Manspreading has its own Wikipedia page, a dedicated subreddit, and about a decade of cultural real estate. Now another habit is getting under women’s skin: men walking straight at them on sidewalks and waiting to see who moves first.

The habit is simple enough: a man walks straight at a woman and seems perfectly happy to let her be the one who moves. Enough women have posted about it on TikTok and in comment threads that the counter move now has a name. Patriarchy chicken, as the New Statesman called it, means holding your line and refusing to step aside, collision be damned. Hold your line and see what happens. A lot of men will walk straight into you.

Women on TikTok have been posting what happens when they stop stepping aside. One said a middle-aged man barged into her after she refused to move into the road. In other clips, the woman keeps walking and so does the man. Sometimes one of them moves at the last second. Sometimes they just hit each other.

@gillianmargonis

pls help me name my cow

♬ original sound – Gillianmargonis

@theprintedpaige

You are walking on the correct side of the street, they better MOVE asap!!

♬ original sound – edits

What Is ‘Patriarchy Chicken’? The Gendered Sidewalk Habit Going Viral.

Psychologist Emma Kenny told Metro that women are broadly socialized to anticipate others, accommodate them, and sidestep conflict, while men are more accustomed to moving through space without thinking much about who adjusts. She also pointed to one observational study that found men were actually more likely to yield for women, so the picture isn’t quite that simple.

What the data and the TikTok comments are describing might be two different things: general urban crowding versus a specific and gendered experience of public space. Cities are more crowded. Phones have made everyone worse at noticing what’s directly in front of them. That doesn’t excuse getting shoulder-checked by a stranger, but it does make the reason harder to pin down.

To be fair, I’ve been shoulder-slammed by plenty of women too. Women can take up the whole sidewalk, stare at their phones, and walk straight through you with the best of them. But there’s something revealing about simply refusing to move for once and seeing who was counting on you to do it.