No really, they’re told that. The Guardian says so.
- Poster campaign will attempt to stop antisocial practice
- Doctors say crossing legs will not affect reproductive powers
Are they sure? Not in any way? Not even shrinking things just a little? Or enfeebling them ever so slightly? Or delaying appropriate responses? Or making them look like lace or flowers or scented soap?
As 2014 comes to an end, one thing New York commuters can expect in 2015 is an official city campaign against a growing problem: “manspreading”.
I wonder why the problem is growing. Maybe it’s a reaction to feminism? “I’ll show you – I’ll take up extra room so that you’ll know who’s boss.” Or maybe it’s that subway seats are shrinking.
In January, the MTA will unveil ads calling for better subway manners. According to the New York Times, one such poster will bear the message: “Dude … Stop the Spread, Please.”
Social-media sites have magnified criticism of manspreading, as people have posted images on sites like Twitter and Tumblr in an effort to shame culprits and compel them to keep their legs together.
But that might do them an injury!
Dr Marc Goldstein, director of the center for male reproductive medicine and microsurgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center, told the Times crossing one’s legs for a subway ride does not – contrary to apparently accepted wisdom – pose health risks to a man’s reproductive organs.
Do people really think otherwise?
Yeah? Then explain why I’ve been sexually active for over 35 years yet my sex partner has never become pregnant? I’ve been crossing my legs ever since my vasectomy and I’m now sterile!
I look forward to Men’s Rights Activists responding to this blatantly misandrist violation of men’s human rights with their usual measured dignity.
/s
Maybe if they would provide an inch or two more space between seats, we wouldn’t have this problem.
I admit it. I cackled. And, oddly, got to thinking of the various bad metaphors for genitalia used in overly florid sex scenes everywhere. I don’t think I’ve ever seen those ones, for men’s bits, at least (flowers for women’s parts probably could be given its own Dewey Decimal class, sure). Maybe just reading the wrong books, tho’. It does seem to me maybe our existing stable of metaphors is overdue for a bit of an expansion, anyway.
More on topic: I’ve absolutely never heard of this ‘crossing your legs will damage your bits’ urban legend thing. Seriously? What?
Sitting in the sprawled mess that seems to accompany the ‘wide-open-to-anything-and-in-the-way-of-everything-else’ thing, on the other hand, that’s the subject of the linked piece, let’s talk about what this is gonna do to your lower back over time.
Good, I like to cause people to cackle!
Heh. Always a new grievance. 😉
Prediction: This one will not go very far. It’s the New York Subway.
Actually, this is one place where the MRA types might have a point. If someone was saying “women, don’t use (posture x) in public because reasons,” surely there would be an uproar?
If they were shoving themselves into other people’s seats, there shouldn’t be an uproar.
Oh, they’re actually shoving their knees into the space occupied by the person sitting next to them? I thought the objections were due to the aesthetics of the leg spread, not the invasion of personal space.
Yes, I suppose that’s kind of rude. I’m getting a great deal of amusement from imagining two of these dudebros sitting next to each other and playing knee hockey with each other to get more space, though.
No, I really don’t think that they do. Why do I think that?
Because, confession time: I was once just such a “wide-stance” bus & train rider, but not because I thought it was any sort of biological imperative. No, I was a lazy, arrogant, self-entitled 20-something doofus, and I was just doing what I saw other men doing.
Not that I’m making excuses for those guys, they’re also doofuses. I wish that time machines really did exist, so that I could go back and slap some sense into my younger self a few years earlier than it actually happened.
While I agree generally with this, I do have one small quibble, in that I have an inflammatory condition the discomfort from which is made worse by sitting with my legs together. I try not to take up more space than necessary or to shove into other peoples areas, and generally would prefer to stand, but buses where I’m at really don’t have great standing room. Which is really more of an issue with failure on the part of the transit system to accommodate passengers with disabilities or health issues that make sitting difficult.
All of the above bit of rambling is to say that yeah, most of the guys doing this are just jerks, but some people do have legitimate issues that make sitting properly uncomfortable =\
Due to a medical issue that resulted in surgery a few years ago, if I sit with my legs crossed for too long it hurts.
TheLetterK@11:
I understand the point that you’re making, and yes it’s a valid one, inasmuch as things that are not zero are finite.
Now, you do need look into the history of the twitter hashtag #notallmen.
AJ Milne
The “Dewy Petals” Decimal System?
Err, I’m quite familiar with that hashtag and its history, thanks. Sorry for my first post, my experiences with disability and public transit are neither relevant nor worth discussing here.
I’ve seen a fair amount of this rudeness with my own eyes in various countries. I have to wonder if it’s more about being territorial or about exposing themselves.
Whatever happened to standing up on a bus or a subway so others can sit? Most rides are only 10-20 minutes, hardly an exhausting ordeal. Am I getting so old that it’s considered passé to stand instead of looking, or giving up a seat when someone elderly, disabled and with kids gets on?
Get a load of this one, a teenager in Hong Kong refusing for several minutes to let a man sit in an empty seat. There’s another version with subtitles but I can’t relocate it. The woman says to the kid (paraphrasing), “If you want two seats, you should pay for two,” and the rude teen answers, “I’m young, I should get two!”
As any woman (or symphonic musician) can tell you, it’s not necessary to cross your legs in order to not take up three seats worth of space on the train/bus/subway. It is entirely possible to sit with your feet flat on the floor and knees straight out from your hips. Then you are both fully within your seat space, and not uncomfortably crossing your legs.
Spreading ones legs out as if they were the sides of an equilateral triangle is totally unnecessary.
I had this medical condition once! I had surgery where the doctors went in through the femoral artery — it was sore & stiff for months afterwards, and crossing my legs was very uncomfortable. Didn’t need a ‘wide stance’, though — turns out that human anatomy is such that just sitting with your legs straight out in front of you eases almost any groin discomfort.
They are just saving room for cats.
No one is saying that men need to cross their legs. Crossing your legs can be painful, even without a medical condition. Crossing legs can also take up a lot of space, forcing one leg out and blocking the centre aisle. (I still do because I like crossing my legs, but it means having to be aware of my surroundings and pull my leg in whenever someone is trying to get by.)
All it means is that you don’t sit with your legs completely open. That’s it. I am able to sit in a way that does not touch the seats on either side of me *with a bag between my legs* and it’s not an issue, so anyone with a medical condition still has plenty of space to spread out as needed.
The only point is that you should not be slouched with your legs totally spread in a way that encroaches into other people’s space. That’s completely it.
Actually, crossed legs do take up space. The top leg tends to stick out and get in other people’s way, not too mention how hard it is to cross and uncross your legs without kicking those who sit across from you. Straight, as MadHatter suggests, works just fine. I find that just crossing my ancles from time to time relieves the (very real) stress of sitting in a static position.
Leg-crossing is not required to avoid taking up double seating space.
I don’t know about New York, but on BART, the ‘spread’ problem does seem related to obesity, and to racial hostility.
I’ll just leave this here: http://mentakingup2muchspaceonthetrain.tumblr.com/
Seems to me crossing one’s legs, if seated, in a crowded subway car is also highly obnoxious behaviour. Gentlemen please learn to sit up straight and keep your knees together.
The New New York subway signage.
“Dudes, stop spreading your legs. Pretend that you are a hot female with a short mini skirt with lots of leering men ready to snap up skirt shots of your junk and post it on every revenge porn website tied to your social media accounts. It will be your fault if your junk gets posted. Seriously, dont do that.”
Not sure if I hit the right sarcasm but I am aware of this issue as well. Taking the subway every mornig in a City with a lot of entitled, privledged men, I intentionally seek them out and force them to close their legs. The Men who have “lava balls” (stolen phrase from a female blogger / commenter that i cannot remember for attribution but it is a great phrase), do not like when they touch legs of other men.
It amuses me in a small way during the commute forcing Mr. Lava Balls to sit and straighten up.
#7 brucegee,
I can assure you that women’s posture and movements get policed routinely, along with their clothing. Even strangers feel entitled to comment how it’s slutty to sit in a way that does not actively to block the view at the crotch, even when wearing pants, from a very early age. Keeping your legs tightly closed or crossed by default is a learned behaviour for women, too.
To understand why this happens, sit in a chair that’s about four inches too short for you. Place you feet together. You now have three options: lean your knees toward the side, extend your feet out, or keep your inner thigh muscles contracted for the duration. If you are sitting in a bus seat with someone on both sides, you only have the latter option, because the first will crowd the person to one side, and the second will trip people–you can only do this if you are sitting sideways. If you relax your thigh muscles (and you will if your mind wanders,) you will get the manspread. If you don’t believe me, lower your office chair to the lowest setting, put your feet right below your knees, hold that position for an hour while doing something else, and watch what happens.
You see, a seat when positioned with proper ergonomics should support your thighs to within three or four inches of your knees. If you are more than 6 feet tall, and much of that is leg, public transportation will not do this. Office chairs that I sit on have to be raised to maximum height. Bus seats are about five inches shorter.
Most public transport is designed to accommodate people no more than 5’8″ and 150 lbs. If I can’t find someone small to sit beside, the person on the outside has to sit with one cheek on the seat, with the outer leg braced and one hand holding tightly onto the seat ahead. My knees, though, aren’t the real problem–it’s my shoulders. And I’m not fat, I’m just big. So I always try for the inside seat, and let people take their chances sitting beside me. When I do this, that seat is the last one people will take on the bus.
Most women don’t have this problem because they are short enough that the seat supports their thighs all the way to their knees, so they only have to place them once and they’re done. There is a woman on my bus who is actually taller than I am, and she always tries for one on the outer side of a seat facing a row of seats that face sideways, with her legs extended out in front of them. When she can’t get this, she sits in a seat facing sideways and extends her legs out.
She trips a LOT of people.
Crossing my legs is not an option. My knees are already jammed painfully against the seat ahead, and there is just no room to cross my legs. I can do it if I’m sitting sideways, but that leaves a size 13 foot sticking out into people’s way, and the other passengers are constantly tripping over it. And don’t get me started on the hamster sized accommodation in planes.
I get that buses and trains have to be a certain width, and that the seats are set for average height. I don’t mind that. I do find it rather comical, though, that my size has now become a political privilege issue.
May I suggest that there are better uses for your time?
mark4nier:
I find that to be a remarkable claim, especially since a 5’9″ person would only have the seat being somewhat less than one inch too short for them.
(Also, your explanation doesn’t account for the eponymous focus on men)
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[meta + OT]
I take it then that you had no better use for your time than, after discussing this post, to suggest others use their time better than to discuss this post.
I call bullshit on that. Fat people get constant death stares on public transportation, and I’ve never seen a fat person who didn’t try to shrink up as much as possible to try and avoid it. It’s “regular-sized” teens to about age 40 dudebros who do it.
@mark4nier says:
I have one answer for you….BULL FUCKING SHIT! Take your entitled opinions and shove them up your fucking ass. I am 197cm (6’7″) and you know fucking what? I take the tram every fucking day. Twice. Both ways. Any you know what? I have no problem keeping my lava balls comfortably in my own space. I am also 250+ with very broad shoulders. You know what? I can keep to my side of the seat, sitting next to others.
Granted, I cannot sit next to another 6’7+ guy with broad shoulders and bigger but beyond that, I can fucking make due with keeping my legs closed and in my own space on the tram.
If my tall fucking ass, with broad shoulders and big fat ass can accommodate riding with others, I suggest you suck it up buttercup. May I suggest you fucking stand and be less self-serving in your entitlement. Fucking wanker….
Really? Does that ever work? Because I’ve never seen one try it.
Donnie: you sound really angry. Maybe you should stop riding the tram and spring for a car of your own. Just a thought.
mark4nier – are you the Mark Fournier? As in, Tory MP Aidan Burley’s buddy who got fined a couple of grand for dressing up as an SS officer at a Nazi-themed stag party in Val Thorens? Or are you just a randomer whose nym pays tribute to him?
Seconding Donnie – what mark4nier says is a bunch of shit, unless he has a very specific medical condition that doesn’t affect most tall people. I’m 6’4″, maybe 225 pounds, so most public transportation/airplane seats are certainly not made for me. And while I can’t do anything about my shoulders being too broad to fit in an airplane seat, I am certainly more than capable of not spreading my legs to intrude on others’ space. And since this story is about NYC subways in particular, where there’s no seat directly in front of you (at least on every NYC subway car I can remember being on, where the seats are along the sides rather than facing front/back), it’s even less of an issue.
Easy, easy – everybody take it easy. sonofroj no, he’s not that Mark Fournier but a different one. He was a regular commenter on the ur-B&W for a long time. I’ve met him and consider him a friend.
So, for the substance – sure, I get that public transportation can be hellishly uncomfortable for bigger than average people, but the leg spread thing is not confined to bigger people. When it’s someone who really has nowhere else to put the legs, then that’s that. The campaign is – surely obviously? – not directed at them.
As for my time, sure, there are better uses for it. That’s almost always true of almost anyone. Often I just do what I feel like doing as opposed to what’s better.
sonofrojblake says
December 22, 2014 at 7:34 am
I am angry, at self-entitled wankers using excuses for being wankers. Maybe you should learn reading comprehension and learn to do that thing call ‘read think’.
Not sure how much of that was directed at me, but I’m sorry Ophelia and mark4nier for the “bunch of shit” comment – that was unnecessary. I’ll just reiterate that as someone who’s quite tall – with a lot of that height in my legs – and broad-shouldered, I know what it’s like to try to fit into seats that aren’t made for me. And for the most part I’m able to do it without resorting to “manspreading” – even at 6’4″/225, which is pretty high up in the distribution, at least for height. I absolutely fucking hate flying for that reason, but I can generally manage it without taking other people’s space that they paid for. I guess that was my main point. And as Ophelia points out this is a phenomenon that occurs with guys who could easily fit without manspreading, which makes them complete jerks.
And at the same time – we can see when it’s someone who can’t help it, and act accordingly.
Fourth option: swivel your heels outward, which will point both your toes and knees towards each other in rest position without having to contract your thigh muscles. I JUST SOLVED EVERYTHING.
Also, short people don’t have it easy, either. Try having the seat go all the way to your knees and still not be able to touch the ground with your feet. The only comfortable option there is to cross one’s leg up under the other thigh, but that takes up extra room too so guess what, I don’t do it in crowded areas.
My comment was intended to show that people might not be doing this intentionally, or out of a sense of privilege, but because of simple physics, and much of the outrage may not be necessary.
I come to this on the heels of an argument I’ve had with a friend about Gamergate. Gamergate is a manufactured controversy, the kind of thing that probably would not be possible with anonymity and the internet. But at the core, it’s nothing–no point, no idea, no cause, no argument. It’s a troll war. I’ve been trying to tell him that, without abruptly telling him that he is probably supporting it because of misogynistic tendencies. Subtlety usually doesn’t work, but screaming never works.
When I was younger, I went into philosophy thinking that I could contribute something to heated arguments that were common in my family. I quickly discovered that those arguments were loaded with fallacies, that no one actually wanted to hear what the others said, and because they never did, they never learned anything. The same thing is happening now between the West and Russia. The nuclear clock is ticking again. This shit may get us all killed.
And the internet is rotten with it.
As I said, the problem for me is not my knees but my shoulders, because I don’t really like my knees touching someone else, so I find a way to avoid that. But saying that outright seemed too much like bragging.Maybe it’s a Canadian thing. Whatever. I was just suggesting that other people who spread their knees are not necessarily assholes. The seats in the buses I take are less than three feet wide, and my shoulders are two feet wide. I guess seats in the London tube are wider, which is why Donnie doesn’t have this problem.
There is one privilege that Donnie and I share that most can only dream of. I can walk down any street, even dangerous ones, and not be challenged. Since I don’t pick fights, I never get into them. But if I were 5’2″, a woman, and even worse, pretty, I would have to be a lot more careful. But it’s not just that. People don’t challenge me in other ways. It’s up to me to notice when I’m inconveniencing someone, because I’m a big white male with money and lots of support, and whatever they think, they won’t speak up. No one will tell me when I’m being a dick. I have to figure that out for myself.
Donnie thinks he never inconveniences anyone.
But how would he know?
mark4nier @38:
No doubt some people aren’t, but surely you don’t dispute some people are — whatever the ratio may be.
Also, to what outrage do you refer? I’m not seeing much in this post or its comments.
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[meta]
That’s nice for you, I suppose. I guess you’re suggesting something more meritorious for a poster campaign than a trivial thing such as that “manspreading”?
FWIW, I only get to see your internet persona, not your intimidating physical personal attributes, so that’s not a problem here (as you might have noticed).
Mark – well the post itself, at least, was far more jokey than outraged. It is something that annoys me in real life (when it’s someone who can help taking up extra space), but this post was mostly amused. I don’t think it’s nuclear war fodder. (That’s mostly a joke too!)
Yeah, I know, and it is pretty funny. I was reacting more to the comments.
Meanwhile, the men’s rights group “CAFE” (Canadian Association For Equality) has started a petition in opposition to the possibility of the Toronto Transit commission implementing such a campaign:
More at http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/12/28/manspreading_a_transit_controversy_with_legs.html
It sometimes can be physically painful for to close our legs and we can’t be expected to do so.
How often, and for what reason(s), does this really happen?
Also, what happens when two “manspreaders” with such a problem are required to sit next to each other?