to finishing school like America’s young ladies, or perhaps they wouldn’t be so “inelegant” and infringe on women’s sensibilities.
So feminists now are enlisting the help of the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
The targets of the campaign, those men who spread their legs wide, into a sort of V-shaped slouch, effectively occupying two, sometimes even three, seats are not hard to find. Whether they will heed the new ads is another question.
Riding the F train from Brooklyn to Manhattan on a recent afternoon, Fabio Panceiro, 20, was unapologetic about sitting with his legs spread apart.
“I’m not going to cross my legs like ladies do,” he said. “I’m going to sit how I want to sit.”
And what if Mr. Panceiro, an administrative assistant from Los Angeles, saw posters on the train asking him to close his legs? “I’d just laugh at the ad and hope that someone graffitis over it,” he said.
The Times continues,
For Kelley Rae O’Donnell, an actress who confronts manspreaders and tweets photos of them, her solitary shaming campaign now has the high-powered help of the transportation authority, whose ads will be plastered inside subway cars.
“It drives me crazy,” she said of men who spread their legs. “I find myself glaring at them because it just seems so inconsiderate in this really crowded city.”
When Ms. O’Donnell, who lives in Brooklyn and is in her 30s, asks men to move, she said, they rarely seem chastened: “I usually get grumbling or a complete refusal.”
I’d say this “actress” (likely waitress at a sub shop) is looking her 15 seconds of fame. If a guy is taking up two seats, just SIT IN THE SEAT! He will move his legs.
What next, “CarSpreading: the people who take up TWO parking spaces!”
The new ads — aimed at curbing rude behavior like manspreading and wearing large backpacks on crowded trains — are set to go up in the subways next month. They will all carry the slogan, “Courtesy Counts: Manners Make a Better Ride.”
One of the posters is likely to be especially welcome to women — as well as to men who frown on manspreading: “Dude… Stop the Spread, Please” reads the caption next to an image of riders forced to stand as a man nearby sits so that he takes up two seats.
The campaign is the latest in a long line of courtesy-themed crusades by the authority going back to at least the 1940s. One such ad urged women annoyed by impolite male riders to, “Hit Him Again Lady, We Don’t Like Door-Blockers Either.”
The new ads come as more riders are crowding onto the subways than at any time in recent history. In 2014, the system logged as many as 6.1 million riders on a single day, up from just under 5.1 million riders on the busiest day a decade ago. The city’s population, meanwhile, has swelled to more than 8.4 million people, pushing everyone closer and closer.
With crime no longer rampant on the subway, the campaign is the latest sign that other unwelcome behavior is getting attention.
Several blogs regularly highlight instances of manspreading where knees stretch several feet apart. On some sites, images of large objects like the Death Star from “Star Wars” have been added with Photoshop into the space between the splayed legs. While there are women who take up more than their share of space, the offenders are usually men.
One admitted manspreader, John Hubbard, sat with his legs wide apart on an F train as it traveled through Manhattan recently.
“It’s more comfortable,” he said with a shrug.
