Men were banned from sitting on trains and buses with their legs wide apart. Widely spaced legs are a demonstration of machismo and micro-aggression, feminists say.
The Spanish capital has banned men from sitting on trains and buses with their legs wide apart, reports Ravnit Ahluwalia in the Independent. Municipal transport system City (EMT) plans to install new signs in the cars. On Wednesday, the organization released a statement to this effect, which reads: “A new information icon indicates a ban on sitting in a position that causes discomfort to other people. It should remind transport users to maintain civic responsibility and respect the privacy of each passenger.”
It is not yet clear whether violators will be fined, the article says.
The author reports that the new measure was preceded by a months-long campaign organized by the residents of Madrid. The hashtag #MadridSinManspreading has gone viral on social media. Then a corresponding petition was submitted to the mayor of Madrid. In April, the CUP took the issue to the government level and asked for a nationwide campaign against sitting with legs wide apart. The party called the pose "a display of machismo and micro-aggression that brings discomfort to the person affected."
In 2014, a campaign against sitting with legs wide apart was held in New York. The New York City Police Department even arrested several violators, however, the charges were later dropped from them, the article says.
What take Manspreading?
Manspreading - Male spreading of the legs in transport ("disrespectful sitting") - the habit of some men to sit in public transport, spreading your legs wide, thereby occupying more than one place.
The phenomenon has long been the subject of jokes on the Internet, as well as criticism and debate in the US, UK, Turkey and Canada. The English-language neologism manspreading was launched by feminists on the social network Tumblr in 2013, when a campaign was launched against such “transport machismo”. The word "manspreading" quickly gained popularity in the US and even became a candidate for "Word of the Year" from the American Dialect Society.
New York transport company The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and Sound Transit in Seattle supported the action by releasing posters instructing them to maintain a respectful posture for other passengers on buses and trains. Transportation officials in cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington, DC, however, deny the problem is that serious. The MTA is campaigning under the slogan "Dude, stop spreading yourself, please!" (Dude, stop the spread please!). Activists who believe that the scale of manspreading is becoming more and more threatening, resort to fighting it with their own methods: for example, photographing this behavior of passengers and posting pictures on the Internet with appropriate derogatory comments.
While activists criticize the practice of manspreading for being rude and inattentive to other passengers who have to stand, they themselves are criticized for focusing exclusively on men, while women sometimes also occupy more than one seat in transport. The practice of posting photos online has been criticized as unacceptable public humiliation or shame.
In response to this idea, this picture gained popularity from feminists. Also, people remembered famous examples from painting, confirming that it is more comfortable for men to sit this way.
Public transport during rush hour is similar to the old one good game with chairs, when there are more players than seats, and passengers are always on the alert, ready to occupy the suddenly vacated square centimeters of the seat. At the same time, absolutely everyone is annoyed by individuals who freely placed the body on one and a half, or even two seats - all thanks to their widely spread legs. The problem, of course, is not only and not so much Russian - for example, in New York, they recently began to arrest men who sit with their legs spread wide on the subway. The Village asked a psychologist, social anthropologist and psychotherapist why men around the world do this.
Ekaterina Bryantseva
President of the Association of Psychologists of St. Petersburg
Of course, not all men sit in vehicles with their legs wide apart. Let's talk about those who do this. In this case, firstly, the culture of sexual education matters. It has long been believed that a girl should keep honor from a young age. This stereotype is also manifested in sexual relations: legs grow from an intimate place, which in the female body is the starting point - this is both a point of constraint and the place from which children appear. The woman must hide it. According to etiquette, the legs of a crouching woman should be connected.
A man must demonstrate that he is a male. If we take the classics of body language, widely spread legs are an indicator of sexual readiness. This does not mean that a man is ready to copulate with anyone - this is an indicator of an active state.
Let's return to the origins of psychoanalysis and grandfather Freud, who said that a person has two leading instincts - eros and thanatos. Thanatos - the desire for death or destruction. Eros is the desire for pleasure: not only sexual, but also from other things (food, clothing, some kind of action). Sex and aggression are at the core of a man's behavior. A man must demonstrate dominance through belonging to his sex (gender).
Most often, men sit with their legs apart, either in search, or having some kind of sexual insufficiency, or trying to pretend to be macho. There is such a concept - hypercompensation: if I have not resolved a certain personal issue, I begin to demonstrate it unconsciously.
Physiology matters too. The genital organs of a man are, as it were, taken out of the body: they must be at a lower temperature in order for the spermatozoa to ripen properly. In women, on the contrary, everything is hidden in the body (at a higher temperature). And many men explain their spread legs like this: “to be cool”, “to ventilate”.
But most often men sit like this, who have not resolved issues with social status. The criterion of masculinity is not only in the ability to copulate, it is a certain set that includes social status, financial capabilities, and so on. As a rule, men who are at a high social level and have good financial opportunities follow the rules of etiquette. I have not seen a single businessman who would sit with his legs wide apart.
Denis Gvozdikov
sociologist, social anthropologist
Probably, such behavior can be interpreted through the prism of human ethology: a man who “shows off” his genitals and takes up more space exhibits implicit dominant behavior. However, this is just a guess.
The factors that push to the manifestation of aggression or competitiveness are, of course, modern. Still, we are dealing with the phenomena of a mass and anonymous society. And public transport is such a technological institution that is largely devoid of a soul.
Dominance and competitiveness, as well as aggression, are also characteristic of women. Another thing is that men, as a rule, are larger and physically stronger, and to suppress the “rival” by force is the easiest way.
A demonstration is sometimes more effective and safer than an outright threat.
However, it is also true that in the conditions of anonymity, we may perceive a threat where there is none. Therefore, the most reasonable way is to politely ask the passenger to move a little.
Elizabeth Zeldina
psychoanalyst, lecturer at the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis
The question of why some men in transport sit with their legs spread wide requires, in my opinion, several clarifications.
The first concerns place. We are talking about public transport, but if you look around, a large number of men sit spread-legged in other public places. The men sit spread-legged and at home on the couch. Is the public interested in the issue of outstretched legs, or just the localization of these legs in space? Will the public judge a man if he spreads his legs in a bar, or on the beach, or at home?
The second clarification concerns the fact that it is men, and not women, who sit with their legs wide apart. But if you look around, a large number of women (if they are not in a skirt) also sit with their legs spread. Will the public judge a woman who sits with her legs spread? If she's not wearing a skirt. Since if yes, the answer suggests itself: it will be, and even how.
These clarifications lead me to ask a completely different question: who is asking, and what is on the mind of someone who is going to judge a man for disrespect? This is the question I would like to answer. In psychoanalysis we often deal with fantasies. The point is not what the other does, but how the subject reacts to his actions, or rather, fantasizes. The disrespect fantasy concerns the one who expresses it. Maybe he does not respect himself and sees that others do just that. And there is nothing reprehensible in this fantasy, it is important to understand it, then actions will be taken that will really solve the issue or problem.
Illustration: Nastya Grigorieva
Madrid authorities ban men from spreading their legs on public transport June 9th, 2017
Residents of the Spanish capital have complained to transport officials for many years that some men assume "irritating" body positions on buses. The municipal transport company, which acts as the state carrier in Madrid, has issued notices banning men from spreading their knees wide on public transport. Information signs calling for compliance with this rule will appear in all subway cars, buses and suburban trains.
According to The Local, this ban was the reaction of the transport authorities to numerous and long-standing complaints from passengers. They complained that the manner of sitting with legs wide apart, common among the representatives of the stronger sex, steals personal space from others. Often next to such a man it is impossible to take an empty seat. And on buses, protruding knees make it difficult to squeeze through to the exit, especially during the morning rush hour.
A red icon depicting a man with legs wide apart will appear in the memo next to information about the ban on smoking and calls for cleanliness in the car or bus cabin. The caption under the picture will read: "Respect the space of others."
