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 sat next to a womanspreader on the train a few days ago. This was the first time I’ve ever encountered the rare female version of the manspreader! She had her right ankle over her left knee, and I had to scrunch up a bit because her right leg was encroaching on my space. Inconsiderate!
@Katamount
I was reading some stuff on california weapon laws recently, as you do, and found endless reams of whiney writing from people who were deeply offended that the evil victim-disarming oppressive liberal government scum wouldn’t let them have the 50 caliber machine guns that god and the founding fathers intended all americans to own, etc. There was this wonderful signature line on one particular forum:
Maybe the liberals took their sense of perspective, too?
Maybe you won’t see this because it’s a little while since you left the comment and it’s completely off topic and not really that big a deal, I’m just curious. Kupo, why do you have so much disgust for Ready Player One? Like it was utterly mediocre and definitely had a number of problematic tropes but it felt like silly writer wish-fulfillment to me. I read about four books a week sometimes more depending(like now cuz I’m not really doing any internet, well I’m not doing news. This website is borderline and since the community here is so kind I don’t think it will make me upset.)So I read it because of all the hype and I’m a huge geek so I thought I’d like it. I didn’t really, it was a waste of time because it was utterly mediocre. But I’ve noticed the number of people who identify strongly as feminists seem to have a lot of, I don’t know exactly what word I’m looking for, contempt, distaste, in some cases downright hatred even seems appropriate.
Why is that? Is it just the problematic video game tropes and objectifying women cuz that’s in so so so many books but this one seems to get much more anger than any I can think of recently. I’d really just like to know what I’m missing.
I’d love if anyone else can chime in I’m just responding to kupo cuz she mentioned seeing someone smiling while reading it as a point in her comment like that was bad and strange LOL. Hope everyone’s having a lovely beginning of summer I’m going to sleep have a good day all
The one time I can recall seeing a woman (or anyone) demand someone else’s seat on a bus, it was an older woman trying to oust a woman with a stroller; and she didn’t just want a seat, she wanted to berate that woman with the stroller for being on the bus taking her child to daycare, instead of staying at home with a husband supporting them. The woman with the baby was Jamaican, I think; the old woman was white – I’m pretty sure her motive was actually racism, but she was cunning enough to stick to dogwhistles so the driver wouldn’t be able to kick her off the bus. At one point someone nearby tried to calm things down by offering up their set, but the old woman refused it, at which point I think anyone who might have had some sympathy for her realized she didn’t actually *want* a seat, she just wanted the other woman to be forced to give up hers.
I once sat next to a guy who kept telling me about the glass eye he’d just mailed to his uncle; he even showed me the receipt. If it was an attempt at flirtation it was definitely one of the weirder techniques I’ve seen.
The best thing I ever overheard on a bus was somebody talking about the local music scene and complaining of some acquaintance: “Hardcore?! He wouldn’t know hardcore if he bit into a frozen apple!” No wait, the best thing I ever overheard was the stoner telling his buddy about “this stuff called ‘absence’ that they have in France; apparently it really fucks you up.”
@Kupo:
Truly we live in the darkest timeline.
(Even reading excerpts from that book makes me wince, and it’s generally tough to make me go “cringe” at anything.)
@KatieKitten420
I have not read the book or seen the movie, so my distaste for it is from reading reviews and from having read a poem by Ernest Cline. The issues that turned me off the most from the reviews:
* Transphobia
* Misogyny
* White washing
* Terrible writing
I once sat next to a dead body at a bus stop for 15 minutes. Obviously I didn’t realize they were dead until the bus driver helped me try unsuccessfully to wake them up by leaning on the horn, & I then realized they weren’t breathing.
I’ve also had several drunk men fall asleep on my shoulder on the bus late at night. In hindsight, some of them might have been doing the heroin nod.
Oh, & I’ve never seen a woman demand a seat. I have had men voluntarily get up to give me their seats. I’d always politely refuse when I was able-bodied, but since I now have an invisible disability (spinal cord injury, eventually learned to walk again), I now gratefully take advantage of their benevolent sexism/chivalry.
In other news on marginal male oppression,
A small women-only holiday resort opened in Finland last weekend, a few months after it was first announced. This enterprise has made local MRAs irate, and the gender equality ombudsman was asked to investigate whether this is illegal discrimination. Verdict: it’s not (statement linked in Finnish).
https://www.tasa-arvo.fi/-/supershe-island-saaren-vain-naisille-tarjotut-hyvinvointi-ja-majoituspalvelut-eivat-riko-tasa-arvolakia-tas-75-2018-annettu-4-6-2018-
The statement says that a reasonable exception to the law applies, since
1) The purpose of the service is to provide a physically tight-knit and socially relaxed holiday community, which purpose would be practically constrained by needs of “modesty and privacy” if both men and women were present.* The place is run by the US company SuperShe that specializes in women’s networking venues around the world.
2) There is a particular need for venues providing this kind of social networking environment for women, who often have a high need of bodily privacy in the company of men. The guests are going to be mostly international, often coming from more conservative cultural backgrounds.
*I figure that if exceptions are made consistently on the grounds of a practical need, they will only ever apply on some non-essential niche services and therefore there’s no need for the practical need to be particularly pressing. For example, this resort is one five-hectare coastal island in an area full of mostly uninhabited small islands.
I took the bus today.
Tragically, when I got on it was less than half full. I tried to force a man to vacate his seat for me anyways but he must have had some sort of masculine repulsor field because I somehow ended up sitting in one of the empty seats instead.
Will try again this afternoon. The tyranny has to stop!
25+ years riding the trains (varying from the upscale suburb-to-downtown Metra lines to the grim-and-gritty CTA), maybe 5 consistently riding buses in the suburbs. I have never once witnessed anything resembling that exchange, either.
I have, however: met a guy who spent most of the trip explaining, in extensive detail, why it was important to understand that he was Aztec, not Mexican; witnessed innumerable guys using the gap between the trains as an open-air urinal; encountered several guys (and it’s ALWAYS guys for this one) who think the ‘no smoking’ signs are just polite suggestions; seen numerous individuals of all genders who are willing to yank on the emergency cord because they were too self-absorbed to realize their stop was coming up; reported to the cops two guys (and yes, they were Cubs fans coming home from a game) who were on my train car who were so drunk they could barely stand, yet were obviously going out to their car to drive home from the end of the line.
I think this is a good thread to share this video. It’s Tracey Ullman on “new charity”, Feminists Who Ruin Things Men Used to Like. The bit where she pronounces the acronym made me snort – “your donations to FWRTMUTL have already funded Ocean’s 8…”
I’ve never seen a woman try to make a man move from his seat on Saskatoon Transit.
I was on a bus that got t-boned at a T intersection when a woman was unable to stop her car because of winter ice. (There’s an apartment building at that intersection that has been hit twice over the years by bad drivers. In the second incident the driver was actually captured by Centre Mall security after he fled on foot.)
I’ve seen drunks removed from buses, including one who fell flat on his face when the cops walked him out the door. I saw a high or drunk young woman, possibly a teen, make it off the bus before she collapsed. And I recently saw a guy asleep on a bus, who when I came back half an hour later was being loaded into an ambulance.
Recently a woman pissed off one of the bus drivers by standing in the back door, keeping it open , so her friend could catch the bus.
A couple of years back I spotted a condom draped over the divider near the rear door of a bus. Obviously I didn’t check to see if it was used or not.
And of course there’s the stuff people talk about, like what appeared to be a 13 year old kid talking about fisting. I hope he didn’t have a clue what that actually is. People discussing their court dates, their problems with Social Services, their fights with their landlords, and other personal business that you really shouldn’t be discussing in front of strangers. After all you don’t know who might be listening.
I’m reminded of an old line from Diana Rigg in something-or-other that escapes me:
Woman gets on bus, says “Make way for a pregnant woman!”
The old lady in the next seat pats her on the hand and asks “And how long have you been pregnant, dear?”
Response: “Fifteen minutes, but ain’t it exhausting!”
But in real life, no. I remember being told by my parents when I was young, “Stand up and give that lady your seat”, but that was in Britain and a long, long time ago.
Well I haven’t seen the movie because I thought the book was utterly adequate like the epitome of adequate. Not good not bad just fine. But I heard from a bunch of people who liked the book more than me but are still not obsessed with it like some people seem to be(I truly don’t understand the hype surrounding it at all)that the movie was utterly whitewashed, but not the book.
The main character is a straight white male in what seems like a case of straight up writer wish-fulfillment. But they make a whole point of the second main character being a black female who’s lesbian and she even brings up points about how the virtual reality system in the book that is essentially the internet but * 1000, you can portray yourself as a straight white dude like some authors use pseudonyms and other things black men and women have had to do throughout history. And actually discusses how her mom told her to do that so she would have more opportunities. The book actually does address some progressive issues but I heard the movie completely ignored every single tiny good thing the book had. And the book definitely wasn’t particularly progressive at all but there were parts that I was slightly surprised and pleased by.
So if you’re basing your dislike on the movie I would say it is completely warranted, if you’re basing your dislike solely on the book I really don’t think it’s that bad. I found it worth 2 hours of my time. I’ll never read it again, but I’m not upset I read it like I was about the 3 hours I’ll never get back I spent reading The DaVinci Code LOL.
Thanks for the links I’ll check them out when I get home. Thanks for answering my question. I hope you and everyone else have a lovely night and tomorrow
Later, Katie
@Katie
Most of the reviews I read were from the book, and I checked movie reviews to see if it might have done better but it sounded like not. Thing is, I have little time or patience for white dude writers anymore. They’re just boring and they don’t write women well and rarely can I even get through their books. And the excerpts I read from Ready Player One were painful. I read slowly so I’m going to have to dedicate time to this shit. And why, when I enjoy reading women so much more? I’ll take an N K Jemisin novel instead.
Regular public transport user her – bus and trains – and I’ve never seen a woman demanding a seat purely for being a woman. Older people have given me hassle for being apparently able-bodied and young, despite my walking stick. Some of the buses now have single seats at the front and I try to get that if I can so I have my space and peace. My autism makes sharing seats painful.
@Tim gueguen,
Yay! A fellow Saskatoonian
Kupo you made a really good point that I don’t consider enough when discussing reading with people. To use “sjw talk” as the morons we discuss on this site would say LOL, I have reading privilege. I can read a thousand page book in 24 hours if I really really want to.
Like when the newest George RR Martin book came out a dance of dragons I read that cover to cover only getting up to pee. And it took me maybe 12 hours. And my job is very malleable in terms of time so I can really read 8 hours a day everyday if I choose and I usually do.
I was not recommending the book at all to be clear. It just seemed like people absolutely hated it and I didn’t get that cuz it just seemed utterly mediocre but if you don’t have that much time to read, why would you read something mediocre? And speaking of NK jemisin, I just reread the fifth season trilogy again because it is just so incredibly brilliant. I do think there are good straight white male writers, George RR Martin as everyone knows LOL plus I adore John Scalzi and Scott Lynch. I really like Rothfuss too but I know that’s disputed, Brandon sanderson’s older stuff is again pretty mediocre, Mistborn is half-assed decent, but his new Stormlight Archive Saga is the only thing of his I think that’s worth reading. That’s the only thing of his I would truly recommend to someone.
But I definitely believe they have a much much much larger percentage of the market share than they deserve. I do think there are talented straight white male authors obviously just like every other group of people but I can see why going into the fantasy section and seeing 90% of the books being by straight white men might put you off them even if the books are good.
Thanks for your comprehensive answer I really appreciate it and I hope you’re doing well. I honestly truly appreciate it even more because maybe it’s just my insecurities but I always thought you were one of the commenters here that didn’t like me. Not like you hated me or anything but you just found me annoying and uninteresting was what I thought but if that was true you probably would have ignored me and you didn’t so that seems to point to me being wrong. Everyone have a lovely day.
@Katiekitten420
Just my two cents on ready player one. Didn’t read the book, though my gf did (she was pretty disappointed with it). The movie is, in a word, trite. It’s also jarringly disconnected from reality in a really inappropriate way, a way that really shows the writer as growing up with significant racial and wealth privilege. The ending where the “bad guy” gets caught by the “good cops”, especially in a world of militarized police, criminalized skin colour and legalized white (collar) crime, is jarring. We need to start conversations about these things using media, not glaze over them or write them out of existence.
Speaking of being written out of existence, Aech’s queer identity was completely ignored/erased in the movie, which is shocking since it apparently played a big part in the book. Of course this is where “libertarians” and the like would interject something about “don’t shove your gay in people’s faces” and something-something nobody assumed she was straight, heteronormativity doesn’t real (which is ironic considering these are the exact same people who scream at a fever pitch about free speech).
Back on topic, I have also never seen this ever occur and I have been using transit since birth. I’ve been lucky/privileged enough to not encounter any dangerous situations, just creepy dudes asking why I don’t smile more.
@Katiekitten420
I’m sorry I came off that way! I don’t find you annoying or dislike you. If I don’t always respond it could be that I don’t have the energy or didn’t see it (I don’t always read all the replies in a thread when responding). Or sometimes because I don’t feel like I have anything interesting to add. Occasionally because I can’t parse your message well (sometimes your comments pack a lot of info and it takes me time to unpack).
But if I didn’t like you, you would know it. I would say something before I’d start ignoring you. And I’d only feel that way if I felt like you were pushing boundaries and doubling down on it. That’s really the thing all the commenters I’ve disliked have had in common. And I don’t recall you ever doing anything like that. On the contrary, I appreciate the perspective you bring to the discussion even if I don’t always agree.
Take care!
Oh thanks a lot Kupo, that’s a perfectly reasonable reason, not trying to be redundant LOL. As I’ve said it a thousand times I don’t know why but I just can’t be concise I’m literally incapable of it. I always feel like to make things clear cuz I can also be bad at clarity, I need to add as many details as possible. I know that that can also decrease clarity so it’s like a catch-22 LOL. Also I totally agree with your girlfriend I was disappointed because I found the book trite and mediocre after all the hype I was utterly disappointed
Which brings me to this is a good time to thank everyone who reads my essay comments asking for advice or information and actually answers them comprehensively and kindly and interesting and amusingly and lots of other awesome adjectives.
I’m doing what I said and just not doing news especially with the thing about Kennedy we all knew was coming but still I’m just not well can’t do it. I’ve been reading and as EJ said, (Thank You EJ) new activists which I definitely am one of, do tend to experience burnout like I’m feeling very often. It is completely normal. Google says I should just chill for a bit and then slowly start getting back involved when I feel like I can.
Their whole page is like r/thathappened, lol
Recently, a woman in my country took pictures of a guy who didn’t give up his seat for her on a train. He slept through the whole journey and was clearly exhausted. The woman then posted the pictures on Facebook along with an elaborate rant on how boorish and “un-gentlemanly” the guy was. Her post was met with severe criticisms from both men and women.
Personally, I believe it’s up to the men if they want to give up their seat for women. It would be nice (I’m saying this because I’m a woman), but they shouldn’t be obliged to do that. We fight for gender equality, yet some of us demand that men give up their seats for us. Something’s wrong there, in my opinion.