I dunno I think manspreading does happen, but I’ll come across a woman whose shopping bags take up a shop extra space, and don’t get me started on women with pushchairs (and yes it is usually women!) taking up disabled spaces with their buggies on public transport. Just dig out a few threads on mumsent and you’ll find an entitled few who seem to think they are entitled to use disabled spaces.
It’s just generally very bad social etiquette, and there are a tonne of ill mannered and rude people at large in the world. The difference is when men are rude there is a legion feminists pointing at the behaviour as being symptomatic of wider trends of the misogyny between men and women.
This is only anecdotal but my biggest experience of rudeness in public spaces was when I worked retail. I’d even venture that I came across way more rude female customers than male. Although I have the wit to realize given that women are responsible for more purchasing decisions than men I’m more likely to be exposed to greater numbers of female consumers than men.
In addition they are just as likely to be rude to female colleagues (and more than one has been reduced to tears from a rude female customer!). So I wouldn’t point to any underlying misandrist trends from my experiences.
On the topic of mansplaining I do think that’s a thing, but it’s not as clear cut as that a certain type of man (and sometimes woman), has such a colossal case of unwarranted case of self importance they like to hold court on a selection of topics, even ones they know less about. Thing is that isn’t behaviour that’s reserved exclusively for women. A man like that is just as likely to mansplain to me, another man as they are a woman. Yes it’s tiresome, but to then hear I’m also somehow morally responsible for these men just because as an accident of birth I happen to share the same chromosomes is patently absurd.
This is where class analysis falls flat on it’s face. As there is no meaningful way to impose a collective responsibility from a group onto an individual. Also some feminists are quick to reach for accusations of mansplaining when they are losing an argument, which leads to all manner of spectacular hilarity as if the man points out that mansplaining is specifically related to cases of explaining something blindly to somebody already expert in the subject, then they just get accused of mansplaining mansplaining, even if the original accusation was incorrectly applied!
I take no pleasure in pointing this out as I’m seeing a lot of feminists hoisted by their own petard. As now they are being boxed in by the precise same rhetorical tricks they’ll use on their idealogical opponents only this time it’s the radical trans lobby claiming greater oppressed status. A different ‘lived experience’ that nobody else can challenge. It would be funny if it wasn’t putting real women in harms way with the erosion of women’s spaces, prisons etc.
This isn’t a specific to feminism problem either. Tonnes of
Men are swept up into this identity politics maelstrom of late. I used to be quite enamoured with feminism, and in some ways I still am when it comes to literary and historical analysis. A female perspective is crucial (and just as much relative to a male one) on just about any topic, but I’ve learned a female perspective isn’t necessarily always a feminist one.