Women can feel uncomfortable to ask a man for something or express their boundaries by setting clear communication and assertively expressing their needs. So it is important for men to understand and do things mindfully.
A Redditor asked on a popular platform, Am I wrong for manspreading on a plane?
Backstory:
The Original Poster (OP) is a 26-year-old male who was alone on a long flight for 6 hours. OP had a middle seat between a young woman (20-year-old female) in the window seat and a woman (30-year-old) on the side.
OP is tall and uncomfortable on most plane journeys. He says, “my knees always dig into the seat in front, and it can be quite painful. I usually try to walk around the airport before flights to stretch my legs, but I neglected to do so this time. It was Spirit airlines, so even less legroom than usual.”
What Happened Next?
About half an hour after takeoff, OP found his left knee inching to the side for the sweet relief of open space — specifically, the no-man’s-land in between seats, level with the shared armrest. OP wasn’t paying attention to his knee the entire time.
OP agrees and says, “I’ll concede it’s possible that at some point, I was occupying space that rightfully belonged to my window seat neighbor. All was well for ~2 hours.“
At this point, the woman in the window seat called over the flight attendant. She asked, “Could you tell him to keep his freaking leg in his own freaking seat?“
What Did OP Do?
With horror, OP understood she was talking about him and instantly retracted his leg in deep shame.
She added something as a snide reference to the idea that spreading your legs is about male comfort. According to OP, she needed to speak more clearly, and the flight attendant seemed to need help understanding her. The flight attendant asked her a clarifying question, but she didn’t answer, and eventually, the attendant went away.
What OP Has To Say?
OP says, “I had been shocked into silence, but when the flight attendant left, I frantically began apologizing. But she refused to speak to me. She acted like she didn’t hear me. Instead, she started furiously texting on her phone (yeah, texting during a flight. I thought it was weird too). The Aisle Seat woman said she had some extra space on her side I could use but then promptly went to sleep. Oh well.”
OP tried again to apologize to the woman on the window seat, but again she ignored him. OP went from embarrassed to being confused. OP kept replaying it in his head, wondering why she didn’t simply ask him to move my knee instead of calling over the attendant.
OP started sneaking peeks at her phone. He says his defense is that he was baffled by her behavior and wanted answers. He admits that he was being judgmental, too and says, she spent the last 3 hours of the flight watching tiktoks about shaming obese people and texting someone she called Papi. I didn’t see all of it, but a significant portion was definitely about me; she wrote, “Men really are too much sometimes,” with a laughing emoji.”
She ignored OP the whole flight, and OP ignored her. He wants to know if he did anything wrong?
What do you think? Was OP right in getting too comfortable on the airplane? Was it wrong for the woman to call the flight attendant instead of just asking him to retract his legs?
This article originally appeared on Mrs. Daaku Studio.