Apparently, the MTA has received countless emails from “offended” men concerning its “Courtesy Counts” etiquette campaign: The PSAs feature faceless green and red stick figures and ask commuters to stop manspreading, nail-clipping, and performing gravity-defying dance routines on the subway. You know, stuff no one should do, but men—for whatever reason seem to do a lot—whilst commuting from one stop to the next.
Many dudes profess to finding these ads to be more than a touch sexist. In the complaint emails, some male commuters call the spots “anti-male.” One of the messages simply says, “Drop dead, you morons!” Another asks why “Purse Seating” isn’t featured in the campaign. Ugh.
Our thoughts? While the PSAs may be targeting men, they hardly seems like an aggressive attack on male commuters. Manspreading has always been a problem on the subway: Taking up two seats on the train is simply not acceptable, and yet you bet your buns that it’s happening on almost every train in existence. No one called the ad featuring women primping their hair sexist, so why are the anti-manspreading ads getting so much hate? Maybe some male commuters are just bitter about being called out. They wouldn’t be complaining if they weren’t manspreading. Check out the hilarious emails below:
Images via: MTA and Gothamist
