# Manspreading Manspreading is the slang term for men sitting on public transit with their knees splayed wide, hogging space meant for other passengers. Coined by New York commuters in 2014 and pushed viral by shame-blogs and an MTA courtesy campaign, it grew from a Tumblr gripe into a global culture-war flashpoint that spawned art projects, staged Russian propaganda videos, and a permanent entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. ## Origin The visual complaint predates the word. On May 8th, 2013, the Tumblr blog Men Taking Up Too Much Space on the Train began collecting candid photos of male passengers sprawled out across New York City subway benches, and the archive quickly became a reference point for the behavior[6]. Bustle writer Gabrielle Moss picked up the thread in August 2014 with a first-person piece in which she spent a weekend deliberately splaying out on the MTA to see how riders would react, still without using the word manspreading[7]. The label itself surfaced on October 6th, 2014, in an AM New York article titled "'Man spread' a widening blight on public transportation," which quoted riders complaining about knee-flaring commuters and is the earliest known use of the term in print[2]. A month later, on November 17th, AM New York reported that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was designing a courtesy campaign that would call out both backpack wearers and "man spreaders" by January[8]. That MTA push, more than the Tumblr blogs, is what dragged the word out of transit-nerd Twitter and into national coverage. - **Platform:** Tumblr (shame blogs) / AM New York (term coinage) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2013 ## Overview Manspreading is the practice of a man sitting with his knees flared far past his hips on a bus or train, taking up two or sometimes three seats' worth of space[1]. The word packages a specific gripe of urban commuters, mostly women, into a single sticky label that could be used in a headline, on a protest sign, or in the caption of a covert subway photo[2]. Part of why the term traveled so fast is that the visual is instantly recognizable: knees at forty-five degrees, phone in hand, an invisible force field of thigh blocking the seats on either side. The format that grew up around the word is mostly documentary. People snap photos of offenders on trains, post them to shaming accounts, and let the picture do the arguing[3]. Riffs on that base template include Photoshops of men sharing the pose with cats slotted between their knees, art-school responses like anti-spread chairs, and news-desk explainers dressed up as sociology[4][5]. The tone slides between earnest complaint and open trolling, which is why manspreading became one of the earliest gender-politics words to be adopted by both feminists and the men's-rights internet at the same time. ## How It Spread The tipping point was a viral Gothamist segment on December 18th, 2014, in which a woman boarded New York trains with a measuring tape and asked splayed-out men to quantify the gap between their knees[3]. Two days later, The New York Times ran a full write-up of the MTA's forthcoming etiquette campaign, and the term jumped from local blog jargon to national vocabulary within the week[9]. On December 22nd, Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos published a counter-column dismissing the backlash as "pathetic feminist pipsqueakery," which locked manspreading in as a culture-war shibboleth for the rest of the decade[10]. The word kept generating fresh news cycles well after the MTA signs went up. In 2015, editors added "manspreading" to the Oxford English Dictionary, defining it as sitting on public transport with legs wide apart in a way that stops others from sitting down[5]. On September 26th, 2018, the RT-owned Facebook page In The Now uploaded "Fighting Manspreading… With Bleach!", a St. Petersburg subway video of activist Anna Dovgalyuk supposedly pouring bleach on offenders, which racked up more than 6.4 million views before being outed as staged Kremlin-adjacent propaganda by EU vs Disinfo, with one of the on-camera "victims" telling Bumaga he had been paid to act the part[11][12]. In June 2019, University of Brighton student Laila Laurel drove another round of coverage when she won the Belmond Award for "A Solution for Man-spreading," a paired chair set that physically blocks men from splaying while nudging women's knees apart[5]. ## How to Use The manspreading label is typically used in two modes. As a photo caption, it accompanies a candid shot of an offender on a train or bus, often with a wry one-liner about square footage or, as Gothamist put it, whether there is enough room between the knees for "a litter of puppies"[3]. As a rhetorical jab, it gets dropped into arguments about gendered use of public space, sometimes sincerely and sometimes as bait, which is why Urban Dictionary entries for the term swing wildly between straight-faced feminism and openly hostile parodies[13]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Manspreading? Manspreading is the slang term for a man sitting on public transit with his legs so wide apart that he hogs seats meant for other riders[5]. ### Where did Manspreading come from? The behavior was first catalogued by the Tumblr blog Men Taking Up Too Much Space on the Train in May 2013, and the word itself was coined in an AM New York article in October 2014[6][2]. ### What does Manspreading mean? The Oxford English Dictionary added the word in 2015 and defines it as sitting on public transport with legs wide apart, taking up more space than needed and preventing others from sitting down[5]. ### How do you use Manspreading? It is used as a caption on candid subway photos of offenders and as a rhetorical jab in debates about gendered use of public space, often paired with shame-blog imagery[3]. ### Is Manspreading still popular? The term is now a classic bit of transit slang, still cited in dictionaries and cited in follow-on stories like Laila Laurel's 2019 anti-spread chair project, though the peak news cycle was 2014 to 2019[5]. ### Who ran the first anti-manspreading blog? The Tumblr blog Men Taking Up Too Much Space on the Train, launched on May 8th, 2013, is the earliest known shame archive for the behavior[6]. ### Did the MTA really run a manspreading campaign? Yes. AM New York reported in November 2014 that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was building an etiquette campaign targeting both backpack wearers and "man spreaders," set to roll out by January 2015[8]. ### What was the In The Now bleach video? A September 2018 clip published by RT-owned page In The Now showing activist Anna Dovgalyuk pouring liquid on manspreaders in the St. Petersburg subway; EU vs Disinfo reported it was staged, and one on-camera "victim" said he was paid to appear[11][12]. ### What is the anti-manspreading chair? University of Brighton student Laila Laurel designed a chair set called "A Solution for Man-spreading" that physically blocks men's knees from spreading, winning the 2019 Belmond Award for emerging design talent[5]. ### When was manspreading added to the dictionary? "Manspreading" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015, following the online campaign that had run since 2013[5]. ## References 1. [https://www.bustle.com/articles/34279-why-do-guys-spread-their-legs-when-sitting-on-the-subway-my-weekend-of-sitting-like]() 2. [https://www.amny.com/transit/man-spread-a-widening-blight-on-public-transportation-say-riders-1.9473786]() 3. [https://gothamist.com/2014/12/18/manspread_subway_video.php]() 4. [https://x.com/i/status/1045297756208676865]() 5. [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7253545/amp/Female-college-student-designs-chair-blocks-manspreading.html]() 6. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/manspreading]() 7. [https://sports.yahoo.com/designers-chair-stops-manspreading-114355373.html]() 8. [https://www.amny.com/transit/man-spreading-backpacks-will-be-targeted-in-mta-transit-manners-campaign-1.9626795]() 9. [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-manspreading-on-new-york-city-subways.html]() 10. [https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2014/12/22/sprawling-men-are-latest-victims-of-feminist-hysteria/]() 11. [https://euvsdisinfo.eu/viral-manspreading-video-is-staged-kremlin-propaganda/]() 12. [https://paperpaper.ru/peterburgskaya-studentka-provela-akc/]() 13. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Manspreading]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/manspreading Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library