Late last year, New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority began placing ads asking its male customers to stop spreading their legs on busses and subways. Though the campaign has received a fair share of criticism over its production cost, Emily Hopkins of Bitch Magazine discovered that the most dramatic reactions appear to have been in customer emails from angry manspreaders to the MTA.
I filed a public records request through MuckRock.com for MTA emails containing the word “manspreading.” The transit agency sent me a file of 18 email comments about the campaign from over the course of one month.
The emails she was given are…perfect.
I am highly disgusted at your blatant sexism regarding taking up too much room in one’s seat on trains. I have witnessed more women taking up tons of space with their large handbags and packages than I have see men spreading their legs taking up space. Yet I would never expect the MTA to choose a bigoted gender-targeted campaign to denigrate just women who do such things.
This manspreader (I’m assuming here) continued with a threat:
Due to your blatant sexism, I may now to decide to take photos of all the women who take up more room than they should be and send them to you and post them on social media to contradict your sexist anti-male campaign and prove that this is not a gender issue.
That man politely ended his rant with, “Thank you.”