By David Futrelle
So I recently ran across this perplexing little cartoon — apparently the English version of a Spanish-language original by cartoonist Mimundo Alex — on a MGTOW Facebook page.
I have a couple of questions:
- Why on earth is she demanding he give her his seat when it’s clear that most of the seats on the bus are empty?
- When the hell does this actually happen in real life?
I mean, I’m not a daily commuter, but I’ve been using public transportation fairly regularly for decades and I have never once seen a woman demand a seat on a bus or train “because I’m a woman.”
Here are some things I have seen:
- Men and women offering elderly people their seats.
- People pretending they don’t see the elderly person standing next to them so they won’t have to give up their seats.
- People offering seats to parents with small children.
- People pretending they don’t see the parents and their children.
- People offering seats to the disabled (or not offering them).
- People offering seats to very pregnant women (or not offering them).
- A creepy dude pressuring a much younger woman who was obviously having an extremely shitty day to move over so he could sit next to her, despite the fact that most of the seats on the train were empty.
- Kids on the tracks throwing rocks at the train I was on
- A store on fire
- A building being demolished imploding just as we passed by
- A guy with his hand stuck in the door of a T train in Boston getting briefly pulled along by the train until other commuters got the attention of the train operator.
- Former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis
- Street hustlers doing the old cups-and-ball routine (numerous times).
- A guy with his face mostly burned off by acid asking riders for money.
- A woman singing loudly and very badly along to music on her headphones while doing dance moves in her seat and refusing to stop after being confronted by other train passengers.
- Large groups of suburban Cubs fans acting like assholes.
These are just off the top of my head.
But I swear I’ve never seen women demand men give them their seats just because they’re women. Because this is simply not a thing, at least in the places where I have lived.
Why are so many men worked up about this thing that doesn’t happen?
It’s like their perpetual outrage about “women and children first” on ships from MRAs and other misogynists. Yes, it happened on the Titanic (though numerous upper class men got seats in lifeboats and many lower class women didn’t). But it’s never been a widespread policy; it would drastically slow down passengers trying to get to safety at a time when every second counts. I realize most people are regular passengers on ocean liners (and neither am I) but think for a minute about the emergency instructions you get every time you fly in a plane. Is there any mention of gender? No.
Why do these guys spend so much of their time railing against things that don’t actually happen? Possibly because the only way to make the case that men are more oppressed than women is to just plain make shit up?
I don’t use buses very often, but I’ve used them just often enough to see people ordered out of their seats by the driver to accommodate incoming passengers more than once. However, that was because the incoming passengers were in wheelchairs, and the seats being vacated were where the wheelchair tie-downs were at. So people were asked to vacate them until the folks in the ‘chairs got to their destination, whereupon the regular seats were lowered again and the able-bodied folks could sit there again.
At the time of the Women’s March on January 20, 2017, I hadn’t realized just how bad my diabetes had begun to impair my ability to stand for long periods of time. When I was finally able to get a bus back to my son’s apartment, I was literally feeling like I was going to pass out. I was just trying to keep standing at all, when this clown says to me “I had to stand all the way to Denver, now it’s your turn.
I lost my shit with this asshole. I said “dude, I had to stand all the way there too. There’s no damn reason to be a dick about it.”
Even though I was wobbling all over the place, not one single person offered me a seat.
When I finally sat down, I dove into my purse and got out my emergency Snickers bar and wolfed it down.
The point being, even though I am not only a woman but a disabled woman, I never demanded that anyone give me their seat.
Bastards are lucky I didn’t faint on them.
Things I’ve seen on public transport.
*Person A screaming at Person B to get out of the reserved seat while brandishing their disability card. And Person B taking their sweet time to find their own disability card while Person A gets redder and redder.
*A woman with a pram demanding that the bus driver kick out the three wheelchair users so she could get on the bus. Bus driver closed the door in her face and drove off. And I was laughing my head off.
*A group of teens (~17) complaining about the youth of today (~10). And looking very bewildered when all the adults around them started laughing.
*Drunk football (soccer for you hand egg people) fans being annoying. E.g. playing fashy music very loud.
Also, people usually don’t want to sit next to me on public transport either.
I guess they just don’t want to catch the fat.
Hate to be that guy, but yeah I’ve witnessed this about five times at the very least. Heard some anecdotes as well, so it does happen but it’s not as pervasive as harassment, so no it is not the moral equivalent Meninists pretend it to be. Not in the US though and it can be chalked up to internalized misogyny.
Always a woman in her mid-forties, always White, always in that “can I see the manager” tone.
Then again, our public transport system is among the worst in the world, so I understand no one wants to stand in an overly crowded bus.
The worst I’ve ever seen it get was when the woman straight up assaulted a college kid because he didn’t want to get up, and when he shoved her back the bus driver came around assaulted him, and threw him off the bus.
When she got recorded by another woman with her phone out she was asked why she felt at home assaulting him over his seat and she first replied, that her feet were tired, and upon further insistence she defended herself saying he was occupying two seats (blatant lie). The video then went somewhat viral on Peruvian social media.
Again, internalized misogyny, certainly cannot be chalked up to feminism.
I’ve been on few cruse ships before and the precast-off muster drill always consists of finding your muster station and being told how your life vest works and then they blow the horn a few times to demonstrate what the muster signal sounds like.
At no point have they ever once mentioned sex or gender its always get to your station and follow instructions from the crew.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/when-its-too-late-to-stop-fascism-according-to-stefan-zweig
Short answer: when there’s a Reichstag Fire.
If 9/11 were to happen today, instead of when it did, it would likely mean the end of the world.
@Knitting Cat Lady
Wait, people were playing fascist propaganda songs loudly in public, and no-one reacted beyond being annoyed?
This is really not a thing. However, I can tell you what IS a thing. Creepy guys making a point of offering me their seats in order to start a conversation. Without me even making any eye contact before (the opposite, actually, because as a woman in a public space you instinctively learn to avoid eye contact with male people at all costs.) And then the “kind gentleman” who offers me his seat “with no pretext” will not leave me alone until I escape to the other end of the bus/train. Yes, that’s a thing.
@Ariblester:
I shouted at them, several times, to knock it off. As did plenty of other people. They just cranked up their ‘music’ louder.
The police awaited them at the next stop, which is a small consolation if you’re on a regional train where the time between stops is about an hour.
Also, there usually is no personnel beside the driver on those trains. And if there is a conductor, well, they’re just one person and probably in the other part of the train…
There were about 15 of them.
@ Rhuu
My own neurological embuggerance is usually well controlled when I’m out in public, so the disability it engenders isn’t obvious (but I walk like I’m drunk sometimes.) When I’m out and about the sight of my walking stick, at least I think it’s that, works wonders in preventing people from challenging my use of reserved seats on a bus.
Here is something I have seen:
A woman in her fifties, with crutches, entering the subway every day. It was obvious that she needed to sit down, yet there was never an empty seat at that time of the day. She would always walk to someone and say “please” with a smile. I noticed that she always said “please” to the same kind of people: girls or women, young, apparently healthy, with a “friendly face”. They always gave her their seat.
No comment.
Thanks for making a distinction around suburban Cubs fans. As a Cubs fan and a (former) Chicago city dweller I can say most of the assholes on the redline on game days are suburbanites.
Actually, I had an experience that approximates what they are talking about. Once, in Seattle heading northbound, a woman and I were both standing up on a crowded bus. She turned to me, all disgusted, and said, “Well, I guess chivalry is dead.” I had no idea what she meant and I don’t remember what I said but I assume I asked what she meant. She continued, “I know everyone is tired from working all day but” then she said something about either it used to be you gave up your seat for a woman or maybe repeated there used to be chivalry; I can’t remember anymore.
That was the only time that I ever experienced a woman literally mentioning the old ways. It’s an interesting occurrence because she was still clinging to this upside of sexism even though she fully knew in her head that equality meant that no, she would stand up if she were able. It took me years to understand the interaction in a way that satisfied me intellectually. And I don’t think it’s helpful to pretend that these attitudes are completely invented out of thin air by irrational MRAs and the like (and obviously this isn’t quite what they were claiming either, but it comes up for them time and time again).
I think the most important takeaway is that when these men complain about female privilege, sometimes it’s rooted in reality. Transitioning from a sexist woman-as-property culture to one with liberated women isn’t easy. Plenty of women are going to say stuff like “I love being equal but I still want guys to buy me drinks.” It might be repulsive to most people, who knows how many, but it’s to be expected in a transition. The question I think we ought to be asking ourselves is, does this matter? I think the answer is no because changing these attitudes in men and women IS the struggle and you especially don’t do it individually.
I litteraly can’t stand to be in a siege next to someone else, so I usually give up my seat as soon as the train begin to be somewhat full.
Never have seen anyone who isn’t a white man ask for a seat. (and it’s rare even for white men)
• A grown man giggling at “fahrt endet hier” labels on the bus in Berlin.
(At least, I think I’m a grown man, but sometimes my mind regresses)
I’ve been on enough buses and trains to have seen all the egregious shit I ever thought possible, and then some.
I have seen things, folks. Some of them I can’t unsee.
This one however, like every other MGTOW fever dream, isn’t one of them.
I just thought of Weird Al Yankovick’s parody of the Queen tune ‘Another One Bites the Dust’:
Another one rides the bus
Another one rides the bus
And another one
And another one
Another one rides the bus
There’s a smelly old man sitting next to me, hasn’t showered in a week…
If you’ve never heard of it, you should Google it.
That’s right, I’m old, and I have no friends, how did you guess?☺
@Knitting Cat Lady
Ah, I see. I misread the tone of your comment, I think. Good to know that the police are responsive to this.
I apologize on behalf of suburban Cubs fans. While I haven’t actually gone to see a game in person, I did grow up in the most obnoxious western suburb, so I feel your pain.
By the way, if you wouldn’t mind, please eat real Chicago-style deep dish in my honor. The last time I ordered an allegedly Chicago-style pizza east of the Appalachians, it was this weird pot pie with a solid disc of sausage in it. What the everlasting fuck.
@Button:
I don’t even see it on the menus, here in Pennsylvania. I love Chicago-style deep-dish pizza! Last time I ate the real thing, was about three millennia ago, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Awhile ago, Pizza Hut was selling their own version of it. It was like under baked muffin dough, with a weird sweetness to it.
I have never demanded a seat, though as a handicapped woman who uses a cane I have been offered seats on the streetcar. However I have never been offered a seat by a man. Not once. I gather not being bangable means courtesy is moot.
Damn, you guys see interesting things on public transportation. All I see is the same slick-haired button-down no-tie millennial yuppies and obnoxious high schoolers that don’t take their backpacks off.
I’m so glad school ends this week (at least in Toronto). Seriously, if there’s one public transport pet peeve I have, it’s clueless dopes that don’t take their backpacks off and just stand near the door, preventing the rest of us from moving down the bus and making room for people to get on. I’m a big guy who carries a heavy backpack himself; I always take it off so I don’t hit somebody with it.
I’m also not a fan of strollers on the bus, but I can appreciate the need to take one on public transport. Backpacks, just no excuse.
I’ve never asked for a seat, and I’ve never been offered one. I’m missing out!
My husband is sometimes been offered a seat when we’ve been travelling together: he’s visually impaired and sometimes uses a walking stick, and when his hair needs cutting has a slight aura of Doc Brown about him.
I’ve stood up for people multiple times: usually older folk (m or f or I couldn’t tell or presume), the heavily pregnant, people carrying a baby or a toddler, or anyone obviously exhausted.
Highlights of public transport travel: overhearing 7 teenagers excitedly discussing whether or not Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare; getting into an underground carriage full of extremely camp and muscular young men who were all using British Sign language; seeing two soberly dressed business types trying to kill each other in total silence… not all on the same trip, of course.
Well, as a total manly man, I did have a young women about half my age (in her twenties) offer her seat to me after I had ran to catch said bus. It was the first time that’s ever happened to me, and…well I guess that’s the official sign that I’m old now. I still took the seat, mind you. I’m not going to pass up a perfectly good seat just because of pride!
I have seen (I’m in Hungary) the white, 40 something, well dressed woman (generally in a hat) type making passive-aggressive remarks or staring offendedly at people sitting.
In my experience they don’t go after men specifically though, just young people. I mean they did this to me too and I’m a woman (including when I had a knee injury and literally couldn’t stand for more than a couple of minutes). I chalk it up to classism, and ageism mostly. (I’m obviously better off than you and older than you. GIVE ME THAT SEAT YOU PUNK!)