Men Arrested For “Manspreading” Legs Apart On NYC Subway

Alex Buscemi11 years ago

Gentleman, look down. Now, back to me. Down again. Back to me. You will probably notice that your knees are spread apart. I call this “sitting in a way that keeps my balls from being mashed into one another or propped up on top of one another in a painful figure-eight formation.” We sit like this not only out of comfort, but out of necessity. However, the world has a different name for this apparently offensive and disruptive means of taking a load off: “Manspreading.”

At first, this term harmlessly made its rounds on feminist blogs as a way to point out how fucked up it is that women are forced by society to sit with their knees together while the oppressive and sexist male population is free to throw their legs around willy-nilly. Ladies, please feel free to sit with your legs spread apart, too. Trust me, none of us are going to stop you.

But “Manspreading” has picked up steam lately, and on May 22 in a New York City subway, two men were arrested for their crimes.

From RT:

“Two Latino men were allegedly arrested for manspreading, sitting with knees wide open, thus occupying two seats on May 22 at 12:11am, according to a report released by the Police Reform Organizing Project in New York. This is probably the first time manspreading has led to an arrest and court appearance.

Although, according to the report, the judge said that at the time of the arrest there could not have been many passengers on the train, she nevertheless slapped the two men with an ACD, which means that charges against them will be dropped if they don’t get arrested again for a fixed period of time, the report says.”

Currently, New York City law prohibits passengers from sitting in a way that interferes with others, but these arrests occurred around midnight, which means that there was plenty of room for everyone on the train.

The Gothamist speculates that police made these arrests — in addition to several other bullshit arrests involving traffic and subway etiquette — so that they can fill a monthly quota.

“One man claimed an officer apologized to him after ticketing him for walking between subway cars, saying, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s the 26th of the month and I have to make my quota.’”

This is an outrage. Gentleman, I think a protest is in order. Let’s stage a sit-in. Throw on your shortest, tightest shorts and join me in spreading my thighs across every seat in every subway car across the country. We must not sit idly by, legs together, and allow our balls to be crushed under the weight of police tyranny.

Freedom! Freedom! From the fruit of our loins, let freedom ring!.

[via RT, The Gothamist]

Image via Twitter