On the train, I encounter the same scene, over and over.
The middle-aged man in the next seat keeps shaking his leg for no reason. The man standing in front of me spreads his legs unnecessarily wide in the cramped car, or fidgets restlessly. Someone’s body odor drifts over, unpleasantly strong. A shirt hem hangs half out, a button done up wrong, and there’s no sign the man has noticed. A mask sags down to the chin, or covers the mouth but not the nose. Some man is smacking his lips, over and over, for no discernible reason.
This isn’t one or two exceptions. This particular kind of “strange behavior” is everywhere in public space, too numerous to count. And it is carried, almost without exception, by men.
Why does this happen? The answer is simple, and structural to the point of cruelty.
Raised to Be Watched, or Not
Women, to varying degrees, are raised on the basic premise that they will be seen by others. Posture, dress, mannerisms, scent — at every stage, correction comes in constantly, from parents, from friends, from advertising, from the gaze of strangers.
Men have almost none of this circuitry. Unless they pass through some cultural apparatus that forcibly corrects posture and bearing — martial arts, traditional performing arts, the discipline of school sports clubs — the habits picked up in childhood simply remain, uncorrected, as the years accumulate. Zero corrective pressure produces zero corrective result. It is nothing more than the plain outcome of a simple mechanism.
The result floods the streets, floods the trains, with that “strange behavior.” This isn’t harm, and it isn’t decay. It’s just a result.
The Function That Unjust Lookism Was Performing
What must not be overlooked here is that the corrective pressure applied to women is, in its true nature, lookism — the tyranny of appearance. Standards like “pretty,” “beautiful,” “cute” can never, from a feminist standpoint or from the standpoint of criticizing sex discrimination, be legitimately affirmed. And yet, this illegitimate standard operates constantly, pervasively, in the real world.
And ironically, it is precisely this illegitimate pressure that has functioned to keep women’s bodily comportment at a “standard that never breaks down.” Bad posture gets pointed out. Disheveled dress gets corrected. In exchange for the unacceptable yardstick of beauty and ugliness, a floor has always been guaranteed under public conduct.
This is not a “high standard.” It isn’t about reaching some absolute pinnacle of beauty — it’s a structural matter of keeping variance down, of preventing collapse.
The Gaze Never Aimed at Men
So does no such evaluative axis exist for men? Words like “handsome,” “buff,” “stylish” certainly exist. But this evaluation is directed only at a select few — celebrities, models, a handful of influencers. The vast majority of “ordinary men,” the ones sprawled carelessly on the train, are excluded from this axis altogether from the start.
Here lies a decisive asymmetry between men and women. The appraisal of women’s appearance is daily and pervasive — even strangers size them up constantly. The appraisal of men’s appearance is occasional and selective — the vast majority of men were never even objects to be looked at in the first place. Not being evaluated means no corrective pressure, and the result is bodies produced wholesale, unchecked.
The Aesthetics of Missing the Mark
Of course, men too engage in “trying to look cool,” “playing it up.” And often enough, this comes from a real motive — wanting to be attractive, wanting to be evaluated by women. But the result mostly misses the mark. The man believes he’s conscious of being watched, but what he’s aiming at diverges sharply from what women actually evaluate, and the verdict comes back: “cringe,” “off the mark.” The intent is there. The aim is not.
Men’s status display tends to be displaced onto things outside the body itself — watches, cars, job titles — rather than refinement of the body. Women are evaluated on a triple axis of possessions, behavior, and body; men get by on just possessions and behavior. That is precisely why corrective pressure never reaches as far as posture and mannerisms on the train.
Not a Harm, Just a Result
That women continue to be subjected to the illegitimate pressure of lookism, and that there is real injustice in this, is an unshakeable fact.
But it is precisely because of that illegitimate pressure that women’s bodily comportment has, as a result, been kept at a “standard that never breaks down.” Men, never reached by that pressure at all, never once get a trigger for correction — so their habits simply accumulate and set.
Not being evaluated is not a harm. It is just a result. But that result, in a packed train car, turns out to be something the stranger sitting next to you finds fairly hard to bear.