By David Futrelle
The dudes who hang out in the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit are ever alert to the dangers posed to men by their sworn enemies of the female persuasion — from false rape accusers to the duplicitous harpies who try to make themselves look prettier than they really are with “fakeup.”
Not long ago, one MGTOW Redditor warned his collegues of a heretofore unknown danger to men: fat women pretending to be pregnant in order to force innocent men to give up their seats for them on public transportation.
In a post with the self-explanatory title “Fat women and their ability to fake pregnancies on public transport to get seats,” a man possibly named Jay_ellsworth told a horrifying story:
So i was on the commuter train earlier and it was super busy meaning a lot of people had to stand. There was this fat woman that had a pin saying baby onboard to indicate that she’s pregnant. She then asked the couple that was sat next to me if she could have one of their seats, and she got one of their seats.
As Patsy from AbFab might say (if she were an angry dude posting on Reddit):
Jay continued his tale of terror:
Now I’m not going to say she was lying about being pregnant, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt but because she was fat i thought to myself, this could be the easiest hustle ever for fat women that don’t get a seat on public transport. No one will ever question them and they will just give them their seat. I wonder how many fat, non pregnant women do that.
Clearly Jay has his female-fraud-detector turned up to 11, as we all should in these perilous times for men. He’s so sensitive to signals of possible female fraud that he’s able to witness an apparently pregnant women WHO MIGHT JUST BE FAT and NOT PREGNANT AT ALL getting a seat on a train, and to deduce from this that FAT LADIES PRETENDING TO BE PREGNANT to get seats on trains MIGHT JUST BE some sort of WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC OF FEMALE SEAT-STEALING FRAUD!
Besides. even is she WAS pregnant, she was still FAT.
Even if she is legitimately pregnant, you can tell that she was fat before she got pregnant and she looks no different to any random fat chick that’s not pregnant, in fact there have been some fat women that have gone into labour without even knowing they were pregnant at all .
Yes, let’s all get mad about the hypothetical possibility that some fat woman who doesn’t know she’s pregnant will pretend to be pregnant (even though she actually is pregnant and just doesn’t know it) in order to steal his seat on the train?
So yeah i just wanted to share that, there are probably a few fat women out there exploiting being fat by lying about being pregnant to get seats on public transport.
Damn those being-fat-exploiters out there taking advantage of the non-fat!
Side note, what kind of pissed me off about the whole encounter is the fact that when the pregnant woman got the seat, she said thank you, and the woman in the couple is the one that responded by saying you’re welcome, but she’s not even the one that gave up her seat, it was her boyfriend that gave his seat up. Yet another woman taking credit for a man’s actions
I think we all owe a hearty “thank you” to the REAL HERO here, the dude who watched an apparently pregnant woman ask for a seat on a train and decided she might not really be pregnant and then got so mad about it that he sat down hours later and wrote a long post about it on Reddit.
Thankfully, Jay’s colleagues on the MGTOW subreddit appreciated his insights on this important issue.
“They’re just fat and wanting free seats then there are none,” replied DangZagnut. “Standard female entitlement.”
Another added his own evidence of this ongoing female fraud.
Many a time I have heard women on public transport say “I’ll just say I am pregnant” to their friend. Not sure how it works elsewhere but there’s apparaently a fine for not giving up your seat for a pregnant lady here. There’s like stickers inserted on train (or tram) windows as a notification.
Stay frosty, men! You never know when a fake-pregnant lady is going to steal your seat — or maybe have you arrested and sent to the cuck farms if you don’t give it up quickly enough,
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I have been riding the bus to and from work every day for the past couple of years. My bus is full to the point where people need to stand in the aisle about 90% of the time. Often it fills up before letting everyone on. I have seen one person request a seat. That person had a mobility device and requested a seat in the priority seating area. It was a woman who gave up her seat.
I have seen two times where people volunteered to give up their seat. Once a dude gave up his seat for another dude for no apparent reason. The dude who gave up his seat is just a nice dude (I happen to know him personally). Another time, an older woman got to the back, saw there were no seats, her face fell, and another woman saw this and gave up her seat.
I guess this scam hasn’t reached my bus route yet.
First they were nice to the disabled people,
And I muttered about it under my breath but didn’t speak up, because some of them are white men.
Then they were nice to the pregnant women,
But still I didn’t speak up,
Because they might be carrying white male babies.
Then they were nice to the fat women,
And I courageously complained about it on Reddit,
Because otherwise niceness will just keep on coming
For more and more groups who don’t deserve it,
And it has to be stopped.
Nobody is nice to me, though,
Even though I should be ahead of everyone else on this list because fuck them.
I do, and fuck you.
Stop ? Insinuating ? That ? Assholes ? Have ? Mental ? Illnesses ?
It’s in the goddamn comments policy, for crying out loud.
Reading this thread, it struck me that maybe he actually did hear someone say that. He just didn’t get that she was joking.
@ Chris Oakley
No. Misogyny isn’t a mental illness.
I am super tired of having to write ‘misogyny isn’t a mental illness. It comes up really really often, and if it wasn’t so frustrating, it would be interesting how often people link the two.
This might be part of why misogynists are so often labelled ‘lone wolves’ and ‘mentally disturbed’ in the media instead of they are… part of a societal problem. And also dear media: MISOGYNY IS NOT A MENTAL ILLNESS.
Love,
Rhuu
The only time I can recall seeing someone get nasty in demanding a seat on public transit was a few years ago when an (older, white) woman began berating a (younger, black) woman with a stroller for not giving up her seat to her, and rapidly moved on to asking why she wasn’t staying home with the kid and where was her husband. Pretty sure she was motivated by racism but was smart enough to not actually cross the plausible-deniability line.
Any sympathy the rest of the bus might have had for the older woman vanished when someone else offered her their seat and she refused it– she didn’t want a seat, she wanted the other woman to lose hers.
… forgot to close my quote. Dammit.
Not sure about other cities, but the Bombardier trains in Toronto have special blue seats for those with mobility issues, such as the elderly. If ever I sit in one of those blue seats, I do so knowing full well I may have to give it up to somebody who needs it more than able-bodied me. The buses also have these seats near the front doors.
If the buses and trains are that crowded, speaks to more of a transit funding issue more than a “fake pregnancy” one.
MGTOW: Because it sounds better than Selfish Overgrown Boys Whining That They Are Expected To Be Decent And Mature. In all fairness, that *would* make a most cumbersome acronym!
I can’t even…
The quip about a woman taking credit for a man’s actions is quite special. from my own personal public transportation experience (a good couple decades of it) I have found far more often than not it’s a woman giving up her seat. Anecdotal sure, your experiences may vary.
I gave up my seat to a severely disabled boy when I was very obviously 8 months pregnant with my last child, no one else offered when his care worker asked. I couldn’t live with ignoring him, and she refused at first because of my giant belly, but he absolutely needed a seat. We spent the bus ride discussing how floored she was that the only passenger willing to help was a pregnant lady.
I’m someone who gives up my seat easily though – to small children, the elderly, the disabled, or just those who look like they might need it more than I do. I am a big believer in the golden rule, because I’ve been on the opposite side, where people won’t make eye contact, and won’t acknowledge someone’s need as greater than their own.
Basic compassion shouldn’t be a rare commodity, and as a generally healthy and abled adult woman I certainly won’t die from having to stand up for 20 minutes.
@Chris Oakley
I’m pretty sure you’ve been told that’s not cool before
I’ve had to argue to convince a young woman with her toddler to take the seat I was vacating, because she didn’t want me to go to the effort. (I was getting off at the next stop anyway, and didn’t want someone else sitting on the aisle seat that I’d have to get past later, so me getting up then and letting someone else sit down might have been less effort, even aside from letting someone obviously already tired sit down.)
And as Katamount says, in Toronto some of the seats are covered in blue rather than red and explicitly listed as ‘priority seating’: https://www.ttc.ca/Riding_the_TTC/Frequently_Asked_Questions/Priority_Seating_FAQ1.jsp
That said, the FAQ page also notes both that ‘Please remember that customers in the Priority Seating area may have a disability that is not easily recognized by others and they may not be comfortable discussing it in public.’ if someone refuses to move, and notes that transit access tends to be first-come, first-served, so someone with a mobility device cannot force other people off the bus. It’s not perfect, but about as good as it’s easy to get. Also, the TTC has had an ad campaign about this for months now about ‘when you see me, make room for me’ (with a ‘spot the difference’ image where one of the figures will be pregnant, have a guide dog, have a walker, etc.)
Honestly, a lot of this just comes down to ‘when you’re living in a city with millions of people, you have to understand that not everything revolves around you’. This is how society works if you want it to function at all.
But then again, we already know that a lot of these sorts don’t seem to want a society that functions for anybody other than them.
I’m slightly overweight and a little bit pear-shaped so maybe the next time some rude asshole who doesn’t know how to mind their own business asks me about my fucking ‘baby bump’ I should just demand they give up whatever they are sitting on.
@Jenora Feuer
We have similar in Seattle but the seats are the same color and just marked with signs, and the rule is you move if the bus driver asks (never seen it come to that, though). I tend to take one of those seats on bad arthritis days but would still get up if asked.
@kupo:
The seats being a different colour is a relatively recent thing in Toronto, but it helps distinguish the seats a lot better. There is always a sign as well.
And ‘bad arthritis days’ would fall into the ‘may have a disability that is not easily recognized by others’ category which is why that section exists in the FAQ.
The section in there about ‘Operators will not intervene in a dispute between customers regarding a seat’ (basically, the bus driver won’t ever force the issue) was probably a result of union negotiations; drivers being worried about getting beaten up if they try to insist that someone move when they’ve already rather loudly said they don’t want to. (This has, unfortunately, happened.) That said, it’s also noted that Transit Enforcement Officers can issue tickets to anybody who holds a priority seat against someone who needs it.
@kupo:
Also, I haven’t been to Seattle in a while, though the last time I was there I remember the articulated busses heading downtown would switch from gas/diesel outside to electric once they got into the core and started running underground. An interesting way of handling that without adding too much extra infrastructure. (Helped by the fact that so much of the Seattle downtown core already does have an extra layer down there because they raised the street level at one point.)
@Jenora Feuer
Some buses do that still, some are fully gas, some are fully electric. They’re actually going to make the tunnel light rail only soon, but there are still the wires the dual mode busses can hook onto on the surface streets.
@ jenora
It might also have something to do with this…
There’s a thing in law called Vicarious Liabilty. That makes employers legally responsible for the actions of their employees, if those actions occur ‘as a course of their employ’. If it’s completely not work related the employee is on “a frolic of his own” and the employer isn’t liable.
But, there’s an issue over what course of their employ means. It’s clear law now, that it doesn’t have to be part of their job description, it’s anything that flows from their job, even if not authorised or explicitly forbidden.
And the example they always give in the textbooks, is a bus conductor getting into a fight with a passenger. Probably because that’s a real case, where the issues were discussed at length.
Hm, as someone who used public transport quite a lot, I remember mostly in the tram there were situations where standing up, wasn’t an option, because you couldn’t move.
On a train in Germany it is normal that a woman has to stand up for a men (and of course the other way around, too).
If you pay a little extra, you can reserve a seat (which is really recomended if you go a longer distance) and people who didn’t pay that have to stand up.
Now I have seen people stand up, for the disabled, and for the elderly.
I don’t remember people standing up for pregnant woman that much, I don’t remember many pregnant woman going by tram, but okay tram takes at worst 30 minutes, that is not so bad to stand if you don’t have strong problems. (Okay sometimes the very full tram was bad, because there were to many people in it)
Okay just a bit rambling, short: Never a problem I encountered in real life.
Moon_custafer:
It may not even have been about getting that woman to give up her seat, but an excuse to berate a black woman. I’ve seen that happen before. Some people look for public excuses to go on personal rants about whatever is in their heads about marginalized people.
That woman has probably always resented black women, and always wanted to say such things to them, and that was her opportunity to say it directly to her face. People like that resent minorities, but still want to be thought of as good people, so they look for plausible excuses for attacking them (or just calling the police if they’re really timid.)
My suspicion is, had the woman given up her seat, the older woman still would have found a reason to denigrate her.
You could just always give up your seat to someone who looks like they need it more then you. That’s always the decent thing to do. Though I know these guys are much for decency
@Alan:
That’s possible. It’s likely that there were multiple factors involved in the decision.
I just know from previous local news that one of the significant points of argument in previous union negotiations here was that the TTC management wanted the drivers to take a more active role in ensuring that people actually paid their fares, up to potentially docking pay if they didn’t; and the drivers pointed to a number of past cases of driver assaults based on trying to force somebody belligerent to pay their fare, and said ‘hell no’.
Some of those same arguments are why the driver seats on TTC busses now have gates on them which can be locked from the inside. It’s not usually a dangerous job, but all it takes is one person…
Re: public transit seats for folks with mobility issues
I don’t know if it’s still the case (although I don’t see why it would have changed, especially in San Francisco), but Muni busses and streetcars — but not the cable cars, because all of them are ancient — used to have rows of seats right at the front, with their backs to the side of the bus, that were reserved for people with mobility issues and the elderly.
When I was pregnant ( in Berlin ) plenty of people, men and women, gave up their seat to me on public transport, and I was glad to accept because if I stood up too long I’d faint – your pregnancy may vary.
Honestly though, it was more women, and women of an age and appearance that made me think they knew what it was to have a foetus playing havoc with the blood pressure. Also I think men were much more wary of assuming I was pregnant in the earlier stages, but to people with intimate experience of pregnancy there were signs. I’m pretty sure Jay would have misread those clear signs (watermelon sized boobs, puffy face and swollen ankles from water retention and breathlessness from having a baby jammed up under the diaphragm) as proof I was overall fat and unfit.
@ lkeke35:
Oh, I’m positive she wanted an excuse to berate a black woman, I just think she was also looking for an excuse to inconvenience her by taking her seat as well. You’re right, though, she probably would have kept ranting even if she had succeeded in making her give up her seat.