'Female rage': Canadian woman sparks 'manspreading' debate after sharing flight experience in viral video

A Canadian woman's recent flight was a lot less comfortable than she expected — and now people online are calling out the "manspreading" from her airplane neighbours. Erin Rempel of Edmonton posted a video on TikTok last month of herself sitting in the middle seat on an airplane, only to be squeezing her legs together as the two passengers on both sides of her encroached on her space.

The clip, which featured on-screen text that read "female rage" with an upside down emoji, showed Rempel shifting her body and trying to lean away from the flier on her right. But as she inched away from the passenger in her already-tight section, the person only spread their legs further.

"Why would anyone ever need that much room???" Rempel wrote in the caption to her post, which has been viewed more than 18 million times since being posted on Aug. 9. "I tried to get him to move but he wouldn't."

In the comments section of the post, many people showed empathy and support to the model, who's just over six feet tall.

"Manspread back with confidence, girl," one person suggested.

"Once when I was on a train, I saw a man manspreading so much that he took up two whole seats," someone shared.

"There is no need for them to sit like that," someone else added.

"This is so disrespectful," one user noted.

But some TikTok users commented in defence of the two other passengers.

"As as man, it's just more comfortable to sit like that," someone replied.

"I do this 'cause I am tall and my legs don't fit really well," someone else noted.

Rempel shared a few follow-up videos on the platform afterwards, replying to some people's comments that she didn't agree with. One person commented "she's so weak ... I would never let this happen," to which she wondered why she was receiving so many negative comments suggesting she should've done something in the moment.

"Why are you choosing to use your comment to shame me for how I reacted instead of choosing your comment to shame him for how he acted in the first place? I just think that's crazy. Why would it ever be my fault that he's acting that way?" she questioned in a video shared on Aug. 19.

"No woman has ever done that to me or made me feel that kind of way. It's just crazy. ... My dad, he's a big guy. He can make room, he buys another seat for his room. If you need that, then buy that."

She continued to say she's had numerous similar interactions with men in the past, and that she's "never taken anything" in those situations. Rempel also further defended herself, noting she initially took a video in the moment because she thought it'd be funny to share online.

"Then right after that, what I did was I reached down to grab something, I spread my legs and then I just stood my ground and left my leg there. He ended up moving. I'm pretty sure, honestly, he was asleep," she said.

In another follow-up video replying to a comment from someone who said "it's on purpose, probably to feel you up," Rempel suggested people have to be careful around strangers in these situations.

"You never know who these people are. You never know that they could follow me home after I get off my flight — you don't know. It's a crazy world out here," she said. "I'm not going to cause a scene over that and risk that that guy is actually doing it on purpose to touch me and be weird for that. I don't want to risk my safety over that."

Global News reported Rempel was on a Flair Airlines flight headed from Winnipeg to Edmonton, adding if the flight was any longer, she would've asked flight attendants for help. Fox News also reported the airline said in an emailed statement, "We don't think we should be stepping into this disagreement between two customers."

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