131. Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Then I’ll begin:
Political Correctness got out of hand years ago and I wrote about how I feel about it last October (Click to see).  Things have become worse.  Now, it seems, people and particularly men, have to be very careful about the way they stand and especially, the way they sit.

You may have heard of the “Power Pose”.  This is the way that some people stand in an open, expansive posture with their feet wide apart.  They believe, so I have read, that this makes them feel, or appear to be, powerful and dominant.  I think that when Theresa May does it, she just looks uncomfortable and ridiculous, as if her knickers are riding up and she's got a wedgie.

Boris Johnson has been in trouble recently and it’s not because of his posture or for anything he has said.  It is the way that he sits that has caused comment and much of it was critical and hostile.  In the team photograph of Theresa May’s first cabinet, Boris was accused of, and pronounced guilty of, “manspreading”.  

This is a relatively new word and you may not have come upon it before.  It was introduced into The Oxford English Dictionary in 2015.

The word “manspread” originated, of course, in New York - the spiritual home of misandrists everywhere.  It was introduced by some silly women who had nothing to be concerned about other than men who were invading their personal leg space on the subway by sitting with their knees apart.  These women attempted to shame the offending men by photographing and naming them if they could.

These women state, as if they know it to be true and it is a matter of fact, that men sit in this way with their knees far apart in order to demonstrate their dominance over women and to increase their sexual attractiveness. 

What a load of bollocks and I use that word deliberately because it is bollocks that are at the core of the issue.

Look at this photograph:

It is a segment of a photograph of St Margaret's School football team after they won the Lowestoft Junior Schools Cup.  I am one of those five boys you can see.  We were all aged 10 or 11.

Look at the way we are sitting.  No “manspreading” there.  In fact, two of us are sitting like little girls with crossed legs.  Those boys are sitting that way because they can.  There are no large bits that 11 year-old boys need to worry about when sitting down.

Now look at this photo:

My knees are in this photograph segment as well and it was taken 5 years after the first photo.  This is of Lowestoft Town Boys football team in 1962.  We five pictured are all 15 or 16.  Look at how we sat.  Puberty had kicked in.  Changes had taken place over five years.  Never mind manspreading - that is world class “boyspreading”. 

Who were all of us trying to dominate or appear sexually attractive towards?  There was no one to impress but the male press photographer.  We all sat that way because that’s the natural, comfortable way that males beyond a certain age choose to sit.  It is instinctive and happens, as with many things that boys and young men do, without any thought process.

How about this one?

Again, two of these legs are mine.  These seven men were all aged between 68 and 70 at the time the photograph was taken last year.  A group of 15 of us who have been friends since we first met in October 1965 at Hatfield College, Durham University, met for a 50-year reunion. 

All of us are married and our wives were standing behind the camera as that picture was taken.  None of us would ever dare to try to dominate any of them and I suspect, although I may be wrong in every case, that we all gave up trying to show sexual attractiveness some years ago.  Yet we are all manspreading.  It’s natural.  Get it?

So, will all you women who find manspreading so offensive and aggressive, please realise that we can’t help it and it is actually nowhere near as offensive and invasive as “she-bagging”.

She-bagging describes the habit that some women have of putting their handbag and possibly their shopping bags and baskets too, on to the seats of buses and tube trains and so prevent people (men) from sitting down.

There is no need for that at all.  Stop it!

However,

There are times when manspreading is really wrong:

That officer in The Scots Guards knew exactly what he was doing. Look at the expression on his face!