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Women Try To Manspread For A Week

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Does Manspreading Only Attribute to Bad Manners or Several Factors?
Shingo Takatera
California State University, Northridge A personal space belongs to a person; therefore, we feel uncomfortable when strangers invade our personal space or social distance. The behavior of invading other’s space becomes an issue, especially in a public transportation. The behavior is a manspreading that is often practiced by male. According to Oxford Living Dictionaries, manspreading refers to “the practice whereby a man, especially one travelling on public transport, adopts a sitting position with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on an adjacent seat or seats” (year). Since manspreading can invade other people’s personal space especially …show more content…

Men who manspread in a limited space are criticized for invading other’s space and their rudeness. If women manspread, do they get the same criticism as men, or would women get other content of criticism such as gender performance? In the video “Women Try to Manspread for a Week”, produced by BuzzFeed, the three women share their experience of manspreading for a week. On the commentary, the woman with a hat and glasses shares her memory of her childhood about closing her legs. She has the vivid memories that her mother often reminded her to close her legs. Her mother’s reminder of closing legs suggests the education of the gender performance, since even though I am disciplined to be polite, I as a man have never been reminded to close my legs from my parents. On the first day of the experiment, the woman with the hat and glasses feels she is like a monster and wonders how men can manspread without being conscious. Since this experiment is conducted with a will of manspreading and caring other’s spaces, she might be more self-conscious, but if men are not conscious of manspreading as she says, what factors make her more conscious of manspreading as a woman? One of the factor of being conscious of manspreading might be attributed to the education she had from her mother during her girlhood because the discipline of “closing legs” conflicts with the behavior of manspreading. On the day three of manspreading, the same woman tells that she is not enjoying the experiment and feels uncomfortable manspreading because she takes extra spaces in a train. None of the three women did not get criticism for being masculine during the experiment, yet the “closing legs” discipline suggests that manspreading opposes the gender performance of

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