Bloody men on trains- manspreading!!!

[Plankingplanks]

I have twice been given the rage today by men on the train manspreading!! Get on train first thing, got an urgent piece of work to do. Take one of the only seats on the train at a table. Guy opposite me is on his laptop taking up 3/4 of the width of the table. I get my laptop out, put it on the edge of the table about 50% on and can't bloody we'll use it because his is taking up most of the room and the lid of it is tipped back across half the rest of the table. I ask him to move it back a bit. He looks at me and moves his maybe an inch, so I'm forced to work at a strange angle whilst surreptitiously using my lid to push his back while he is on his bloody phone, not even using the goddamned laptop!!

Then I get on the train home. Men and women everywhere with their bags nicely seated on the seat next to them whilst people are having to stand!!

Spot an empty seat. Make my way to it to find a man seated diagonally across two seats with his leg (only one) across the footwell of the empty seat. He looks at me as I go to sit down, and doesn't move his legs at all!! I sit down, and say excuse me, and he moved his foot back slightly! He is still taking up nearly half my foot space.
So I move my feet and ask him to move again. He moves slightly again and now my leg is touching his leg pushing him back into his space. Still he doesn't ducking get in his own chair!!

Eventually, I turned to him and said "do you have a disability that required you to sit taking up two spaces? Because this is the third time I've asked you to move your legs out of my space and they are still there!" His response was to move his leg to the exact edge of his seat and then spend the rest of the journey, pushing his leg into mine!

Wtf is it with these men? Do they get turned on by it?

Also why are people giving their bloody bags seats and making people stand? The fuck I'd stand and let someone have their bag on the bloody seat, but more fool them for standing!!

That fucker sat with his rucksack on his knee with his legs WIDE open.

Was there room for his legs. Neither of us are particularly tall but it can be a pain travelling just trying to fit yourselves into the gap. We have ended up with our legs at odd places just to get comfortable.

I still have a very fond memory from years ago. I was in a train for a long journey (6+hours). The man next to me was nice enough when awake and didn’t spread. He then fell asleep and massively manspread. He woke up, noticed, apologized profusely and immediately then took off his scarf, tied it tight around his knees/thighs and went back to sleep.

i still think of that man and of how he did the right thing.

i can’t stand man spreaders. They ruin my commutes and give me the rage.

Why didn't you?

I find both sexes do this. Plenty of men sit with a rucksack on the seat next to them but plenty of women do the same when a handbag.

I had to come back from a hospital appointment via bus yesterday and the woman already on the 2 seats was taking up a big portion of the spare seat and was encroaching even further with her arms out reading a paper. I had to sit on a little sliver of the seat which meant people kept pushing into me to walk down the aisle. Really annoying.

I can't believe adults stand whilst bags are on seats, just ask ffs. It's pretty normal where I live to have your bag next to you, if someone wants the seat they'll ask for it. No pratting about with passive agressive comments either.

Manspreading is sadly everywhere though, just last night I had some arsehole next to me at a gig tell me I'd need to sit elsewhere because he liked to throw his arms about 'dancing'. I swapped with my husband...arsehole threw his arms about once. Amazing how only a woman was expected to accomodate his shape throwing.

"It's not always men"

No, but it almost always is. And they tend to be larger and do it more aggressively.

@Katiepoes I can't believe adults stand whilst bags are on seats, just ask ffs. It's pretty normal where I live to have your bag next to you, if someone wants the seat they'll ask for it. No pratting about with passive agressive comments either.

This is a ridiculous stance. I can’t believe adults hog a seat for their bag when a bus or train is so full it leaves people standing.
It’s completely selfish and there is a huge overlap between people who as selfish and have no regard for others and people who lash out at other people in public for asking them nicely to remove their bag.
People get arsey with people who ask for the seat, pregnant woman who dare ask, people in wheelchairs who need the designated space.

The easiest solution is to just not be a dick and use one single seat. It’s not that hard.

It's the way it works here Sissynova. As the train fills people ask for the seat if there's a bag there. Nobody is bothered. This is not in the UK though, maybe you all like the chance to tut at others? 😁

God this is disturbing, one of the linked threads at the bottom of this one is where OP took a photo of a man with his legs spread so wide his knee was nearly touching the centre point of her seat, and the thread is just full of people ranting and raving about how it's just man-bashing, why didn't the OP just stand, why didn't the OP just swivel round and sit with her legs poking out into the aisle, but of course the poor dumpling couldn't possibly not have his legs spread as wide as they can go because they might touch the seat in front!! One particularly unhinged poster even ranted about how she hoped the man dropped a nasty fart in the OP's face to punish her for the crime of not wanting a guy taking up nearly half her seat.

The fact so many women have been indoctrinated with this "woman MUST serve men at all costs" hyper-misogynistic mentality is honestly the most terrifying thing to me. Since peri I have no problem standing up to men,

Omg shocking. I'm tall but basically dislocate my knees so as not to encroach in anyone else's space!

Yes well seeing as we can't control how other people act, and many other people don't always behave in a socially acceptable way, we can control our mouths and ask them to move it. Or you can stand and seethe about it.

Of course people should know better, but if everyone behaved as they should we'd have no crime!

The answer to man spreaders, in the absence of a bag with pointy corners, is to jiggle your leg.

It is incredibly annoying & guaranteed to get the manspreader to move his (or her) leg away from yours.

Laptop users are a fairly selfish breed on trains irrespective of sex. I’ve experienced quite a few huffy business-y woman laptop users on morning trains who appear outraged that I want to sit down on my morning commute.

@BigFatLiar well I'm 5ft 9" myself with 33" legs & I did not need to spread into poor diddum's space...he was about my height & skinny build.
He was just a selfish fucker. He smelled of drink & was coming from a city where a lot of men got on who had clearly been to a match that afternoon & had clearly been drinking.

He closed his eyes as soon as he sat down & kept them closed the entire journey.

Any spreading thigh that ends up in my space gets a handbag perched on it

This made me chuckle out loud :)

I finished my swimming session this morning due to a sort of man spreading. The medium lane had been, by chance and quite unusually, all women for the 25 minutes I’d been there. Really nice swim session actually, time flew by, people rearranging themselves politely at the ends for any overtaking required. Then a bloke joined and proceeded to swim at the same pace as the fast lane swimmers up and down the middle of the lane (while everyone else swam clockwise as directed, just now tight up to the dividing rope). One of the fast lanes only had a single person in it, while our medium lane had 5 women when he joined. I’m not sure it’s technically manspreading, but that was the word that sprang to mind.

How annoying @TakeMeToKernow . Didn’t the lifeguard notice?

You got out of the pool rather than address the problem? You could have spoken to him or a lifeguard.

Spreaders are annoying, bag-dumpers are infurating...

However I have put my dog on the seat and I would do it again - when I travelled with a dog, I had a blanket for the seat (and always folded up when not in use so the hair free side remained hair free)...

The reason was this.

At each stop, people would come to sit in the seat next to me. I would tell them there was a dog under the table, so they could choose if they sat there or not and wouldn't be surprised.

Every. Single. Time. the person in question would absolutely fucking BLANK me.. and then thirty seconds later, leap up muttering words of disgust, or in some cases actually screaming... as the dog I'd informed them was under the table, moved or huffed or wagged his tail and they felt/heard him.

'Eugh, theres a DOG!'.... in the same way most people might say 'Eugh, theres a dreadful slimy monster'...

So I had him hop up on the seat on the blanket, next to me (he'd get the window and I'd get the aisle) so people could SEE there was a dog and then I would offer to move him if it looked like they wanted to sit, and not if they huffed and kept moving.

This did make the long trips from Lancaster to Reading/Guildford much more bearable - though one trio of rugby fans did try to get my dog drunk, which wasn't a lot of fun particularly as the dog was very much up for this!

If people actually bothered listening, or if I could trust other train/bus users NOT to boot my dog in the face or stamp on his tail (both things have happened, not hyperbole for the sake of the post!), then it wouldn't be necessary to go to such lengths to keep everyone safe.

All I’m going to say is that sometimes I’m a tad clumsy in heels (oops a daisy!) and for some unfathaomable reason it always happens when I sit next to a manspreader!

You are a CF.

Arsehole men are absolutely everywhere behaving like unevolved primates.

i have grey hair and I'm in Germany so bluntness isn't frowned upon in the way it can be in uk.

On Friday the manspreader got his leg moved, by my hand, back beyond the divide in the sat cushions. The 2nd time i said "stop doing that it's uncomfortable" and the woman across from me said to him "if you want more room pay for 1st class" and we had a grin of solidarity

I always push back against their legs, shift my legs so they have to move theirs, and generally take up the amount of space i should have in my seat.

Bags on seats? last week i just picked up a rucksack when the chap i asked to move it ignored me. I put it on the luggage rack next to mine and sat down. As i put it up i said "if you need a hand getting it down, because of your injury, let me know when you get off" and then just read my book.

People stare. Some people mumble. But most people hate the fuckers who take up all the room, so they don't really mind or care. After the first couple of times you won't either.

Tables are a bit more tricky, but i push back until i have up to the halfway line and that's fine.

Being tall and trying to contort yourself into an inadequate space is not the same as man spreading! I'm 6ft tall with a lot of height in my legs. Sometimes I cannot fit my legs in the prescribed space. I hate it and often won't sit but sometimes there is nothing for it but to sit on a diagonal. Buses as particularly bad for this.

Public transport seats are really narrow though - i was sitting next to a rather corpulent woman the other day who easily took up a third of my seat too, it was uncomfortable for me (but it was the last seat and i really needed to sit) but what could i say/do? she knows she's large, so pushing her would do nothing.

But a manspreader? i'd have shoved him right back into his space, i just don't put up with it.
Can also concur with pp: having a "nervous leg jiggle" really helps.