Iris’s Notebook

6/05/2022

The way one occupies public space may reveal elements of their society and culture, and its inflictions of power and control which inhibit individual freedoms. To explore this idea, and to better understand the tacit principles of gender, I undertook an ethnographic observation on a public transport train line. I observed approximately 150 people on multiple train rides over approximately 3 hours, to explore the idea of power regarding the differences in the implicit occupation of space amongst men and women. There were an even number of women and men that I observed as I took notes on my phone. Four significant categories of spatial occupation were observed amongst the public participants, including standing, gaze, manspreading and volume. The aim of this research is to study the significance of hegemonical bodies of power. The results portray an insightful set of information, which are a starting point towards exploring the cultural binary of gender, and surrounding notions of patriarchal control.

 Standing over Sitting

Those who chose to stand rather than sit on the observed train rides consisted of both men and women, for noticeable different reasons. When there were many empty seats, most men weren’t afraid to assume a seat near another, while women however tended to sit far from anyone, or remain standing. Those who chose to sit immediately next to another traveller sat next to a fellow female or male. Like tramways, trains too ‘briefly confine men and women together in an intimate, narrow space’ as Schmucki (2002, p. 60) examines, creating a ‘unique opportunity to analyse how gender is constructed’ between male and female behaviour. In this case, women’s occupation of space is different to that of men. Men did so with open body language, often staring into the train or talking to another passenger. Women usually stood while staring at the floor, facing outward, and appearing closed-off. The observed difference could be credited to the notion of the lack of choice that women hold regarding how their bodies are perceived and treated publicly, especially in the ‘intimate’ space of a train. If they chose to sit near someone, they risk an unwelcome encounter, as studies reveal (Silan et al 2016) (Gekoski et al 2017) (Ding et al 2020). This behaviour continued amongst those of higher rank, including that of two transit officers who stood for a ride. The male officer held onto the railing, talking to the female officer, with open body language. The female officer had closed body language, with her arms crossed and gaze downward. Due to their rank, they appeared dominant and intimidating. The difference however with the female officer’s spatial occupation maintains the idea that gender certainly impacts the space one assumes, whether intentionally or inadvertently, on public transport. Continuing to stand evidently reveals the power belonging to men and the inferiority or fear-driven motives in the spatial occupation of women.

Gaze 

It can be argued that the direct gaze occupies, and traverses through, the local environment, or space. Almost everyone I observed occupied a phone and stared at it for the entire train ride. Those who did not do so, either gazed at the floor, or out the window of the train. Men consistently did the latter, along with gazing at others in the train, while women consistently continued to stare only at the floor, and never at anyone else. This binary behaviour exhibited by men and women regarding their gaze was quite considerable, and was consistent amongst rank, age, and culture. For example, a middle-aged black woman sat with legs and arms crossed, head down facing the floor, and a schoolgirl sat with her head very low into her lap, facing the ground. Opposingly, and notably, one elderly white man stared at me with a grin and gazed out into the train for almost his entire ride. Jordan & Aitchison (2008, p. 332) explore the public gaze, analysing how ‘the body is subject to a process of discipline whereby people wield power over each other, through social surveillance.’ Men and women are hence ‘socialised to conform to feminine and masculinised ideals’ through the exercise of these gazes (Jordan & Aitchison 2008). The observed dominant use of the male gaze on the observed train rides hence wields specific power over women, who are subject to their neighbouring male surveillance. Jording et al (2018, p. 1) elaborate on the gaze as a provider of ‘information about our own attention and inner experiences’, and hence the social gaze as a ‘window into social cognition’. The observed frequent use of the male gaze on public transport, along with the subsequent lack of a female gaze, indicates a notion of male dominance in public space.

Manspreading

Almost every man was sitting very wide-legged and taking up more than one seat, or manspreading, on my observed train rides. Described as ‘the spatial expression of male privilege’ (Neupane & Chesney-Lind 2014), teenagers, young men, middle-aged men and the elderly all did so, no matter their race, with varying degrees. For example, older men tended to sit with their legs crossed rather than spread widely. Younger men tended to stretch their legs out into the train. Opposingly, almost every woman sat with her legs either crossed or straight and together. One young, white man who I observed sat in front of me, spreading his legs very far apart. He placed his coffee on the ground between his feet, his large business bag on the chair beside him, and had his head down into his phone. He was leaning very far forward, arms rested on his legs. Another young black man expressed the same posture in another train ride. Manspreading may be considered as an expression of embodied space. Acarón (2016, p. 144) explains that ‘Low’s (2003) term embodied space… focuses on the body’s ability to effect and receive change through movement, and by extension, to nonverbal and verbal language’. ‘The body looks up from itself’ here, shifting into the social realm (Acarón 2016, p. 144). As observed, manspreading occurs exclusively amongst men, as women remain sitting tightly with their legs either always crossed or together. The notion of the body looking up from itself and shifting therefore occurs only amongst women, who accommodate their bodies socially for the comfort of others. Men arguably, as observed, do the exact opposite. The power held by men to shape space by displaying physical dominance connotes a sense of agency (Acarón 2016, p. 145-146) which women lack.

Manspreading continued

The only woman over the course of my observations who had her legs spread widely apart was a young black woman, with her head up, facing forward. She expressed power through this position, appearing alert and as ‘large’ as her neighbouring male passengers, possibly out of necessary rather than choice. The physical dominance of men on public transport can be directly related to the corresponding physical inferiority of many women. Sarkar (2017, p. 100) explores the mistreatment of women on Indian trains, which they view is ‘a site for gendered confrontation, controlling women as merely ‘trespassers’ in a male domain’. ‘Various forms of sexual violence occur, exposing a vulnerability to the physical self in a hyper-masculine, polarised public space’ (Sarkar 2017, p. 102-103). These instances may influence the consistency in women to sit with their legs straight together or crossed, their arms to their sides, their head low; almost the exact opposite of the observed male spatial mobility. Women tended to also hold their personal belongings very close to them, even in a near-empty carriage. Some men however let their bags sit untouched on an entire neighbouring seat or used their phones while leaning forward into the carriage. For example, an elderly white woman sat reading a book held close to her face, with her bag on her lap, and another clutched tight to her bike the entire train ride. Whereas generally, many men had their belongings tucked away behind their feet or to the side of them. Women have been shown to possess a greater fear of crime on public transport, where ‘the limited space of a train carriage restricts accessibility to escape an attack, and the physicality of a moving carriage creates openness to potential threat’ (Kim 2019, p. 15). The scattered nature of men on public transport, juxtaposed to the tight positionality of women, reveals an existing cultural power which men possess over women.

Volume/Noise

Taking up the public space of a train carriage may include talking or emitting noise in another way, such as through music. I found during my observations that the only form of talking on the train was between those in a group of two or more, or the occasional passenger on the phone. No one else talked to another person at all. Producing noise may be seen as an assertion of power or dominance in one’s spatial environment and was observed to occur between both women and men, however mostly amongst those who were elderly. A trio of young black friends, two women and a man, sat together chatting for most of the ride, their body language facing towards each other, one woman on the phone talking. This example was unique to the other observations. Notions of greater power when in a group belong primarily to men, who are physically and culturally dominant over women, relating to social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto 2012), yet women may travel in a group due to fear of an attack. A middle-aged white woman sat on the phone, talking relatively loud for the otherwise quiet ride, gradually getting louder as the carriage emptied. A middle-aged man on another ride was also talking on the phone for a moment, and three old white men talked to each other for most of their ride. Emitting noise in a crowded, intimate public space may be seen as an act of exposure, where strangers may listen in and be revealed details of a private, personal life. Kemmer et al (2022, p. 290) explains that exposure, regarding public transport, ‘entails a ‘fraught sense of agency’ emerging from the loss of boundaries’. New forms of involvement result from the ‘staged’ vulnerability of life (Kemmer et al 2022, p. 291), as in the examined talkativeness of the elderly. Their lack of concern in talking loudly on public transport may not therefore be credited to differences in gender, with the category of volume arising as the only observed trait in which there were no distinct gendered differences.

Conclusions

The principal organising of our psyches can be directly produced by gender (Kaufman 1994, p. 144). This idea is explored by the ethnographic research I undertook on multiple train rides, resulting in an intriguing observational account. I found that one’s role of gender was modified through age amongst the men, who’s occupation of space reduced as they aged. The women however remained the same no matter their age, with few outliers. One’s role of gender was rarely modified through culture, with most men and women retaining their respective behaviours, as with rank, where the female officer remained ‘smaller’ than the man. I discovered that power was expressed by men through standing up yet was not evident when women stood, who do so to avoid unwelcome interactions. Men were also dominant in the category of gaze and body posture, or manspreading, but not so in volume. The four categories examined reveal the significance of implicit gendered behaviours regarding the occupation of public space. The cultural significance of hegemonical bodies of power may be better understood by these findings, which peer into the realm of patriarchal control and gendered binaries of power.

References  

Acarón, Thania. 2016. “Shape-in(g) Space: Body, Boundaries, and Violence.” Space and Culture 19(2): 139–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331215623208.

Carli, Linda L. 1999. “Gender, Interpersonal Power, and Social Influence.” Journal of Social Issues 55(1): 81-99. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Linda-Carli/publication/229696152_Gender_Interpersonal_Power_and_Social_Influence/links/5ee39fd6299bf1faac4ebbca/Gender-Interpersonal-Power-and-Social-Influence.pdf.

Gekoski, Anna, Jacqueline M. Gray, Joanna R. Adler and Miranda A.H. Horvath. 2017. “The prevalence and nature of sexual harassment and assault against women and girls on public transport: an international review.” Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice 3(1): 3-16. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRPP-08-2016-0016.

Jordan, Fiona and Cara Aitchison. 2008. “Tourism and the sexualisation of the gaze: solo female tourists’ experiences of gendered power, surveillance and embodiment.” Leisure Studies 27(3): 329-349. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614360802125080.

Jording Mathis, Arne Hartz, Gary Bente, Schulte-Rüther Martin, Vogeley Kai. 2018. “The “Social Gaze Space”: A Taxonomy for Gaze-Based Communication in Triadic Interactions.” Frontiers in Psychology 9: 1-8. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00226.

Kaufman, Michael. 1994. “Men, Feminism, and Men’s Contradictory Experiences of Power”. In Theorising Masculinities, edited by Brod, Harry, and Michael Kaufman, 142-64. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452243627.n8.

Kemmer, Laura, Wladimir Sgibnev, Tonio Weicker, and Maxwell Woods. 2022. “Spaces of Exposure: Re-Thinking ‘Publicness’ through Public Transport.” Cultural Geographies 29(2): 285–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/14744740211068097.

Kim, Hyunjin. 2019. “Service Design for Public Transportation to Address the Issue of Females’ Fear of Crime.” Transportation: 1-26. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/service-design-public-transportation-address/docview/2284296809/se-2.

Neupane, Gita and Meda Chesney-Lind. 2014. “Violence against women on public transport in Nepal: sexual harassment and the spatial expression of male privilege.” International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice 38(1): 23-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/01924036.2013.794556.

Sarkar, Sanchali. 2017. ‘Security and Agency of Women in the Hyper-Masculine Space of Local Trains in West Bengal’. Special Issue: Cultures of Violence in South Asia 2(1): 100-108. http://kairostext.in/index.php/kairostext/article/view/41.

Schmucki, Barbara. 2002. “On the Trams: Women, Men and Urban Public Transport in Germany.” The Journal of Transport History 23(1): 60–72. https://doi.org/10.7227/TJTH.23.1.7.

Sidanius, Jim, and Felicia Pratto. 2012. “Social Dominance Theory.” In Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology, edited by Paul A. M. Van Lange, Arie W. Kruglanski and E. Tory Higgins, 418-438. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446249222.n47.

Silan, Miguel Alejandro A., Mary Anne F. Rivera and Loraine T. Chulipa. 2016. “Trans on Trains: Lived Experiences of Filipina Transgender Women on the MRT.” Phillipine Journal of Psychology 49(2): 35-60. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Miguel-Silan-2/publication/323343226_Trans_on_Trains_Lived_Experiences_of_Filipina_Transgender_Women_on_the_MRT/links/5a8ee66fa6fdccecffffcb62/Trans-on-Trains-Lived-Experiences-of-Filipina-Transgender-Women-on-the-MRT.pdf.

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