If you’re a woman, you’ve experienced this, probably more than once, maybe every time you’ve dared to exist in public. You’re in a crowded space (or sometimes not even that crowded), and a man decides he needs to get past you. But instead of using his words, he uses his hands. Sometimes one hand, sometimes both. Not to tap you on the shoulder, of course, because that would require acknowledging you as a person. No, his hand glides across your lower back, as if your body is a public handrail, just a piece of infrastructure to his disposal, rather than, you know, yours.
This phenomenon is so common, I think it deserves a name: manwaisting. Manwaisting (verb): when a man uses a woman’s waist as his personal GPS, handrail, or announcement system, rather than simply saying “excuse me.” It’s a subtle but perfect example of the patriarchal entitlement to women’s bodies, a microcosm of how gendered power operates in public spaces.
His hand glides across your lower back, as if your body is a public handrail, just a piece of infrastructure to his disposal, rather than, you know, yours.
To mark the inauguration of a man who turned boundary-crossing into a brand (and who has been found liable for rape—the most egregious invasion of a woman’s personal space, lest we forget), I decided to flip the script and join a viral TikTok trend called #WomenInMaleFields. This trend explores how women might react if they behaved in the same way men often do.
In the crowd at Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington, DC, I did a little manwaisting of my own. In a video I made with Courrier, I casually touched men’s waists and lower backs to move past them. No “excuse me,” no explanation, just that awkward, unnecessary physical creepy contact that women have been enduring for ages. And honestly? The reactions were fascinating.
Confusion. Shock. Discomfort. Turns out, even the smallest invasion of men’s personal space feels unsettling when it’s not invited. Turns out men don’t like having their personal space invaded either!
For the record, I didn’t do this to make men feel bad. My goal was simply to highlight just how strange this supposedly “normal” male behavior really is, so ingrained that it often goes unnoticed. Feminist theory, particularly Judith Butler’s work on the performativity of gender, helps us understand how public spaces are gendered and how bodies are regulated within them. Women are often expected to make themselves smaller, quieter, and more accommodating to maintain the social order.
Manwaisting is a perfect example of this dynamic: it reinforces the idea that women’s bodies are not sovereign but permeable, always available for others to touch, guide, or use, even in passing. It’s a microcosm of how gendered power dynamics play out in everyday life.
Of course, the irony here is that we were all gathered to inaugurate a president who made violating women’s private space a symbol of his power. When this kind of behavior is modeled at the highest levels, it normalizes it for everyone else. So it felt extra great to do my social experiment during such a historical and symbolic event.
If touching someone’s waist without asking feels weird when it happens to men, maybe it’s time to reconsider why more of us don’t realize that it’s weird when it happens to women.
These so-called "little" acts of entitlement aren’t small at all—they’re part of the scaffolding that props up much larger systems of inequality. Dismantling that scaffolding doesn’t require revenge or even anger—it requires perspective. It’s not about giving men a taste of their own medicine but about using humor to hold up a mirror and say, “See? It’s weird, right?”
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