So Manspreading has been in the news recently. Two men in New York were arrested for spreading their legs on a subway. It sounds stupid when you say it out loud, yet, it is true. Before we discuss what happened to these men, we need to understand what is manspreading and the controversy behind it.



Manspreading (also known as man-sitting) is the act of men sitting with their legs open. More specifically, it is a term for when it occurs on public transport, though it could be expanded for anywhere public seating is available. The first appearance of this term in a public forum was in 2013 on Tumblr. A feminist cited the issue of men spreading their legs taking up a lot of space, which she said is a means to oppress women who take up little space, thus making them uncomfortable.

This immediately came under attack, as this is nothing more than a way to control men. It also is a gross ignorance of biology and how the male body is designed. For men, sitting with our legs open is due to how our hips are structured. Because of how narrow they are, compared to women (which women’s bodies are designed for childbirth and men aren’t), men must keep their legs open to be comfortable. Which also means, to keep their legs closed is very uncomfortable.

This of course is not to say that men must keep their legs open. In times were space becomes a premium, due to a lot of people in a small area, men are known to close legs to make more room.

It’s one thing to bitch about this in public forums and social media, but this has become an issue for New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). At the beginning of 2015, MTA launched a campaign costing over $76,000 to put up signs that tell men not to spread their legs and announcements on the trains not to do it. Mind you, MTA is $34.4 billion in debt, but then, what is another $76k. At present, this is a campaign asking people not to be rude.



When it comes to this controversy, none are more famous than Tom Hanks. Yes, the actor. He got accused of manspreading and take up two seats. In truth he was doing this and freely admitted it, but added that the car was half empty and he decided to relax. Him taking up two seats was not an inconvenience for anyone. Yet, he was shamed for doing it.

The flip side to all of this, is that the worst offenders of space issues on public transports are women. The thing is, men do need to spread their legs to feel comfortable, but 99% of the time, if it is required of them to close their legs to make room, they will. However, women represent a greater problem.

How? Bags.

While men can easily make room, women will often carry bags with them, likely do to shopping. Now men do this as well, but more often it is because it is a backpack. However, when men carry a bag they usually keep it on them or put it under their feet rather than taking up another seat with it, and they usually have just one or two.

Women get on public transportation with multiple bags from shops. When they do this, they put their bags on adjacent seats, and expect other paying customers to give up those seats to make room for them. No one is outraged about this. Even those who support the issue of manspreading are not bothered by women doing this, justifying that she is not spreading her legs.

So if it is OK for a woman to take up multiple seats, and Tom Hanks is bitched at when the subway is half empty, perhaps this isn’t a space issue. Perhaps the issue is SJW trying to control male behavior, and criminalize men for being men. It is a form of harassment and attempt at shaming men who are not actually doing anything wrong and making it an issue about space despite the fact that women are the worst offenders when it comes to take up space on a train. There is also exaggeration of men spreading their legs with captions of them taking up seats when in truth, the people next to them still have a lot of space. People tend not to want to be touching someone if they can help it. More than that, most men will accommodate those around them if asked.

So let’s talk about the two men arrested. In my research for this issue, the good news I can tell you is that this is not a law. But then, how does one get arrested for something not a law?

The two men in question got arrested on Friday, May 22nd 2015 @ 12:11am. Focus on that time. After midnight on a subway. I’ve been told that at midnight, a subway car is mostly empty. Which means these two men were arrested for having their legs spread apart while the train was mostly empty.

Even the judge herself was shocked by this, citing that the subway couldn’t have had that many people on it. However, she didn’t throw out the case, but instead, slapped the men with a warning that if they do get arrested again, they would go to jail.

Again, why did they get arrested for something that is not a law that didn’t inconvenience anyone?

Because the police can. It appears that police can arrest anyone for any reason without probable cause to do so, for things that are not even a crime. This sounds like a bad cop show, but this is actually going on. People are arrested or written up for things that are not crimes, often times to be thrown out of court or given a bullshit sentence.

This is called Broken Window Policing. I quote to you a document from PROP (Police Reform Organizing Project):

A Department representative, a precinct captain or lieutenant, pressures officers to meet numerical goals regarding arrests and summonses, then deploys the officers in particular neighborhoods. Everyone in those neighborhoods becomes a potential criminal even if their criminality is fabricated to meet the targeted monthly quotas, sometimes referred to by Department brass as “productivity goals”. The subsequent indiscriminate ticketing, false arrests, and illegal stops undermine officers’ relationships with communities and result in unfair, counterproductive policing. As the stories in this report attest, many community members do not feel that they can turn to the police as a source of protection. In fact, they often feel that they must take steps to protect themselves and their children from the police. They lose faith in a legal system that unjustly harasses and punishes them at its earliest stages with its most public arm.

The problem, as reported by PROP, appears to be with the policing within subways system at night. People, namely minorities, are ticketed or arrested for crimes including: putting foot on seat, walking between cars, and even having someone swipe in for you.

At present for 2015, there have been over 1400 summons to court for the issue of manspreading, holding open the possibility that more have been arrested for this.

While a quota system could explain why these sort of arrests are happening, there is no concrete evidence to prove a quota system is being used by police.

The long and the short of it is that feminists have given the police manspreading on a silver patter. Men can be arrested for something biological. It’s like women being arrested for menstruating. It’s not something women can control, but you better believe feminists would cry oppression if such a law were made… yet they are gung-ho about barring men from doing something that they need to do.

While the overall problem appears to be a race issue, as the majority of those accused of these petty issues are non-white, this new rule is a way of legal discrimination against men, as no rule has been made against bags on seats.

Our society is really going down a dark hole. First world feminism is complaining of something that doesn’t affect anyone, simply because it hurts their feelings. They have forced New York to make it a policy which now gives police the ability to arrest people for it, despite it not being a crime. I would think twice about living in New York, as it is becoming more and more anti-men by the minute.

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