Manspreading

About

“Manspreading” is a slang term referring to the practice of spreading one’s legs far apart while sitting, which is often criticized online for being inconsiderate of other passengers.

Origin

On May 8th, 2013, the Tumblr^[1] blog “Men Taking Up Too Much Space on the Train” was launched, which highlights photographs of men sitting with their legs spread wide while sitting in New York City subway trains (shown below).

Spread

On November 25th, 2013, the “One Bro, Two Seats” Tumblr^[2] blog was created for photoshopped images of a young man sitting with his legs spread on a train (shown below, left). On May 19th, the “Saving Room For Cats” Tumblr^[3] was launched, which features images of men sitting on trains with cats superimposed between their legs (shown below, right).

On August 7th, 2014, the women’s interest blog Bustle^[5] published an article titled “Why Do Guys Spread Their Legs When Sitting on the Subway?” On October 6th, 2014, the New York news blog AM New York^[6] published an article titled “‘Man spread’” a widening blight on public transportation," marking the earliest known use of the term. On November 17th, AM New York^[7] reported that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was launching an awareness campaign to discourage manspreading. On December 18th, the New York City news blog Gothamist^[4] published a video featuring a woman confronting manspreading men on the subway by asking them to measure the distance between their legs with measuring tape (shown below).

On December 20th, the New York Times published an article about the new MTA awareness campaign. The same day, Gawker highlighted several comments from the New York Times article. On December 22nd, the conservative news site Breitbart^[9] published an article about manspreading by staff writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who criticized the manspreading backlash for being “pathetic feminist pipsqueakery.”