ID: An outline of a fat person with long flowing wild hair, they’re in a graceful pose that looks like they might be dancing, with their arms spread out and one leg in front of the other. The outline is filled with a starry galaxy like pattern, made to look like it’s glowing on the blue-purple background. On the torso are the words “take up space”
I specifically used the word “likely” to indicate it isn’t the case 100% of the time, but lets be honest, the only people not only manspreading, but coming on to a post like this, in a community like this, to make a smug point about manspreading, are cis men. That is what I based my assumptions on.
Having to be respectful of and just as uncomfortable as everyone else around you on public transport is, is not a form of oppression from which cis men need to reclaim space in the world.
I’m supportive of your general vibe. But respectfully, being inclusive of your own needs does not require being exclusive of the needs of others. We all share the same world, so maybe we can be understanding of everyone’s desire for comfort without judging them based on how they were born.
Not when those “needs” come from nothing but an overinflated sense of entitlement and at the expense of less privileged people in that space, no.
E: like seriously, people defending manspreading as if it’s some brave reclamation of space cis men have been deprived of?? This is absurd.
you are right, there is not much reclamatory or rebellious on a societal level about cis men (in their role as such) taking up the space they need and even less so, when they take up more space than they need.
i think it is still positive when people - including cis men - overcome their insecurities and take care of themselves. but i understand if that is not what you meant with your post.
i would give the commenter the benefit of the doubt tho and assume that they are not a troll as well as even restrain from assuming their gender and therefore the reclamatory value of their action.
personally, i still struggle with internalizing that i can sit comfortably on public transport without that invalidating my feminitiy or making me a toxically masculine man
I’ve been a man for most of my life. It hurts my feelings when people say “cis men don’t deserve this or that privilege” cause I’ve been there. Everyone deserves the privilege of living in comfort, even the stinky, evil cis men.
Uh, that is to say I agree with you.
this is pretty much what i intended with my comment.
I spent most of my life with undiagnosed autism which i’ve now realized resulted in me experiencing quite a bit of trauma i never even realized was out of the norm, and i’m so utterly fucking sick of people latching on to features that are associated with privilege as if that somehow guarantees the person cannot have experienced bad things.
I’ve also as of late started realizing i’m not quite as straight as i thought i was, and how delayed that realization has been due to people assuming i’m straight and therefore a bit of an other in many leftist communities.
No, fuck this self-segregation, we’re all people and the only grouping that matters is that between the proletariat and the bourgeois.
This is where i run out of brainpower a bit, but i’m gonna finish the comment and hope this makes some sense:
I think the idea of being privileged for a trait you didn’t choose is itself reinforcing privilege, it makes people who are viewed as privileged think that’s what they are and thus they can’t have “unprivileged” traits, if everyone calls you a straight cis white man then you’re not going to feel like you’re allowed to explore yourself and realize that you’re not really that straight, or you’d actually prefer to be a woman or not have a gender at all.
If we want an inclusive and just world, we have to remove barriers between people, we have to make everyone feel part of the same group so that we can work together instead of working against each other.
In a world dominated by, among other things, cis heteronormative patriarchy, it would just be nice, for once, to have a conversation not taken over and derailed by a member of a dominant group wanting to make it all about them (or to have to list a bunch of caveats and stipulations in advance to try and avoid these situations, just for them to be ignored anyway).
As a rule I don’t gender people unless they’ve made their gender clearly known, or, very rarely, if they’ve given me glaring contextual clues. You’re absolutely right of course that having testicles doesn’t mean someone is a man, but barging in to a conversation by and for marginalised people about taking up space in the world that marginalises us, to make it about their act of marginalisation, is a classic cis man move. They don’t even have to mean to dominate every space they come across and try to centre themsleves in it, which just goes to show how ingrained the entitlement is.
Do I think I was wrong about that person? No, I really don’t.
Do I regret how my reply has impacted you and potentially others? Yes, that wasn’t my intention and I apologise.