not to be a gender studies student but i am on the bus and i was looking at my phone and i noticed a man sit down across from me. i could see the legs of the person next to him, and they shifted further into the wall to make space for the man sitting down. then, after he took a seat, i was mildly surprised that the person sitting closest to the wall was a man. i had unconsciously, instantly assumed that the person closer to the wall would be a woman. in case it isn’t clear, that was most definitely because they had moved to make space for the man.
women and fem presenting people (as well as many trans and queer people and people of colour, i’m sure) seem to perhaps have more empathy for others because of how they were raised, and it’s more expected that they would – or even should – make room for and care about the comfort of particularly cishet white men. because cishet white men are above everyone else in the social hierarchy, and they are taught that that is so. their comfort matters more.
or maybe it’s that women and fem presenting people, people of colour, and lgbtq+ people have grown to fear the consequences of not making room for cishet white men in most public spaces – whether that be rudeness, aggression, sexual attraction, or outright violence.
and now i’ve been conditioned to assume that someone making space for someone else has to do with gender. ridiculous, really.
and at the same time, it’s frustrating. men have the capacity for the same general kindness and courtesy. and non-men have the capacity to not care about such things and prioritize their own comfort. both are honestly fine. not being courteous doesn’t make you a bad person. however, we’ve definitely been taught socially that that’s the polite thing to do, politeness is good, but it’s also feminine… and women ought to be even more polite because they are lesser than men and their only true purpose is to find a man to revolve their lives around so they should be grateful to be allowed in society at all. or some nonsense like that. the same is the case for people of colour – they are lesser and should make room for white people. the same is often the case in regards lgbtq+ people for cishet people.
this is why i always manspread on the bus now!! i’m sick of cishet white people taking up so much space and thinking it doesn’t affect the people around them, or that it doesn’t matter whether it does or not.
i want to take up space. as a black, queer, genderfluid trans person who was raised as a woman… i want to take up so much space! more space than i should, even! just because i can! just out of spite against all of these stupid social rules!
also, as a (mostly (genderfluidity and stuff)) transmasc person, i do feel some gender euphoria when i manspread on the bus, so there’s even a reward!
so that’s my rant for the day i guess. to all of the women and fem presenting people out there, lgbtqia+ people, and people of colour, take up so much space!!
