What is manspreading, why do men do it, is there a science behind it and who is campaigner Anna Dovgalyuk?
Here's what you need to know about the controversial sitting position
AN anti-manspreading campaigner has sparked debate after sharing a video of herself splashing male commuters with a mixture of bleach and water on a Russian metro train.
While some have argued the seated position is a physical necessity, others have said it displays sexual attractiveness. Here's what you need to know about manspreading, why men do it and who Anna Dovgalyuk is.
What is manspreading?
Manspreading, sometimes referred to ballrooming or mansitting, is a term to describe the way in which some men sit on public transport with their legs spread wide apart.
Both the position and the term have sparked widespread criticism and debate online, and it has been compared with examples of women taking up excessive space on public transport with handbags.
OxfordDictionaries.com added the word "manspreading" in August 2015, describing it as: ";The practice whereby a man, especially one travelling on public transport, adopts a sitting position with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on an adjacent seat or seats."
Oxford Dictionaries said it noticed the at the same time as New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority launched a campaign to "encourage courteous behaviour on the subway" around December 2014, which called for ending the practice of taking up more than one seat.
They said: "Evidence of the word manspreading first registered on our tracking corpus in November 2014 when the campaign was first ‘teased’, and the word’s use shot into the stratosphere in December, when the campaign officially launched."
Why do men do it and is there a science behind it?
A number of claims have been made in relation to the reasons for manspreading, including accommodating testicles, shoulder-hip proportion and sexual attractiveness.
According to the , men's rights group the Canadian Association for Equality launched an online petition in 2014 urging the Toronto Transit Commission to "take a more gender-neutral approach to people hogging space".
"It’s physically painful for men to close their legs and we cannot be expected to do so, and it’s also a biological necessity for us to do so,” the campaign reportedly stated.
"We can’t force women to stop breast feeding on buses or trains and we can’t force them to stop bringing strollers on, why should we force men to close their legs?
"This is sexism plain and simple and it cannot be passed."
Economonitor that the seat position is not rude behaviour, but is a necessity because of hip-shoulder ratio.
They said: "One of the data sets that we studied show that the average man’s shoulders were far wider — 28 per cent wider than his hips... If a man sits on the subway with his knees together, and other passengers crowd in closely on both sides, then his torso likely won’t fit on the top half of the seat if his knees are positioned less than shoulder width apart."
But a UC Berkeley post-doctorate researcher which found that spreading legs and arms is more sexually attractive when males do it.
Using photographs, Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk found that images of men spreading out got 87 per cent of interest among female viewers.
"Based on our results garnered from thousands of single persons at an actual speed dating event, and using a dating application, it is evident that postural expansion can dramatically increase a person’s chances of making a successful initial romantic connection," she said.
Who is campaigner Anna Dovgalyuk?
Anna Dovgalyuk, 20, has started splashing a mixture of water and bleach on the groins of men with their legs spread too far on the St Petersberg metro.
The law student embarked on the one-woman crusade to stop manspreading and has accused men in her native Russia of "gender aggression" but says the country is not doing enough the tackle the problem.
Anna warned her targets in a video: “This solution is 30 times more concentrated than the mixture used by housewives when doing the laundry.
“It eats colours in the fabric in a matter of minutes - leaving indelible stains.”
She has also accused manspreaders of a "disgusting act that is being fought around the world - but hushed up here".
Anna, who calls herself a "social activist", claims the bleach stains are "identification spots" to "immediately understand which body part controls the behaviour of these men.”
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The student claimed to be acting “on behalf of everyone who has to endure the manifestations of you declaring your macho qualities on public transportation”.
Russian news outlet Rosbalt has claimed the video is fake - but Anna has insisted it is "absolutely real".
She also revealed no one has sued her so far, adding: "I don't think people are going to go to the police to file a report about jeans."
People have previously campaigned against manspreading on Madrid trains.
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