Chair designed to "prevent manspreading", your thoughts?

The one that gets me is women who try their best to poke your eyes out with their umbrella spokes. It's less an issue with blokes due to their height and less seem to use umbrellas.

Women are worse than men for putting their feet up on the sofa next to you. Fine if just sharing a sofa with your partner and they're in to that but otherwise is unpleasant for the person next to them. I think women just have different space dominating habits.

Ahh okay, thanks for replying.

'Not sure' that is.

Yes, legs apart is defo more comfy for me but it sure if anything to do with my junk (unless pressed really tightly together). But not like the guy in the photo.

I think it looks really silly. I’m going to ask a question here and for what’s it’s worth, regardless of the answer people in general should be more aware of the space they take up and should notice this themselves and adjust if need be. My question is, do men spread their legs because it can be uncomfortable not to given their junk just kind of hangs in the way? I sit with my legs slightly apart because I find it more comfortable.

Seems to me that there are two types of manspreading: oblivious and aggressive.

The oblivious manspreader doesn't notice that he's behaving antisocially. If he does notice that his manspreading is causing problems but doesn't care, then he becomes an aggressive manspreader.

The aggressive manspreader deliberately invades the space around him, deliberately makes his neighbours uncomfortable, and silently challenges anyone to object.

I have certainly seen men use manspreading to challenge other men. Not when they're sitting side-by-side, but when they are opposite each other. It's a very obvious 'status' game.

Boggles.

I do appreciate that, but a lot of people don't consider that we're frequently intimidated by other men too (and much more likely to get battered by them). I used to hate getting the train on match days when I lived near a football ground well known for its hooliganism.

Lots of whataboutery from the male posters. Quelle surprise.

If you don't want men to object then don't make spurious statements about them. The feminist lobby have been pretty quick to speak up about the things TRAs say about women.

Lots of whataboutery from the male posters. Quelle surprise.

@BjornAgain81 but you do realise that form many women being around men is scary or uncomfortable right? You do realise that the vast majority of women have been on the reciprocating end of unpleasant behaviour from men don’t you? It’s not a simple as statistics. Psychological studies have shown the primary experiences are far more powerful that secondary experiences in terms of forming opinions. When all the statistics back up unpleasant primary experiences it can be very difficult for people to act objectively. Rationally yes, it is ridiculous to tar the entire sex with one brush, subjectively, for many women-not all but many, in order to not do so requires the suppression of fairly ingrained Pavlovian associations. How would you feel if you constantly felt discomfort when faced with a strange woman and regularly that feeling if discomfort was followed by intimidating, aggressive, violent, lewd, dismissive (hint), patronising, or disparaging behaviour. Form women who encounter these kinds of men on a regular basis the associations and distressing feelings become more and more ingrained. Is it irrational? Yes. Is it unreasonable? Of course. Is it difficult to understand, be sympathetic (instead of getting defensive), to care? No, not if you have a modicum or empathy.

I’m not sure why you think this would effect women who typically sit likevtgat anyway. Might be difficult for very overweight people. I do think that making sears in public transport narrower (to fit more people in) and putting up barriers between them (to stop spreaders) is a brilliant idea though.

I sat next to a large manspreader at an event yesterday... I even 'nudged' his legs to try get him to close them then realised he might think i was cosying up to him. At one point I even looked at his 'spread'smiled st him and said 'oooh you're doing that thing that men do when they take up too much room' - he said 'ooooh i know, it's terrible isn't it'

You really can't use class analysis to blame anyone for anything, or even the whole class. That isn't how it works.

And you have to be accurate about your claims for the analysis to work in the first place. Even true statistics don't always reveal a lot without further contextualisation.

I would say that constantly deriding men in general on the basis of what a very small number of them do is a form of bullying, certainly when it's used as ammunition against individual men who don't do these things - as a sort of emotional shaming tactic.

The typical justification is that men statistically commit the large majority of crime and that it's impossible to tell the good men from the bad (also that every man is culpable as a member of the male class and needs to commit to resolving the issues caused by 'his' class).

I'd give this argument more credence if it wasn't used in such a blinkered way. However, the lens never seems to be turned inwards.

70% of parents who murder their children are female. Surely then we can't trust women with children as we don't know which are the 'good' mothers. As a member of the female class, this is your responsibility to sort out, not mine as a man. Why aren't you jumping to it?

Studies have also shown that sexual abuse committed by a female has tripled in the last decade, and other studies involving interviews with victims have concluded that abuse by a female is generally more psychologically damaging to the victim.

However, you never see feminists taking ownership of these issues in the way they expect men to do when the statistics show the perpetrators to be statically male majority. IMO there are plenty of individuals who use the feminist banner as justification for freely bashing men, but don't really seem to do anything to help women in general.

If we are expected to sort the problems which a small proportion of our class commit, does the same apply to all white people whose class perpetrated horrific slavery, or black people whose class commit more knife crime, Chinese people who class persecuted the Falun Gong, etc, etc?

Nobody's saying that male violence is OK, but I disagree with using it as an excuse to constantly bash men, especially when you're actually more likely statistically to choke on your food than be murdered by your spouse. Anybody who points out that most men don't murder women is then accused of WATMing or called a misogynist in the same way that some TRAs use the 'homophobe' accusation to shut down dissent.

Do you take responsibilities for the actions of Donald Trump as a fellow white person?

And yes I think the word "bully" got jumped on because it is a moral judgement. It's not abstract or neutral like "violence". People hate bullies, bullies are bad, so if men get called bullies by golly we'd better make sure women are labelled that way too. Otherwise we might have to think about men and their motivations and behaviour and that would never do.

Now come on, you just said in the post previous to yours that I've quoted here that bullying isn't the same!

I said bullying in the workplace isn't the same. Does this really need spelling out? It was a pathetic attempt to take the focus off men who are the only people who behave like this in public. Women, even big or tall women don't shove themselves into other people's spaces. It's a male thing, hence it being called "manspreading" and everybody knowing what that means.

Bullies can be violent, they can also impinge on others spaces which is more likely if they are in fact larger. That doesn't mean all three things always happen at the same time, or they are all equally concerning. Nor does it mean that male bullying is somehow more morally compromised than female bullying. Notwithstanding what a man you once met said.

I'd say sacking 20,000 people or in the case of Weinstein and Green, sexual assault is far worse than anything you can scrabble around to find that women apparently do too.

When you are saying opposite things in concurrent posts it's difficult to avoid concluding you are making whatever argument makes women seem morally superior to men.

Women are morally superior to men. It's not hard to notice if you've got your eyes open. We don't do the appalling things that men do.

Can't believe men's testicles are being used as an excuse for this. Wait, yes I can! Pity the poor menz with their large testicles in their scolds bridles.

I wasn't attempting to 'come up with the worst thing' I could find. I'll leave the victim Olympics to you.

I wasn't talking about victims, I was talking about perpetrators. You decided to nitpick at a word I used, when the context was clearly physical bullying, which women as a group don't do (yes I'm sure there are some exceptions, yawn, but we're talking about aggregate male behaviour here). And I can counter your stupid point anyway - Philip Green, Harvey Weinstein - their workplace bullying is so bad it makes the papers and goes to court. Can you think of a female equivalent? No you can't.

I mentioned the workplace bullying because you categorically stated that women don't bully which is rubbish. Even on this very forum the AIBU threads are notorious for nasty comments - like when that woman dropped her baby on it's head causing a dent and came on here frantically asking for help (a fair few female posters took it as an opportunity to make horrible comments and take potshots).

See above. Stop kneejerking and think about the context of what is being said.

I'd imagine many men probably don't bother altering their leg position because.....well, fuck it. They're probably not too concerned about the random stranger next to them.

They're bullies. It's physical intimidation. Subtle, but it's there.

People are often selfish and don't check their privilege if they don't need to - like how you don't see many women kicking up fuss about the expectation that men pay for dates (quite the opposite!).

Another random "women do it too or do something worse". Your argument is all over the place.

"I have tall female friends and they manage to not do this."

I very much suspect that your tall, female friends, don't have "extra bits" dangling below them, unless of course they are a special kind of "laydee"?

I'm pretty sure women are less inclined to indulge in physical bullying and intimidation and 'ownership' of space, which is the context here.

Yes, but men on average are larger and I would say that is the main reason those who are bullies use their physicality in that way. You don't generally see people who are smaller framed who do, it's just not very effective, if they want to be jerks they develop other strategies.

I agree in the question of seats it's the physical element that is the point mostly, although I do think others will use other strategies to mark out their space. The question of other types of bullies was a response to people making some more general claims that seemed pretty unfounded.

They need to spread to make room for their huge bollocks don't they. Maybe designing some underwear to lift the male genitals up and hold them in place at the front might be a better idea.

Or you know, for men to keep their legs closed and not invading the space of any one else.

Look down a train carriage. It's always male knees or feet poking out into the aisle. I have tall female friends and they manage to not do this. But you know, big hairy bollocks need space and for us to be impressed at how much they need to spread due to the size of their genitals 🙄

"Of course. But I'm curious as to whether they get manspreaded into as much as women."

Yep, it happens just as much to me, and I think it is a combination of things. Some people are just selfish and ignorant and will do anything to stop people sitting next to them.
However, I have always found it uncomforable to sit with my legs together, because my upper leg muscles (quads and adductors) are quite large, and after a while they start to tremor or in a worse case scenario, they start to cramp up.
If I am sitting on public transport, I never sit in a middle seat between two people, I would rather stand. If I sit in an inside seat then I angle my body towards the window.

Most people can manage it eg the other day I got on a crowded train, someone moved their bag off the seat, beckoned to me and moved their legs diagonally to be out of the way of the seat. This is normal considerate behaviour

It is considerate behaviour- whether most people do it before they are asked to, I'm less sure about.

I'm pretty sure women are less inclined to indulge in physical bullying and intimidation and 'ownership' of space, which is the context here. And it doesn't really help that many blokes are probably doing it without intent, just oblivious of the effect on other people.

Well, any bloke who has read this sort of discussion who carries on regardless is a dick.