A man has been slammed after he admitted to “manspreading” on a flight.
In a post on Reddit‘s popular r/AmITheA****** forum, user u/Dr_Chekhov asked the internet if he was wrong after he and another passenger got into an altercation over his “manspreading.”
The post gained over 10k upvotes and more than 4,000 comments where the 26-year-old explained: “I was alone on a long flight, [around] six hours. I had a middle seat between a young woman [in her 20s] in the window seat and a woman [in her 30s] on the aisle. I’m tall and am never comfortable on planes.”
Getty Images/Chalabala/BongkarnThanyakij
Uneasy due to the lack of legroom, the man explained how he found a more comfortable position: “I found my 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. But I wasn’t paying attention to my knee the entire time.”
For around two hours, all was well. But at this point, the woman in the window seat called over the flight attendant.
“She asked her something like, ‘Could you tell him to keep his f****** leg in his own f****** seat.’ With horror, I understood she was talking about me. I instantly retracted my leg in deep shame,” said the poster. “She wasn’t speaking very clearly, and the flight attendant didn’t seem to understand her. The flight attendant asked her some sort of clarifying question but she didn’t answer and eventually, the attendant went away.”
Shocked by the uncomfortable moment, the passenger said he started to try and apologize to the other passenger.
“I frantically began to apologize. But she refused to speak to me. She acted like she didn’t hear me,” he said. “Instead she started furiously texting on her phone.”
Far from the first time legroom on a flight has been an issue, last year another viral Reddit post caused outrage when a woman shared a picture of a man’s leg invading her space.
Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert from The Protocol School of Texas, told Newsweek: “Basically, you have one passenger who is ill-prepared by not paying extra for a seat with extra legroom and another passenger, who appears to be looking for reasons to find fault with others. The passenger in the middle seat should have definitely kept his legs in his own space.”
The woman in the window seat was not interested in anything the man had to say after the incident, and the man said that he was quite confused. “I went from embarrassed to confused. I kept replaying it in my head, wondering why she didn’t simply ask me to move my knee instead of calling over the attendant,” he said.
At this point, he explained that he started sneaking peeks at the woman’s phone as she was texting. “My defense is that I was baffled by her behavior and wanted answers. I’ll admit that I was being judgmental, too,” he said. “I didn’t see all of it but a significant portion was definitely about me; she wrote ‘Men really do be too much sometimes’ with a laughing emoji.”
The woman ignored the passenger for the rest of the flight, and he said he was uncomfortable trying to keep his knees together for the final four hours.
On Reddit, thousands of commenters slammed the man for his behavior.
One comment with over 33k upvotes said: “YTA (you’re the a******). You KNOW you will feel better with more leg space. Stop pinching pennies and pay for an aisle seat or an exit seat. By wanting the woman to tell you if she is bothered by your invasion of her space, you make it her responsibility instead of just not doing it. And then there is the snooping. Seriously dude?! You thought what? Ho, this woman has already found me intrusive before, let’s double down?”
Thousands of other users agreed and slammed the man for his behavior on the flight.
“Pay for extra legroom. Having some random guy pressing his leg against me is enough to make me get up from my bus or train seat because it creeps me out,” said another reply.
“YTA full stop,” said another. “Did she handle it great? No, but she should not have had to.”
“It should’ve come as no surprise to the long-legged middle-seat passenger that he was going to be uncomfortable. Paying an extra for legroom would have taken care of this problem,” said Gottsman. “Bottom line, the manspreading middle seat passenger should have done everything he could to stay in his own space—and minded his own business.”
Newsweek has reached out to u/Dr_Chekhov for comment. We were not able to verify the details of this case.
