Able-Bodied Grown Man Wonders Why He Needs to Give Up His Bus Seat for a Pregnant Woman
Everyone knows you should give up your seat on public transportation to pregnant people, right? And yet we are never surprised to learn that there are people who just don’t. And those people more often than not have never, nor will they ever, be pregnant themselves. One of those people — OK, we’re not fooling anyone, one of those men with zero empathy dared to ask Reddit if it was wrong of him to refuse to give up his seat on a bus to a pregnant woman when his poor widdle feet were hurting him. It is very, very satisfying to read the responses.
“So last night I’m on the bus, and a very heavily pregnant lady gets on,” myfeetfuckinghurt wrote on the AITA subreddit, after a sad story about how his car was totaled and his job requires him to be on his feet for 10 hours a day. “She looks around for a seat, only to find there are no available ones left. I’m the closest to her, so she starts giving me the imploring eyes. I had my headphones on and tried to pretend I couldn’t see her, but once she started talking to me it became inevitable.”
I believe all pregnant people who have ridden on public transportation are quite familiar with the old “Oh, I’m just here on my headphones and have no idea that there’s anyone else on the bus with me” trick. Good on this woman for not having it.
“I wasn’t rude or anything, I just told her no, I’ve had a long day and my feet are sore,” he said. “I don’t want to give up my seat. She started crying about how she’s a pregnant single mom, and I told her I’m sorry, but that was her personal choice, and she can’t expect other people to accommodate her life choices.”
While this guy has his own set of excuses for taking the bus, he thinks there can’t possibly be a good reason for the woman to be doing so. He even thinks she should have gotten an abortion since she didn’t have money for a car.
Jaws off the floor everyone, because that’s not the worst part of this tale. An old man witnessing this exchange got up to offer his seat to the woman, and as he was doing so, the bus moved, causing both old man and pregnant woman to fall. Even after this, myfeetfuckinghurt had zero regrets until he told the story to his sister, who lit into him for it.
As did most of the commenters on Reddit.
“No, you didn’t ask her to be pregnant, but you can, as an able-bodied otherwise healthy person, just choose to be nice,” banjo_fandango wrote.
Others also added info about why pregnant people deserve seating. It’s not just about their feet hurting or because “breeding” makes people entitled (as he put it).
“Pregnancy also loosens tendons and ligaments as the body prepares for childbirth,” ReeveStodgers wrote. “This causes pregnant people to be more susceptible to injury if they fall, or even if they have to hold a strap to stand. Combine that with a different center of gravity and a moving bus and you have a recipe for disaster if that person is forced to stand.”
“YTA, you didn’t show common courtesy by giving up your seat to someone who needs it much more,” riyuzqki wrote. “As in, if you fall during transit you might get a bruise; if she fell during transit, she might lose her child. Not to mention that no matter now tired you are she’s more likely to have an accident while standing during transit than you.”
The only defense of his actions came from readers who wanted to know what all the other riders of the bus, other than the old man, were doing. According to myfuckingfeethurt’s later comments, there were women she passed by before asking him (this is why we’ve concluded that he is a man).
But guess what? Even if other people are jerks, you don’t have to be.
Childbirth is nothing like in the movies, as these beautiful photos show.
Launch Gallery: Celebrity Moms Get Real About Their Home Births
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