People Are Defending 'Manspreading' After Woman Pours Bleach On Commuters' Crotches

Have you heard of 'manspreading'? If you hadn't before, the chances are you may well have learned what it is over the last few days, following a stunt by a Russian activist which saw her pouring bleach onto the crotches of guilty commuters.

Basically, manspreading is when a man sits with his legs splayed apart in a public place, taking up more than one seat.

Now, most would agree that taking up more than one chair in public through whatever means is bad etiquette. However, it seems not everyone agrees that manspreading is such a disgusting form of space hogging - certainly not one that should be punishable by having a bleach mixture poured on your groin.

Some people were certainly riled by the activist's actions, with one social media user offering the following explanation: "Manspreading is done because it's uncomfortable to close our legs due to our testicles."

Hmm, sounds plausible. But is it legit?

East2West News

Well, it seems there could be a scientific argument to support this point. Spinal neurosurgeon, John Sutcliffe, told the Independent that a lack of pelvic width could be behind manspreading.

He said: "The overall width of the pelvis is relatively greater in females and the angle of the femoral neck is more acute. These factors could play a role in making a position of sitting with the knees close together less comfortable in men.

"I suspect most men would suggest the reason for adopting the more spread posture in sitting would be the avoidance of testicular compression from the thigh muscles. The pelvic rotation goes some way to improve compression in both aspects."

via GIPHY

So, just in case you needed a neurosurgeon to tell you it's not nice having your balls pressed together - there you have it. According to one of the captions on the bleach-pouring video, an experiment has been carried out whereby women tried sitting with their legs together while wearing imitation testicles, to see whether it was uncomfortable.

However, unless these imitation testicles were able to somehow accurately simulate the sensitivity of an actual pair of grapes, then this seems a fairly pointless experiment.

Twenty-year-old law student Anna Dovgalyuk, the woman behind the bleach stunt, describes the act of manspreading as a form of 'gender aggression', adding: "Men demonstrating their alpha-manhood in the subway with women and children around deserve contempt."

As such, she launched the 'video manifesto' in which 70 manspreaders on the metro in St Petersburg have their balls doused in a mixture concocted from 30 litres of water and six litres of bleach.

The video has been viewed more than 3.3 million times on YouTube since it was uploaded on Tuesday, but only 2,900 users have liked the video - as opposed to the 63,000 who have disliked it.

It's one way of making your point, I suppose.

Topics: sexism, World News, Interesting, sexism

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey