Men complain based on religious beliefs, and women are forced to move
Nick Little – director of legal affairs and VP at CFI – casts a cold eye on this business of airlines making women change their seats when men afflicted with religious misogyny refuse to sit next to women. He starts with Renee Rabinowitz, and then proceeds to the general.
This isn’t an isolated event. This scene is being played out repeatedly at multiple airports, and on multiple airlines. Men complain based on religious beliefs, and women are forced to move. When men are denied this “accommodation” they have protested, stood in the aisles, and refused to allow the plane to take off. So the airlines have kowtowed to their demands, and the men have gotten their way. The offending and offensive woman has been taken elsewhere in the plane, where, presumably, she should be grateful that she can sit without having curtains drawn around her.
Beyond even the ridiculous notion that sitting next to a woman on a flight, be she 18 or 81, should somehow tempt you into sin, there’s what is to me a stunning problem in this story. HE had the problem with his seat assignment, yet the airline’s policy was to ask HER to move to a different seat. If it’s his problem, if he is seeking the special treatment, why shouldn’t he be the one to move? Yet the default solution is that where a man is unhappy with the actions (or existence) of a woman, it should be up to the woman to change. The problem is no longer his irrational fear of sitting next to her, it is her very existence in a seat next to him.
Making the woman move just accepts that idea, and also makes her deal with the inconvenience of it. Doing that just endorses the idea that women are a contaminant and a nuisance, and get to share public facilities only on sufferance. Oh all right, you can fly on airplanes if you insist, but you can’t force anyone to sit next to you. If anyone doesn’t want to sit next to you, you have to move. Bitch.
The airline has multiple choices in this situation. It could, at the very least, require the adjustment to be made by the complaining male passenger. It could (and should) require any seat requests to be made in advance of boarding, when the ticket is purchased. That way a woman is not publicly accused of being unclean, and unfit to share a row of seats with a pious man.
Good line? Round of applause?
But El Al, and other airlines do none of these. They bow to the pressure, and they require women to bear the burden, and to make the change
The airlines concerned aren’t the only villains of this story. The United States government regulates air travel and airports in this country. It strikes me as inconceivable that an airline would be permitted to operate in the United States if it treated people of color in this fashion – if a white passenger was allowed to complain that he didn’t feel like sitting next to a black person, and that the airline should move the black person to a different part of the plane. For that reason, on behalf of CFI, I wrote today to Michael Huerta of the Federal Aviation Administration, asking what the policy of the government is on this issue, and how women’s rights to respect and equal treatment can be protected in U.S. airports. You can find the text of the letter here. I’ll let you know what response I get.
It’s a terrific letter. I’m looking forward to the response (unless it’s a “thank you for concern now fuck off” response).
I think that if they can’t sit next to a woman, after at least 100 years of public transportation, they should be encouraged to walk, stay home or ride on an ass like in the old days.
If a man makes a fuss about getting a woman moved away from him and then creates a disturbance if not catered to, he should be removed from the plane. I wouldn’t say no to putting them on the No-fly list, either.
Being stuck on a plane with a crying baby is no fun, even when the crying baby is middle-aged.
Eileen – ride on an ass instead of act like an ass?
I was on a plane home from Pittsburgh today, and this went through my mind. No problem on the first leg; I was seated next to a woman, though I suppose it is possible that I could have tempted her into same-sex sin. But on the last leg, I was seated next to a male passenger. I sat and read my book; he sat and read his book. There was no hint that either of us was tempted into lustful behavior. He barely looked at me except to get up long enough to let me into my seat; then we somehow managed to ride all the way from Minneapolis to Lincoln without any sort of lustful incident. Imagine that.
I was thinking to myself if someone tried that on me, I would just say hell no and go on reading. Let him throw a tantrum. But I suppose I might end up being arrested for his tantrum, and that sort of inconvenience could cost me a lot that I can ill afford right now. I guess that’s why women give up and move. Calling attention to our own rights often costs way too much.
Guess I was fortunate to have one of those robots next to me, instead of a real man who cannot feel safe from lustful thoughts sitting next to a woman.
I would be fine with their silly religious constraints, if only they were the ones that took steps to rid themselves of the risk of sitting next to
schrodinger’s succubusa woman. Travel in pairs or more so as to claim an entire row of seats to your manly selves, or avoid the problem of having neighbours at all by purchasing multiple seats for yourself. Sure it’s more expensive that way, but anything to avoid displeasing your tyrannical malevolent god, right?Anyone making a fuss that delays take-off should be removed from the plane.
A couple years ago there was a case involving Air France in Kuwait, I believe. A man refused to sit next to a women and prevented the plane from taking off. The captain had him forcibly removed and the flight left.
Once an airline gets the reputation for not tolerating such misogyny, the problem tends to disappear.
The complainer should be offered a choice – leave the plane, travel in the luggage compartment in a dog crate, or be hooded and bound so they cannot sin with their eyes or their body.
I don’t understand why any ultra-Ortho Jew takes any public transportation whatsoever:
Leviticus doesn’t say how long furniture remains “unclean” after a menstruant has cootified it, or what happens if some Poor Innocent Clean Man™ perches on more than one such seat, but odds are that, until post-pubertal pre-menopausal biological female humans either get their own chairs in cabs/buses/planes/restaurants/etc, or are permanently confined to quarters, all the PICM™ must remain on their feet everywhere or reconcile themselves to paying the price* for holy decontamination procedures as a daily routine.
* Lev 15:29 specifies 2 turtles or 2 pigeons, but that’s for the woman herself; men apparently just have to bathe & launder.