[creep]

I also make attempts to discourage people from sitting next to me. This behavior cannot be policed. If you want to sit next to a guy spreading his legs, simply ask him to move over. It's courteous not to attempt to discourage people from using public transit as intended, but it's not a gendered issue that needs widespread media attention chastising males.

[eridius]

But that's the thing, it absolutely is a gendered issue. Woman simply do not manspread. A lot of men do. And the real problem is men do this without even consciously realizing it. This is why raising attention to the issue is important. If men realize they're doing this, then they can choose not to do it (or they can decide to continue being rude of course).

> If you want to sit next to a guy spreading his legs, simply ask him to move over.

That is not an acceptable response. It's a fact that people in general do not feel comfortable talking to strangers on public transit. And it's especially true that women do not feel comfortable confronting strange men. Add to that the fact that everybody can be expected to understand that taking up a seat with their bag is rude, so nodding towards someone's bag as a way of asking "can I sit there?" is acceptable, but most men don't recognize that manspreading is a problem, so you can't just nod towards a seat to mean "can you please minimize your personal space so I can sit there?". You'd have to actually talk to someone, explain that they're taking up too much space, and hope that they don't react poorly to this. This is just not something you can expect people on public transit to do to complete strangers in general, and especially not something you can expect women to do to men.

Manspreading is pretty much exclusively a male problem, and "just ask the person to move" is an example of male privilege. And it's been going on long enough that apparently we do need to keep bringing this up over and over again in public discourse in order to get men to even recognize that there is a problem, much less work to fix it.

[creep]

>an example of male privilege.

Everyone has privileges in life and everyone has disadvantages. Making this an issue about gender hurts everyone. When you hold the group responsible for the actions of individuals in that group, you risk "tribal" war.

Ask the guy to please make some space for you, and move on with your life.