… and scoot over. Is the tube a microcosm for our culture at large?
Nobody will be surprised to learn, from two separate surveys, that heavily pregnant women have trouble getting a seat on public transport. All pregnant women report this. There are several reasons, I think. One is obviously that the tubes are so crowded in the first place. Another is the selfishness of passengers on the underground.
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Reading some of the comments after that story were even more pathetic than the results of the survey. What a lot of angry, mean and bitter people!
I think that the old courtesy of giving a woman her seat was rooted in the reality of a high birth rate. My first trimester, before anything was showing, was one in which I was constantly dizzy, and on the edge of fainting. When I became obviously pregnant, it was other women, mothers, who would offer their seats first, as a gesture of solidarity, making clear while doing so that this was their motivation. In all the time I was pregnant, there was only one man who offered his seat, and this was two weeks before I delivered, so I looked as if it was about to happen.
The feminists were the first to throw this courtesy under the bus, in the name of “equality”. It is only suitable that we women take care of our sisters, because the men have been taught not to.