legs together, knees apart

[calimac]

This is not the first article I've seen on an obsession that's recently hit the British press: men who sit in public spaces with their legs splayed far apart, taking up their neighbors' room.

Most of the discussion I've seen of this matter is far more dogmatic than the present article in insisting that it's a dominance issue, that the men do it deliberately to be aggressive and rude.

I was going to say that I'm sure that's not necessarily the case, because one of my brothers, the one who's now deceased, used to sit like that, and he was far from being a dominant or aggressive individual. He would sit with his legs splayed apart in the back seat of the car, with two of the others of us, who did not sit like that, trying to squeeze into the remaining space.

Because he was my brother, and my younger brother at that, I could address the matter directly in a way that London Tube passengers would be reluctant to do. I would reach over and grab his two knees, and pull them together. The other thing we would do was mock him. My other brother and I would splay our own legs apart, making electrical humming sounds as we did it, on the theory that some kind of high-voltage magnetic oppositional force was responsible for the reluctance of his knees to mutually associate.

Of course this annoyed my brother, as it was intended to do, but it didn't change the way he sat. He didn't spin any elaborate theories as to why it was necessary for men to sit like that. He was not one for elaborate theories about anything - I have another brother who specializes in that - and it wouldn't impress other males who didn't sit that way. All he would say was that this was how he most comfortably sat, so I'd guess he'd adhere to the male-pelvis theory, except that it was just his pelvis and not anyone else's.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

This is interesting. I saw a Tumblr with pictures of this recently. I don't buy "male pelvis," but I also don't precisely buy "deliberate aggression and rudeness." What I think is that, modulo your brother in a household of men, most men are never discouraged from taking up as much space as possible, and most women are never encouraged to take up any space at all. So both groups fall into what they would call "natural," i.e., the thing no one ever tells them is a problem.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I see that happen on the bus a lot, and it's almost always men rather than women. I find it discourteous and a bit annoying, but I don't have a theory, ideological or otherwise, to explain it.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree with this -- ISTM that women, in general, are socialized not to take up space as part of the general conditioning against being inconvenient to others. Girls who splay themselves are told to "sit properly" or similarly, while boys are simply allowed to take up as much space as they please that doesn't intentionally encroach on others' space.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Sprawling around, as you and yarram discuss, is something all of us boys in the household did, but only when there was available space. We didn't do it as aggressive moves on each other, and though we fought often, it was not over "Mom, he's in my space" issues. My one brother and the knees-apart is the one exception to this, and he knew it was a problem. He wasn't doing it either to be annoying or to sprawl; I believe him when he said it was just the only way he felt comfortable.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It is indeed almost always men. But once in a while I do see a woman sitting that way. I find that astonishing.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

As a regular tube user, that annoys the hell out of me, as do some men of 6' plus with whom I have to interact on busy tube trains at armpit height when it's standing room only on hot summer days (I'm 5'6") and who appear never to have heard of underarm deodorant or changing shirts more than once a fortnight!

[(Anonymous)]

If he sat on the bus that way, why should his comfort trump that of the woman next to him whom he would be crushing?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There's no need for an "if" about it. Why did his need to sit that way trump the space needed by the brothers whom he was crowded in to the back seat of the car with? That's why I pushed his knees together; that's why we mocked him. He wasn't doing it to be annoying - believe me, I knew him when he was being annoying, and this wasn't it. And he wasn't doing it to sprawl out - I saw him when he was sprawled out, and this wasn't that, either. And he certainly wasn't doing it to exert dominance.