Last night I got on the train with a packed backpack and a bag of groceries, and I chose to sit between a dude whose legs were covering half the seat next to him and a white lady whose legs were crossed and her arms folded in on themselves. I sat between them, putting my backpack on my lap, and my grocery bag between my legs, and here’s the kicker—I took none of the woman’s space. I pushed up only against the dude. I didn’t push him, I just asserted. And when he... asserted back, I didn’t back down. It’s a subway thing I’ve been practicing for awhile, refusing to make myself smaller. My foot was planted the at the width of my stance, and wasn’t budging. I’d forgotten a book, so I calmly and deliberately took out my phone and started playing some dumb candy crush clone.
I could feel the bafflement pouring off him—he glanced next to me, to confirm that I wasn’t taking up the other lady’s space. He moved his head around in that subtle ‘what the fuck is happening here?’ way for a couple stops and then, fed up but not quite willing to yell at me, he got up and moved to a seat across from me. Not even down the car, for the pretense of it, but directly across from me.
When I looked down, smirking and trying not to laugh out loud, I saw that in ‘taking up some of his space’, I still had almost an inch of space in my OWN SEAT that I wasn’t even taking up.
It’s a small violence, perhaps, the way our culture demands that women take up less space, to be accommodating no matter what… but it’s a violence nonetheless. I suspect it’s one that petite lady-types are subject to the most.
I am small. I’ve always been small. Sometimes when I stand up I’m slightly surprised that I am as tall as I am. But my bones are small too. My shoulders are straight but so delicate, it’s creepy. Mostly I am content with it, but in my secret fantasies, I am tall and broad and I have muscles for days. I don’t want to be your doll, I want to be a warrior.
After he moved, the woman who had been sitting there first got up and sat next to me instead, clucking because he had invaded her space. It was genuinely hilarious, really, but I wish she had done the same thing to him that I had done. Shit, that would have been great.
I will not take up less room so that you can take up more, dudes.