Are We Sitting Comfortably?

Ellie Muir asks if we need a new approach to one of the most provocative terms in modern discourse: manspreading

- Ellie Muir

A week ago, 24-year-old Olivia found herself inside a “manspread sandwich”. Trapped between the muscular legs of the two men bookending her on the Tube, she pretzeled her limbs into a tiny ball. “I felt so small,” she tells me. “I didn’t notice their spreading until I lowered into the seat and accidentally nudged each of their knees as I sat down. The one on the left of me actually sank even lower into his seat – his knee bumped into my thigh. How can you be so rude? They must have known what they were doing, they just didn’t care.”

Discussion of manspreading – in which a man adopts a wide sitting position on public transport and encroaches on the person in the adjacent seat – sits at the murky intersection of debates about common courtesy and male privilege. The term was first used by the American newspaper AM New York in 2008, and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015, the years in between transforming it into one of the most provocative words in modern discourse.

It’s even been deemed to be so morally offensive that Madrid’s transport network issued a ban on manspreading in 2017, with the Empresa Municipal de Transportes rolling out signs asking passengers to refrain from taking up space by spreading their legs. Around the same time, Instagram accounts dedicated to capturing splayed stances on public transport began popping up across Europe. In France, @manspreadersofparis chronicled “Olympic-level spreaders”, while @manspread_dormunt in Germany and @manspreadersofnorway began showcasing everything from a humble V-shaped sprawl to men doing box splits.