Twitter, allow me a wee thread on taking up space in public: a tale of two seatmates.
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These are two small incidents in the scheme of things, but in combination, they've made me think a lot about how we take up space in the world, and how others perceive our entitlement to that space (or lack thereof).
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See, the thing about the train journey was that, while all the individual *seats* were booked, the cabins at the front were not. Seeing an injured woman in pain struggling to lie flat in a way that inconvenienced others, the conductor might have offered her a cabin. He didn't.
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Instead, he chose to shame her for doing what she needed to do to accommodate her illness, which prompted her friend to come up with a solution instead, where as the conductor on my flight, in response to the same scenario minus any visible injury, did nothing.
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I specify visible injury, because it's quite possible the man in front of me required accommodation for an invisible ailment. He might not have been physically able to lie down across all four seats in comfort, and that's fine! But he still had a choice of seats to recline.
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As I said, it's not a big deal in the scheme of things. Nonetheless, I think it's a salient microcosm of the wider phenomenon wherein men are allowed and expected to take up space in public, while women are censured for doing the same thing. FIN.
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End of conversation
New conversation -
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You were much nicer than I would have been. I fear I would have suddenly developed a tick in one or maybe both legs that caused me to kick his reclined seat. When eventually confronted, I would apologize, explain my condition and point out where he could recline comfortably...
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