M a n s p r e a d i n g.
This phrase refers to a particular way that men sit, with their legs spread apart as wide as humanly imaginable, and take up as much room as possible on public transport, with little regard for the personal space of others.
Anyone who’s ever used public transport has most likely unwittingly witnessed this phenomenon, and probably had to sit scrunched up in order to accommodate all of the room required for culprit’s massive dick? Giant balls?. Why else would someone sit in such an inconsiderate way if not for physiological reasons?
Manspreading has gained quite a lot of attention over recent years since being written about on websites such as Everyday Feminism. And now it seems that action is being taken to fight this phenomenon.
New signs are set to appear on buses in Madrid, depicting a man intentionally taking up more than one seat with an ‘x’ in the top corner, in a bid to dissuade commuters from this practice. The city’s metro system is also set to be adopting a similar campaign in the near future too.
The Spanish bus operator EMT said in a statement this week that, ‘the mission of this new signage is to remember the need to maintain civic behaviour and to respect the space of everyone on board the bus.’
The decision to put up these signs came around after the women’s group Mujeres en Lucha organised an online Change.org petition, which gained over 600 signatures, pushing Madrid officials to do so.
Manspreading is quite a divisive topic of discussion, as most men probably aren’t actively trying to be inconsiderate when they spread their legs. But the thing about manspreading is that it’s primarily down to male socialisation and how men have been taught, in however subtle ways, that they never have to consider or assess their entitlement to public spaces.
Whilst manspreading may not be as overtly sexist as cat-calling, it still highlights one of the many small ways in which common acts of toxic masculinity are ingrained in our culture, and how we are continuously subjected to this notion that men are unquestionably entitled to the space around them. And that's why small steps to change things - like those signs in Madrid - are so important.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.