Men, You Are Not Dickensian Orphans. Stop Spitting in the Street

You’re not on a Victorian workhouse floor. You’re not a 1920s boxer about to go twelve rounds. You’re not, as far as I can tell, a cowboy who’s just finished a particularly dramatic duel.

So why, in the name of all that is civilised, are you still hocking up spit onto the pavement like some Dickensian street urchin?

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It is, without question, one of the most disgusting and baffling male behaviours.

A perfectly ordinary-looking man, strolling down the high street, suddenly feels the urge to stop dead, lean ever so slightly forward, and launch a glob of spit onto the ground with the solemnity of someone paying tribute to fallen soldiers.

Why? What is the end goal? Is he marking his territory? Testing for wind direction?

And before the men start: “It’s biological! It’s necessary! We can’t help it!” …

Absolute rubbish.

Women have the same biology, the same saliva-producing glands, the same capacity for phlegm, yet we somehow manage to get through the day without decorating the pavement like a herd of rabid llamas.

The thing is, it’s not just about the spit. It’s about the space.

It’s about the sheer confidence of treating the world as your personal spittoon, the unthinking entitlement that allows you to expel bodily fluids wherever you please and assume someone else will simply step around it. It’s the same breed of confidence that leads to manspreading, manblocking, and men generally assuming the universe is their living room.

Women, by contrast, are conditioned to take up as little space as possible. We tuck in our elbows on crowded trains. We apologise when someone walks into us.

We are so used to navigating around men’s mess, literal and figurative, that dodging a glob of spit on the pavement just feels like another exhausting, inevitable part of life.

And honestly, I’d let it slide if spitting were confined to moments of genuine necessity.

But it never is.

It is always unnecessary.

It is always some perfectly healthy-looking man who simply chooses to do it. Because he can. Because no one ever told him not to. Because, deep down, he knows that if women started spitting en masse, if we began littering the streets with saliva every time we were mildly inconvenienced, there would be meetings. There would be public health campaigns. There would be a new law faster than you could say Public Order Act.

So, my dear spitting men, I implore you: evolve. Join us in the modern age. Swallow it, find a drain, or, best of all, just don’t do it.

You are not a Dickensian orphan. You are not a cowboy. And I promise you, whatever primal, ancestral spirit is whispering spit, my son, claim your territory, it is lying to you.

Comment

Dear lovely reader,

I wrote this because I have simply had enough. Seven times this week, I have watched a man, always a man, hawk up some deep, existential misery and launch it onto the pavement as if the world were his personal spittoon. Seven times, I have recoiled, sidestepped, and questioned the very fabric of civilisation.

I don’t want to live like this. None of us do. So I am making a plea, not just for myself, but for every woman who has ever had to watch a grown man summon the depths of his soul just to spit it out in front of her. Please, I beg of you - just stop.

love,

Kate