To tell you how I foiled one of those spready out men on the bus earlier?

[DaygloYellowLady]

I'm really quite pleased with myself and it was dead easy. I just sat slightly diagonally but still within the boundaries of my seat so when he started attempting to spread out his legs to air his bollocks he ended up with my bony knee stuck in his thigh with very little discomfort or contact to me. Then, when he moved his leg away I quite subtly stretched my legs ever so slightly into his space, I know this made me
just as bad as him but after years of being squashed into the window, thigh to thigh with a strange man it felt so sooo good. The best part was the slightly bewildered looks he kept throwing me as we trundled along, like that just wasn't the way things should have turned out.

omg, sorry that your wife died, but being paid less than the man at the next desk is a very real issue, it's not petty at all

I'm a single parent too, and I'm paid less than some men who do they same thing but not as well and take more cigarette breaks. So it's not a petty issue at all.

I suggest psychotherapy. I had it myself after i left an abusive x. He used to physically, verbally, emotionally and financially abuse me. it's a common story and yet, none of us that have been through it seem to hate men. We hate the behaviours. YOu seem like you're in a really bad place right now.

virtue OF height..

I agree, you would probably get a really kind hearing on the bereavement board. We won't tell them you gave out to us here on a light hearted thread.

Dadscare You seem to have issues beyond the scope of this essentially light-hearted thread. Either that or you're trying to win the AIBU 2015 Award for The Most Glaring Irony by trying to derail a thread about how men occupy women's space by…occupying women's space.

Can you not see the contradiction between refusing to believe what women say they experience and then raging that You know absolutely nothing of what my life is like? Why don't you go off and be angry on some other thread of men who are angry about women? Lord knows, there are enough of them out there.

Dadscare, I am truly sorry your wife has died. And I am sorry you feel excluded at toddlers groups. However, it would seem a tad 'double standards' to complain we are all saying 'all men spread their legs' while you are suggesting 'all women' ignore single men at toddlers. My toddlers group experiences are long behind me, I am glad to say! but I can think of single men who attended and were not ignored. I also had an experience of going - once - to a baby group and not one person spoke to me. I didn't go back.

Sadly, the feeling excluded when widowed affects both sexes. And all ages, it would seem. I have a friend who was complaining just last week how few invites she gets from couples now her husband has died. She is 60 ish and feels other women regard her as a threat to their coupledom. Society is quite screwed up regarding bereavement anyway.

As for leg-spreading, I know lots of men - of all shapes and sizes - who do not do this. This thread has mostly been a discussion of how irritating it is when they do.

P.S. Glass ceilings and lower pay are a statistical fact in certain industries.

PS, and fwiw, I never assume that a dad with his children is a paedophile. Sometimes something gives me a bad feeling but I don't automatically think father = paedophile. You must be feeling really really paranoid if you believe that people are thinking that. And I don't mean that as an accusation "you're paranoid!". I mean, it's an indication things are good for you right now. You should see somebody. No shame in it.

That was to dadscare, btw.

Interesting how the tall women try to accommodate others while the man is offended at the suggestion he does the same. (This particular man, as namalt -obviously)

Prole, I just do not accept that posters on here are 'mainly making assumptions that EVERY spreader has no actual reason to do so.' People are talking about experiences with individuals. Please give posters some credit; I'm sure that if the only stories they had to tell on the subject were about being manspread by tall men, they'd either not tell them or would come on and say 'This happened to me but he was obviously too tall for the seat, and uncomfortable.'

I don't know about 'should' apologise and I don't really know what to say to you about it; personally I do it because I want to and feel that it's a small, nice thing to do. If you need it explained to you then I guess you're just not of the same mind.

My husband used to get the stinkeye at toddler groups too. Fwiw once you hit school age it's all a lot easier to make parent pals. I personally hate toddler groups anyway!

Way to ruin a fun thread dudes. Let us all now ruffle your hair and sympathise for your particular experiences instead of talking about our own common ones.

I accommodate as best I can. Spreading is far from my preferred sitting position - cross legs would be, in fact. This thread started from the OP being pleased at restricting a spreader. He may have been over-endowed with testicles/entitlement or he may have been tall. I'm the latter and wouldn't spread if I had another option. To shove me over in my cramped position is akin to telling a fat person to 'budge up' when they clearly can't.

But to show willing, I'll make the effort to apologise to anyone sat next to me and look forward to those of large arse or hips doing the same.

London buses are busy - legs out in the aisle is worse as it would impinge on more people than the one next to me. I can't win... One of the reasons I take the tube whenever possible.

It's a myth that men don't territorially spread next to men - believe me, they do.

Surely if you have long legs you'd sit in a seat that can accommodate them, like the flip up ones at the sides or the seat in the middle at the back as there's nothing infront?

Some people just feel entitled to alllll the space.

I recently took the train to London. I had a reserved seat. Seat 43 in carriage C. I found seats 44 and 43 - a forward-facing seat at a table. I didn't know which was the window and which was the aisle. I sat by the window. At Stockport a man got on and sat diagonal from me. I smiled at him and he said, "Actually, I am supposed to be in seat 44." I jumped up, stood in the asile, and said, "Oh! I am sorry! I didn't know which was which. Please... have your seat." And he just pursed his lips and huffed and said, "Oh, never mind. I'm fine." "Really!" I said, "I didn't know which was which seat. Of course you should have the seat you'd reserved." And he just refused to move. I realised that perhaps he didn't want to have someone sat right next to him so I explicitly offered to switch with him (offering to sit facing backwards so that he could have both forward-facing seats to himself) and he just said, "No. Never mind. Carry on" in a sour tone of voice. I was utterly friendly and smiling and cheerful the whole time and not at all being obnoxious or sarcastic, so there was no reason why he should not take the seat he'd reserved after having complained about it.

He was very passive-aggressive and peevish. And I couldn't understand what his problem was until a friend told me that he was simply annoyed that he couldn't have ALL FOUR seats (the whole table) to himself.

Anyway, I spent the journey feeling sort of guilty and wrong when of course I wasn't. He spent the journey on the phone whinging about somebody at work having sent him an email he didn't like.

Don't get me started on that, Fab.

I'd booked seats for ds and I for a 2 hour train journey. Got to the table and the whole of it, including our seats (and the overhead things, and under the table), had been nabbed by a couple, their baby and a shit load of their stuff. There was no where else for us to sit, so they moved their shit from the seats (but not from under the table or on the top) and we had to spend the next 2 hours unable to move. I swung my legs into the isle, I have MS and I can't sit like that I wasn't a happy bunny.

I am tall and generous of arse. I am also riddled with arthritis: lower back, hips, knees, hands, feet... I have a longish commute and am always carrying at least one bag plus my laptop bag. There is nothing I would like better than to spread my lady bulk out, with a nice big gap between my knees and my bags nestling in comfort beside me. I do understand why men feel they 'need' to spread their legs - I just don't understand why they feel entitled to do so.

Incidentally, this isn't just about personal anecdote. I think it's pretty firmly established through ethnomethodological studies [ooh, I enjoyed saying that] that men DO take up more space then women. They take up more public space, they do more of the talking, they move out of the way of others less. And they do all this without noticing. That's why it's important for them to listen.

Ethnometho...
Ethnomendolo...
Ethnodistinctlyminty.

I've got my work cut out slipping that into a convo tomorrow.

I've started straight-up asking people if we can share the space after some undignified elbow jostling incidents

It's the one thing I remember from my antique sociology degree, Bifauxnen. The one and only thing...

I've been spread into my a really tall man who clearly couldn't put his legs anywhere else - I would never complain about that as the poor fellow had no choice and was really uncomfortable! That is different, it goes without saying.

Is it bad that when it comes to invading elbows I now just elbow them right off into their own space? I often get outraged/arsey looks from men who clearly can't believe I very dare to evict them from my ribs and clonk them back over to their own side...

www.humour.com/medias/photos/2013/600x404/l-20131028124041.jpg

prole to answer your question my dh deals with this by taking an aisle seat and extending into the aisle as needed (retracting as needed when people need to pass). IMO it's not the spreading per se, but the spreading into a volume of space to which someone else has a stronger claim that is the issue. If you are sharing a double seat with another person, position yourself as if you were in a single seat with a brick wall squarely on the half way line. If you can't arrange yourself without some part of your anatomy having to go through the brick wall then that seat is sadly too small for you. I agree it's crap that public transport often doesn't accommodate tall people well and have every sympathy for your discomfort. It's just that your legitimate right to minimise this discomfort does not include any right to take up more than 50% of any 2-person seat.

As this all boils down to not taking more than 50% of the seat - I'm wondering how to approach fatties who can take up 75% or more quite easily. If I should apologise for not quite fitting then they should certainly be more contrite.

Taking my inspiration from this thread, I could take humourous comments about ball size and medical attention and paraphrase it to the context of their huge arse. Or perhaps just physically shove right in to get my 50%. That seems OK - after all a lanky sod's leg or a fatty's gut is all simply a unacceptable spread?

There's a certain irony here. a spreading man is excessively territorial which upsets the neighbour who isn't getting their exact 50% so is also being territorial?

I think the issue here was that some men don't NEED to take up so much of seat but just sit with legs spread like their balls are massive.

So not same as you being tall and not being able to help it
Or someone having a large arse.

I know you are taking it otherwise. But that is what people meant.

I think there is a difference between someone taking up more space because they are tall or fat or disabled or heavily pregnant

And someone feeling entitled to take up more space because they have a penis

Usually the first group of people apologise for inconveniencing you . As we've seen on this thread, they choose seats to minimise their disturbance of others and they usually thank you for moving to accommodate them. I don't see anyone here complaining about them

Whereas the second group don't even think twice about it, they feel morally entitled to some of your space as well as all of their own share . Just as they feel entitled to more money than a woman doing the same job. Or entitled to 70% of the airtime in a conversation