June 19, 2017

"El Manspreading is an English term that describes the position of men who open their legs excessively when they sit, occupying the seats next to his, among other situations."

"The mission of this new pictographic icon is to be a reminder of the need to maintain civic behavior and to respect the space of everyone on board the bus."

Explained a statement from the Municipal Transport Company of Madrid, Spain, quoted in "Madrid Transit Officials Tackle ‘El Manspreading.'"(NYT)

The anti-manspreading mission is said to have been inspired by a petition from Microrrelatos Feministas that read:
"All means of transportation have a sticker explaining that we must make room for pregnant women, people with a baby carriage, seniors and people with disabilities. But there is something else that affects us practically every day we ride on public transport: manspreading. It is not difficult to spot women with their legs closed and very uncomfortable because there is a man next to her who is invading her space. It is not a question of bad education, but just as women have been taught to sit with our legs close together (as if we had to hold something between our knees) men have conveyed hierarchy and territoriality, as if the space belonged to them."

57 comments:

Bad Lieutenant said...

I knew a woman at NYU, a devout Catholic with cystic fibrosis, who came thisclose to being raped by a cabdriver in Spain, begged and pleaded and prayed her way out of it. Yeah, el manspreading is wise focus for Spanish feminism. You betcha!

StephenFearby said...

In some parts, manspreading while mansplaining could be considered a Class A misdemeanor.

wild chicken said...

DH takes up three spaces at church. I teased him about it but he says, muh balls. They sweat, or something.

So that's that.

MayBee said...

Oh how stupid.

If you want people to stop spreading out on public transportation, take gender out of it.

I know I have taken up way more than my own space with my duffle bag and yoga mat.

DKWalser said...

This is another example of women using their (relatively) new societal power to invade men's personal lives without regard to the burdens their new strictures impose on men. Worse was Germany's move to insist that men urinate while sitting. Sure, that may be the best way for women to urinate, but that doesn't mean men ought to be required to perform that task in the same manner. Similarly, while women have been taught to sit with their legs together (or crossed) when wearing skirts, that doesn't make that rule appropriate for men (unless they, too, are in skirts). Women are taught to keep their legs together as if they are holding something in place. Men already have something between their legs. Squeezing their legs together may be a bit more uncomfortable for men than it is for women.

That doesn't mean that men should be sitting with their legs splayed far apart. But, that's not what women are complaining about. They want men to sit with their knees together -- which I find to be uncomfortable if done for more than a few minutes at a stretch.

Achilles said...

Just replace White Male with Jew or Black and it all makes sense.

The left never stops dividing and conquering.

Patrick Henry was right! said...

The unmerited arrogance just continues to seep, seep from these people.

Where is the source of their authority to tell anyone how to sit????

Kafka was a genius. And that is terrifying.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Behold the hive mind at work. Amazing how progs are able to get everyone organized and singing from the same hymnal.

Michael K said...

It's virtue signaling and a little dose of man hatred.

Huckleberry Finn (Not that we are allowed to mention it) was found out when he was pretending to be a girl when a woman threw something to him to catch and he put his legs together instead of spreading them as if he wore a skirt. He was wearing a skirt but gave himself away.

rhhardin said...

Sitzverbreitunger.

whitney said...

I think feminists​ should have to walk around with prosthetic male genitals between their legs for a week and see how it feels

Bob Ellison said...

Can I be the first to explain that we males have some junk between our legs and prefer not to squeeze them when sitting?

rhhardin said...

Aspirin held between the knees. Early birth control.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

For every instance of "manspreading" I see on the bus, I see at least two or three of women setting their groceries on the seat next to their own, rather than at their feet where they ought to be. Yeesh, ladies, lighten up, will ya?

Kevin said...

They're really going to have a problem when the first trans-person manspreads and objects to the article being "el".

rhhardin said...

Anatomical mistake, though. It doesn't prevent doggy style.

Birkel said...

Same thing allowed James West (played by Robert Conrad) to catch a bad guy on an episode of Wild, Wild West.

Birkel said...

That last was meant for Michael K.

Francisco D said...

To paraphrase Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty to pee while standing or give me death."


Having had kidney stones, that's just about what it adds up to.





Ambrose said...

Nobody expects el manspreading

Original Mike said...

"Worse was Germany's move to insist that men urinate while sitting."

Fortunately, urination occurs behind closed doors.

Gahrie said...

When are Spanish feminists going to go after the Spanish language? It is literally patriarchal. For example see the Spanish word for "parent".

Michael K said...

I know guys that insisted crew sit while peeing on racing sailboats but that's different. Those German pissoirs don't bounce around.

Ambrose said...

"Worse was Germany's move to insist that men urinate while sitting."

I like to think that Germany is actually insisting that men sit while urinating. (He types as he sits by his computer.)

n.n said...

El Manspreading is a first-order forcing of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Sitting Women.

Who are these men? They need to name names; otherwise, we must assume they are extrapolating from single digit, personal experiences. They have done this before with universal slander.

Ralph L said...

After my parents married in 1955, my mother followed his ship around the Mediterranean. Two English poofs (pooves?) protected her on the ship from Naples to Barcelona, where an unaccompanied young woman on the street was fair game. She had to yell at my father from her hotel room window. Guess things have improved a bit if they're only complaining about "wide stances".

David said...

"Worse was Germany's move to insist that men urinate while sitting."

I like to think that Germany is actually insisting that men sit while urinating.


Every once in a while, a rare gem emerges from the dross.

mockturtle said...

Good grief. Are they running out of things to whine about

Mark said...

How offensively presumptuous and cis-bigoted it is to think that it is men who are spreading their legs like this.

walter said...

whitney said...I think feminists​ should have to walk around with prosthetic male genitals between their legs for a week and see how it feels
--
Except a prosthetic has no sensation itself.

bleh said...

Obligatory womanspreading purse comment.

Ralph L said...

At least they aren't expressing their anal glands. Hope no one's eating dinner.

ALP said...

UGH, lets have a campaign to wipe out WomanBlanking: Female sits on the bus, aisle seat - plops bags of crap into window seat. Takes out smart phone, puts in earplugs, thus forcing anyone who wants the window seat to A) Drag her attention away from screen/book, then B) Request she move her shit then C) Swivel her legs so you can squeeze by her, the whole time getting sighs and stink eye at THE NERVE of another female requesting the empty seat. For. Fucks. SAKE!!!!!

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

German men sit to pee because of how German toilets are made to be used by Germans.

Michael K said...

North, great link.

Fernandinande said...

That annoying habit some people have of spreading their legs on buses and trains, encroaching on seats next to them, has become so universal that one word crosses language barriers to describe it: "extensión de campesinos".

Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others

Probably even more-so in a more primitive country like Spain.

Fernandinande said...

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
German men sit to pee because of how German toilets are made to be used by Germans.


Heh yeah, that's kinda sick (check google images), but that's because Germans are pretty fucked up.

David-2 said...

Manspreading has been around for centuries. Or at least a century. Here's an example from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:


“Keep your eye on the rats. You better have the lead in your lap, handy.” So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped my legs together on it and she went on talking."

Obviously, he had his legs spread when sitting there before he "clapped" them together.

(Notice too that when the girl wants to catch something she throws her legs apart. Maybe Titus can comment on that.)

Later Mrs. Loftus, explaining how she figured out Huck was a boy not a girl says:

"And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don’t clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead."

So the issue of manspreading was so prevalent it could easily be used to separate the boys from the girls.

Fred Drinkwater said...

MK
On bouncing boats I try to wedge myself in a standing position. Sitting, I expect I'd go flying more often than not.

Achilles said...

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
German men sit to pee because of how German toilets are made to be used by Germans.

And here I thought airline toilets were awful.

mockturtle said...

Germans have always had a scatological bent.

John henry said...

I've only been to Germany once. Frankfurt, 2015, stayed in the Hilton out near the airport.

I had seen the article linked above and was curious to see what they looked like in the flesh. So I paid particular attention.

In my room, in the Hilton public bathrooms, in the airport, in the train station (Airport train, probably not the main one) they were fairly normal toilets. There was no dry shelf in any of them. I did notice that all of them had a bowl brush. A helpful NoAgenda travel tip had informed me that after taking a dump, I was expected to use the brush as a courtesy to the next user.

Perhaps that dryshelf toilet is only in homes? Or in parts of Germany?

John Henry

John henry said...

The last time I had been in Europe before that was in 1969 on one of these all inclusive cruises: "6 Glorious months in the Mediterranean!" A/K/A "Haze gray and underway". Spain, Mallorca, Gibraltar, Naples, Malta, Athens...

Never saw a regular toilet the entire trip except in US Navy facilities. The RN Dockyard in Gibraltar had sort of regular toilets but outdoors. No partitions, just an 8' high brick wall with no roof. Waxed paper so it didn't go bad if rained on.

Everywhere else, without exception, the toilets were squat type. A porcelain recess with two pedestals for your feet.

https://i0.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/toiletsquat.jpg?resize=480%2C640

I learned to take a good dump before debarking and if worst came to worst go back early.

John Henry

mockturtle said...

The only 'squat' toilets I've ever used were the 'benjos' in Japan. I kind of liked them as there was no contact with the surface but I'm not sure my knees are up to the task any more. These were mostly in public restrooms as the hotels we stayed in and the corporate buildings had regular [sometimes heated] toilets.

Fen said...

You don't get to dictate how we sit, SJW feminist
scum.

And try taking some responsibility for what you *choose* to do with your own bodies before looking to ours. Because not even rapists are willing to risk killing a fetus over a chance to climax.

Earnest Prole said...

Manspreaders describes most of your commenters these days.

Hey Skipper said...

German men sit to pee because of how German toilets are made to be used by Germans.

I lived in Europe throughout the 1980s -- those toilets were the rule in Germany at the time.

I live in Germany now, and I haven't seen even one in the last two years.

Peter Irons said...

Don't these idiots know that men's and women's hips are designed differently? So of course we sit differently. This is just another bigoted attempt to other men.

Peter Irons said...

We also need to haves signs about women's hips taking up more than their share of the space on a train.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Manspreading happens because of the Western aversion to physical contact with male strangers. 737's make this unavoidable for two men sitting side-by-side. Crossed the country welded to a dude yesterday because he couldn't stay in his space. No homo!

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

Maybe they can just give us seats at the back of the bus?

Jupiter said...

"men have conveyed hierarchy and territoriality, as if the space belonged to them".

It used to be a Man's World. Now it's just a man's fault.

walter said...

El Manspreading sounds like a future Jack Black portrayed character...the other half of the anti-hero duo, El Mansplaining, yet to be determined.

ccscientist said...

Maybe he is manspreading because his pants are too tight, or because he doesn't want someone with BO to sit next to him. Maybe government officials really need to find something useful to do.

rsbsail said...

Real men don't sit on a seat, they stand and let others have the seat.

the gold digger said...

They want men to sit with their knees together

No. We just don't want your legs in our space or touching us. Spread as much as you want as long as your body remains in the space defined by the planes that intersect the space where our seats meet. You do not get to touch my body and make me be uncomfortable just so you can be comfortable.