Name: Manspreading.
Age: Dates to 2014.
Appearance: Everywhere.
What does it mean? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the practice whereby a man, especially one on public transportation, adopts a sitting position with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on an adjacent seat or seats”.
Men have only been doing that since 2014? Actually, historical public transport advertisements prove it has been an issue for more than a century.
I was gonna say. The concept was first widely debated in a Tumblr forum in 2013. But it was a year later that the term “manspreading” was popularised, after a New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) campaign to stamp out the practice.
And was that campaign successful? It was not.
Well, this has been informative. Wait – there’s so much more you need to know.
No, I think I’ve got the gist of it, thank you. Global condemnation of manspreading was followed by a robust defence from men who claimed it was anatomically inherent.
That figures. And a backlash from some women, who considered the whole debate to be a form of fake feminism that clouded more substantive issues.
This all feels very 10 years ago to me. Perhaps. But men have now taken manspreading to the next level.
They have? Well, one anonymous man has.
And what exactly is the next level of manspreading? Doing it on a plane, and spreading far enough to reach all the way across the aisle.
That sounds physically impossible. There is proof. TikTokker Claire Zhu shared footage of the groundbreaking trans-aisle spread, one shoe of which encroached on territory she could reasonably have claimed to have paid for.
The fellow in question sounds, erm … Monstrously entitled?
I was going to say limber, but yeah. Flexible and entitled. “He’s about to give birth,” was one of the comments under the video, which has been viewed 3.8m times.
It does seem pretty indefensible. That didn’t stop male commenters trying. Some excused the move on the grounds that cramped aeroplane seating is a nightmare for tall people.
I can see both sides. I think you might be missing the point of social media.
Do say: “Oh sorry, I thought I was repeatedly sticking this plastic fork into my leg.”
Don’t say: “Ma’am, let me explain how manspreading actually works.”
