Why Do Asians Suck at Offering Pregnant Women a Subway Seat?

By Anonymous

What do you get when you combine one HEAVILY preggers Asian American woman and the NYC subway system during rush hour? An ideal opportunity for an informal social experiment, of course.

During the last three months of my pregnancy, there was no denying my protruding mid-section. I wasn’t fat. I wasn’t bloated. I was pregnant. Pregnant in that “you can see the outline of my belly button through my shirt” sort of pregnant. Though the NYC MTA has rules about giving up subway seats to the elderly and disabled, there is no such rule about giving up your seat to a pregnant woman no matter how big, miserable, and sweaty she might appear.

It was around month seven that I began noticing an uptick in seat offers during my daily commute. It was also around this time that I noticed the decidedly segregated nature of those who offered me a seat. Thus began my informal tracking of the frequency of seat offers and the gender, approximate age, and race/ethnicity of the courteous souls who relinquished their seats.

THE RESULTS

First and foremost, how often was I offered a seat? Contrary to popular belief, New Yorkers are a pretty courteous bunch. I was offered a seat 69% of the time that I rode the subway after I passed the 32 week mark.

Gender counts offered the first surprising results. One might believe that women are more apt to offer a seat given that they can more readily sympathize with a pregnant sister. Ah, but how wrong one would be to make this assumption. Out of 87 seat offerings, only 18 were from women. Men were four times more likely to offer me a seat. What can we conclude from this? Chivalry is not dead — and women are seat hoarders. And by the way, it was never the young women who offered me a seat. Most of the 18 women who offered me their seat were clearly in their 40s and 50s. Maybe it’s that young women, having never experienced pregnancy, don’t understand how exceedingly tiresome the third trimester can be.

Though age can be difficult to assess, particularly amongst people of color, my general conclusion was that older people (meaning people 30+) were much more likely to offer me a seat. I don’t think a single teenager or person in their early 20s offered me a seat during the entire time I was keeping tabs. I chalk this up to youngling self-absorption. How can a teenager possibly think to offer a seat to a pregnant woman when there are pressing matters like SATs, college essays, and how to ask the pretty girl with the green sweater out on a date to consider?

Then finally, the most interesting demographic of all: race/ethnicity. If you were to guess where Asians/Asian-Americans ranked in seat offerings, where would you rank us? First? Third? How about dead last. In the entire three months that I ran my little pseudo experiment, NOT A SINGLE Asian or Asian American offered me their seat. NOT ONE. Yes, fellow yellow subway riders, you all suck. (And yes, I am using the term yellow in all its glory and inaccuracy.)

Not only did I not get offered a seat by a single Asian/Asian American person, at one point I was physically shoved out of the way by a middle aged Asian woman (with her red Chinatown grocery bags) angling for the last empty seat on the uptown F train. Yeah, you all know THAT woman. She might even be your aunt/cousin/sister/mother/grandmother/friend.

So, which ethnic/racial group was the most generous? Let’s give a warm round of applause for the Latinos! Nearly 50% of all seat offerings were made by people who appeared to be of some sort of Latino/Hispanic ancestry. Coming in a close second were African Americans. White/Caucasians came in a very distant third, people of Arabic/Middle Eastern came in fourth and as I mentioned, Asian people suck in the seat offering category.

Now lets break things down a bit further . Here are the rankings if I cross-reference race and gender:

1. Latino men (YOU RULE!)
2. African American men
3. Latino women
4. African American women
5. Caucasian men
6. Caucasian women ( this includes the two women who told their husbands/boyfriends to give me their seat)
7. Middle Eastern/Arab man (one seat offer)

Now, I could probably yammer on for a few more paragraphs about the different cultural values and social norms that led to these heavily lopsided results. I can write about cultural perceptions about gender and pregnancy. One might even suggest the hypothesis that those individuals from cultures which hold onto the most traditional gender stereotypes are also the ones to most likely to offer a seat to a pregnant woman… but I’ll leave such theorizing to the real sociologists and cultural anthropologists. I’m just here mostly to shame my fellow Asian and Asian-American subway riders.

If I could leave one final message to all you readers, here it is:

YO! YELLOW PERSON. YEAH YOU. I’M NOT HIDING A WATERMELON UNDER MY SHIRT. DON’T TRY TO AVOID MY GAZE. I KNOW YOU SEE ME. YOU LOOK PRETTY HEALTHY. GIVE ME YOUR SEAT, DAMN IT!

[Photo Courtesy of EYECCD]