I once had a man try to shove my leg aside on the subway so that he could spread his wide, and he insisted, loudly and explicitly, that he was entitled to the space because he was male. I didn't move. Note that there was nobody on his other side, so this wasn't about a physical need to avoid squashing his equipment: it was explicitly "I am male and you are female, so I am going to take space that you were already using."