Women must not use public transportation
An Israeli journalist reported being pressured to change seats on an international flight on Tuesday, complaining that she was told by airline staff that any flight delays caused by ultra-Orthodox men attempting to enforce gender segregation would be her fault.
In a tweet, Neria Kraus, a U.S.-based correspondent for Channel 13 News, wrote that she had been asked to move by ultra-Orthodox men and alleged that she received no assistance after she turned to the Delta Air Lines flight crew for help.
Burying the lede. Why wasn’t the important bit in the first paragraph? Male religious fanatics tried to force a woman out of her seat because they think women are too filthy and whorey to sit next to.
In recent years, male ultra-Orthodox passengers on flights to and from Israel have increasingly refused to sit next to women, with travelers reporting clusters of ultra-Orthodox men approaching female passengers prior to take-off and requesting to switch seats.
Because god hates women. Men like that should be banned by the airlines.
There is no problem sitting next to a woman on public transportation according to Jewish law, asserted Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, co-founder of the Orthodox feminist group Chochmat Nashim, complaining that “we in the religious community have allowed this by erasing women. When we erase women’s images, we get used to the idea that women aren’t there, and then we expect women not to be there in person.”
And that women are sinister, and dangerous, and filthy, and harlots, and all the rest of it. If sitting next to a woman is too difficult for men then they should stay home.
Elements of the ultra-Orthodox community have long tried to erase images of women from the public sphere through vandalism and by blurring their faces in news coverage.
Don’t call it a “community.” That’s a hooray word. Call it something not-hooray – sect, cult, gang, mafia.
The latest incident involving Kraus happened only a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “Israel is a free country in which no one will restrict who can use public transportation, and no one will dictate where she or he will sit.”
He was responded to a series of incidents where women were asked to move to the back seats on buses or avoid using public transportation.
The back of the bus – or just get off the bus altogether. Unfuckingbelievable.
It’s not just misogyny; it’s budding theocracy. I imagine Iran wasn’t too dissimilar in the early days…
If sitting next to a woman is so offensive to him, why not solve that by:
Men travelling in pairs to be each other’s seating buddies
Men booking and paying for extra seats to buffer between them and women
Men not taking planes/other transport or using public locations where women might be
Going to live in a male only environment like a monastery or something
It’s almost like they don’t want to solve it.
Arcadia, the whole point is to throw their weight around and force flight attendants and women to bow and scrape.
Yeah, you’d think that if ‘not being comfortable sitting next to a woman’ were the actual issue, they’d move. So clearly that’s not the actual issue.
I’d refund their f*ing tickets. They can walk.
I was remembering a similar incident from 2010s, in which an 81-year-old holocaust survivor was asked to vacate her seat. Unfortunately for the airline, she was a retired lawyer, and sued, and as a result Israeli airlines were prohibited from doing this sort of thing (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/22/israeli-airline-cant-make-women-move-seats-for-religious-reasons-court-rules). But apparently other airlines are still bending over backwards to accommodate men claiming discomfort, because of course the women should always defer to the wishes of a man in this sort of situation.
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/the-flight-attendant-pressed-her-further/
You’re the first to comment.
plus ça change…