Men who can't keep to their own side of a double seat on public transport

[Pavementworrier]

This is getting worse right? It's getting to the point where they just launch themselves halfway across both and crush the person sitting at the window and don't seem to see anything wrong with this. Guy just did that to me so I elbowed him away and he turned to look at me in outrage.

I think part of the issue is people who used to drive are getting public transport more. Which is good overall but it also means a lot more selfish pricks in enclosed spaces.

Please don't assume we are doing this to be selfish. I have hip replacements (but I'm youngish for that so you probably wouldn't expect I would) and I can't flex the joints inwards comfortably. Often the window seats have reduced foot space/ slanted sides (at least on the trains, I rarely take a bus) which means I can't keep my hips at right angles with the floor if I sit there. I have a priority seat pass but I only use it when I have to... I never have a problem standing to let someone get past to the window seat, I just can't comfortably sit on that side.

Around here my pet peeve is almost always young women who put their bag(s) on the aisle seat and are then so engrossed in their phones (or pretending to be) that they don’t notice the bus filling up fast, and have to be asked to move their bags. I have no hesitation in asking, though, and the odd eye roll bothers me not at all.

Afraid to say it’s nearly always young women who plonk themselves in the first available (elderly/disabled) seats, when there are plenty further back, and ditto are so busy with their phones that they don’t notice some doddery old dear who needs the seat.

Please don’t anybody say they probably have hidden disabilities. This practice is so common around here, I simply don’t believe it, and they typically hop on and off the bus like mountain goats,

I hate to say it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a young man doing the same.

To give a possible answer to those asking why you'd sit on the aisle seat and effectively take up two, I sit on the outside of a double seat because I've had too many creepy men sit beside me when there's plenty of free seats, trapping me against the window and forcing me to squeeze past them and have unwanted physical contact to get out, I've also been groped while trying to get out. I'll move in to the window seat to let another woman sit down or I'll stand to let a man in to the window but I feel safer being on the aisle.

A few years ago I was on a fairly crowded train sitting opposite DH in window seats. I had the arm down. A large lady came to sit beside me and tried to lift the arm up. I pushed it back down and held it. She said she need more room. I said I was sorry about that but I wanted to use all of the seat I'd paid for. I can't bear being touched by strangers.

So do I , I also if say at a gig or the theatre and they sit down before me and encroach into my space just sit down and if their legs are there well I just sit on them.

I totally accept that for some people , such as yourself there could be a valid reason.

However, my local service is only one bus per hour. It's a single decker. And often when I get on there are no double seats left, or perhaps one or two at the very back - being in my 70s myself I much prefer not to have to go right to the back of the bus. And of the people already occupying the double seats routinely at least half of them are sat in the aisle seat with the window seat vacant. And I refuse to believe that all, or even the majority of these people, have health issues. Definitely for most of them the attitude is that they just do not want anyone sat next to them.

I do that. It's certainly not entitled, it's to put off men who like to sit next to a lone woman to intimidate them when there's loads of other seats available.

The buses I normally get on don't have loads of other seats available.

I must say though I did have what you describe happen to me last year when I was on a bus in Glasgow and a guy got on and came and sat next to me even though the downstairs of the bus was virtually empty and there were loads of free seats And it really puzzled me, especially given the age I am.

Yeah this happens with creepy regularity ime.

What about the women that use the empty seat, for their shopping bags and won't move them.
Or the elderly women with trolleys, that plonk them in front of a seat and refuse to move them.
Its really not just men.

That’s not the same as invading your personal space. I don’t want to touch a stranger.

Is she sitting with her legs wide open acting like she has more right to the space than you do? Because if so, she would be a rare exception to the behaviour of women on public transport, but reflective of patterned behaviour from men. Which is why it absolutely is a sex based issue.

On the bus just now a woman just aggressively climbed over my teenage daughter and almost whacked her with her bag rather than just saying "excuse me please because I am getting off at the next stop".
But no..... it's just a man thing .

No, but she did have her bags and coat piled up on the seat next to her while other passengers were standing, until I asked her to move them.

Which isn’t the same thing. At all.

I have started physically impeding the fuckers. I will use my leg to firmly correct a manspread into its own allotted space. I simply cannot tolerate the utter selfishness any more.

The result is the same though. Someone in your space is someone in your space.

They can't help that their penis is so huge that they have to manspread cause it would be squashed otherwise.

DD unfortunately is too intimidated to do things like this. She has to take an evening bus home from the city, often full to the brim and rowdy. I think it's really difficult when you are are younger and (speaking from experience) you get a lot less tolerant and braver as you get older and certainly as I've been perimenopausal!

Now that's not a sex based issue, as both men and women do that.

Definitely! I would never have done it at her age. Menopause has its upsides.

The issue here is partly how seats and pretty much everything is designed. It is based on a standard male anatomy. Men have narrow hips. Even fat men spread their apple shaped belly forward in their seats, unlike many overweight women who will carry on their hips. Some quite slim women can have very wide hips that simply don’t fit into a standard male made toilet seat (god forbid we’ve all experienced the half sitting on a sanitary bin on a public loo as toilets have become narrower and bins are wedge right up against loo seat), the airplane seat, the car seat, office chair, bar stools, amusement park rides etc

and let’s not even get into how they’ve not taken into account our height and lower centre of gravity in crash tests exposing us to higher risk of injury and death

can’t see women next to you, and she may be very overweight, but for women the issue is usually compounded by the apparent ignorance by designers that women are bigger round hips and bums. Even though they’re probably quite familiar with the “does my bum look big in this” question that haunts so many of us women.

so, let’s stick to point …almost always it will be men that terrotorily will claim space by spreading their legs and elbows , even when that man is very small.

This is interesting. Where I live creepiness on trains has become so frequent that most women alone choose the outside seat, I have taught my daughter to do this too. We of course move when asked. Nobody is standing tutting at 'ettiquette' leaving a seat empty.

As for bags, same thing. If a grown adult stands and does not just ask the bag owner to move it then that is their problem. Please none of you ever come to the Netherlands or Germany, public transport will kill you. It is not rudeness here it is just how it works.

In terms of size/weight, it's not a gender issue but I've never seen a woman do this...

As above that's quite different from pressing your disgusting body against a stranger so they are caused physical pain then reacting with outrage when they elbow you.