A feminist college professor in the United Kingdom has new advice for women who are looking to resist the patriarchy during the busiest time of the day: Inconvenience men during their morning commute.
Charlotte Riley, who teaches history at the University of Southampton, penned an interesting op-ed in the New Statesmen last month where she literally suggested standing in the way of busy males on their morning commute to help resist perceived patriarchy in society. According to Riley, such tactics are necessary because males have naturally been raised to believe they have a “right to occupy space.”
“The point is that men have been socialised, for their entire lives, to take up space. Men who would never express these thoughts out loud have nevertheless been brought up to believe that their right to occupy space takes precedent over anyone else’s right to be there,” complains Riley. “They spread their legs on tubes and trains, they bellow across coffee shops and guffaw in pubs, and they never, ever give way.”
While Riley’s hatred of males is unique in that she chooses to hide her contempt in the form of refusing to move over at the train station, she also admits that reclaiming some of her “space” helps her to question potential assumptions that might be standing in the way of her success.
While the thought of purposefully tailoring your morning commute to inconvenience others might seem bizarre and pathetic to a rational member of society, we can take comfort in knowing that any time professor Riley spends standing at a subway turnstile is less time she gets to spend imparting her “wisdom” to students in a classroom.
John Patrick (@john_pat_rick) is a graduate of Canisius College and Georgia Southern University. He interned for Red Alert Politics during the summer of 2012 and has continued to contribute regularly.
