by frog
The furore today over Air NZ and Qantas’ practice of not allowing men to sit next to unaccompanied children brings the Right’s definition of ‘political correctness’ into question.
National’s PC Eradicator Wayne Mapp has said that the move is “political correctness that had got out of hand” (BTW, should we assume that when PC hasn’t ‘got out of hand’ or ‘gone mad’, its okay by Wayne? 
).
But I thought that PC is said to be occurring when there is an over-emphasis on equal rights. In this case the opposite is true, it is a discriminatory practice that Dr Mapp is opposing.
IMHO, excessive paranoia about paedophiles leading to limits being placed on the entire male population is a form of moral panic, not political correctness. Do we really want to see this ‘get out of hand’ and have men and children totally segregated in society?
Keith has said this morning that the airlines need to be more down to earth on the issue.
“This is clearly a breach of the Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.
“I will be writing to the Human Rights Commission asking them to intervene to bring the two airlines to their senses.
Given that he thinks the HRC is too PC, will Dr Mapp be happy if it supports Keith’s call and asks for the airlines’ practice to stop?
Published in Parliament | Society & Culture by frog on Tue, November 29th, 2005
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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The one which has my blood boiling at present is this ’stopping violence’ site, whose patron is allegedly the governer general: http://www.dvc.org.nz.
It contains such gems as “most men are raised to believe they are superior to women”.
Fear and misdirected anger can never effect positive change.. it is time for a little more public recognition and appreciation of the positive contribution the vast majority of men make every day to daily life in NZ.
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Don’t be naughty – quoting phrases out of context doesn’t advance the debate.
The dvc site says (clipped for space not content)
” Understanding domestic violence is key to making safe changes … it is a social problem of men’s violence against women and sometimes children. It is based in deep-seated beliefs in male superiority. …
Not all men believe in male superiority. Men have a strong role in modelling non- violent behaviour. “
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but as for defying crew instructions on an aircraft–fugedaboudit.
you’ll be tied down and dragged off to the cells as soon as you land.
when you check into an international flight, all your rights to human dignity are waived, as far as i can tell.
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I suppose this is discriminatory in a sense, in the same way as keeping women out of mens’ toilets (or vice versa) is, and could be an over-reaction. But who cares? Is anybody actually suffering from not getting seated next to a child?
It interests me, however, that the National Party are trying to tell companies how to run their own businesses. This seems an example of how nanny capitalism demands even stricter regulation and the right to interfere more in people’s lives than the state.
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The logic of the airline seems to be that because P(passenger will molest child/passenger is male) > P(passenger will molest child/pasenger is not male), that they should take a precautionary approach. But this can apply to a number of groups. For example
It is known that Maori are more represented in prisons than non-Maori. So ato be consistent, airline staff should move Maori (how well would that go down with the local iwi?)
It is knowen that most child molesters are friends or relatives of the family. So the children should not be seated next to anyone who knows them. In fact, P(passenger will molest child in some way/passenger is a parent of the child) is probably greater than P(passenger will molest child in some way/passenger does not know child & passenger is male)
It is known that Muslims are more likely to be airline terrorists than non-Muslims. So they should be subjected to a more thorough search and refused admission to the plane if there is any doubt
It is known that ex-criminals are more likely to re-offend than non-ex-criminals. But the Green Party introduced the Clean Slate Act to protect the rights of the majority of ex-criminals who would never offend again. Similarly, the chance of a passenger molesting a child he is next to given he is male, is miniscule. The rights of passengers, and the rights of men as a whole should certainly take priority, just as the rights of ex-criminals was respected in the Clean Slate Act.
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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=87&ObjectID=10351464
A Justice Ministry survey of 5300 people aged 15 and over in 2001 found that, of those who had had partners, 26 per cent of women and 18 per cent of men had at some stage been hit, threatened or frightened by a partner.
Yet the article then goes on an only talks about men beating women. Domestic violence is a problem on both sides of the fence. There are men that have been abused by their (female) partners. There might be fewer but that doesn’t mean we should forget about it. Perhaps once we start tackling the issue without bias we can get closer to solving the problem.
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Frog said “PC is said to be occurring when there is an over-emphasis on equal rights. In this case the opposite is true, it is a discriminatory practice that Dr Mapp is opposing”. Well of course that’s complete rubbish; PC simply means anything that challenges the priviledged position of white men. This offends people in that group…
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It’s a measure of how far things have swung that a statement like can be made and people are not outraged by it.
“The vast majority of domestic violence in western industrial societies is perpetrated by men. This doesn’t mean men are bad – rather that most men are raised to believe they are superior to women. These men believe they have the right to use violence and abuse to maintain that position.”
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Without discounting the very real problem of child abuse, societally we have a huge reservior of sexual shame that causes many people to feel ‘creepy’ around all manner of things sexual. We’re averse to touching other people (in healthy ways), we’re repressed in bed, and we’re loath to openly discuss sexual issues.
In answer to your question Sam (Is anybody actually suffering from not getting seated next to a child?), umm, yes, quite frankly. I’m losing and they’re losing, and all because of a creepy societal paranoia.
It’s easy to gloss this one over.. it’s not much. But where actually is the line? It’s like terrorism – how many of your social liberties are your prepared to give up in an effort to keep everybody perfectly safe, all of the time.
When I have children, then yes, I expect I will feel protective. But I also expect I’ll try to be rational with my feelings and not expect the world to change so I feel perfectly comfortable.
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Instead of getting flumoxed by the language, look at the numbers:
- Women’s Refuge assisted about 22,500 women and children in 2004
- NZ police attend 1 DV incident per hour
- 95% of family violence carried out by men
- “One person dies every 12 and a half days at the hands of a family member. Most of them are women and children. “
You say …”generalised”, “inflamatory”, “hate speech” etc
Get a grip man !
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The argument in Court that lost my ex-husband custody of our children was his insistance that a 14 year-old could adequately supervise her two younger siblings, without an accompanying adult, from Auckland, transitting LA, through to St Louis, Missouri, a journey that could take up to 24 hours, depending on how long the transit time was from International to domestic flights.
The Judge presiding was amazed that the father of these 3 children could not see the possibility of harm coming to them during such a long trip, without any family member to help them with luggage, etc. Having seen the literature on children being kidnapped via air travel in the USA, I was very relieved by the grilling he gave my ex-husband; neither of them were very impressed with the other’s responses.
Did anyone think to ask how the child concerned felt about it?
Some children really do not want to be seated next to a stranger of one gender or another, but don’t have the percieved power to question or demand a change; the subject here is a very vulnerable group of our society, generally disempowered by the old-fashioned “obey your elders” axiom.
As a mother I would prefer that they err on the side of caution, rather than allowing any stranger who chooses to be seated next to a child the opportunity to groom that child for the next however many hours; the rape of one child is too high a price to pay, in my mind, for the offence to the dignity of a hundred innocent men.
Guys, your injured egos will mend in a week.
A raped child needs therapy for most of his/her life, and is generally dysfuctional to some degree in all relationships, because of the effects of the rape on an immature psyche.
But go ahead – risk your own children if you like. It’s your choice.
Just don’t complain to me if you get an outcome you weren’t bargaining for.
And have the grace to explain to your child yourself why the bad man was able to hurt him/her.
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Huskynut, I agree that this is like the “give me your nail file, you evil terrorist” scenario. How exactly was I going to hijack the plane with it? And isn’t the risk a little overstated compared with the risk I could hijack the plane some other way if I wanted, eg be a very good fighter, strangle with string – whatever. Comparing these risks makes airlines (and us) look like naive idiots. Finally the most painful comparison is between the reduction in risk from taking my nail file with the massive cost, inconvenience, and frustration of it getting taken off me.
As was pointed out, the word is moral panic. Useless, useless, moral panic. Who exactly is reassured by such actions? Or is this kind of thing actually encouraging paranoia?
Like most of the commenters, I’m offended that the airlines (and society, if “society” likes the policy) thinks our (males) embarressment is a better option than installing some simple safeguard to mitigate whatever elevated probability of bad things results from letting a male sit there. But perhaps thats my problem, we easily offended males should all just “get over it”. But I don’t think people get over things that easily unless they get given good reasons for doing so, in my opinion they’re lacking here.
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Mapp’s comment “What do they think men are going to do that women won’t?� makes him sound like a complete drongo, isn’t it obvious?
I reply:
No Sam, you sound like the complete drongo. Why don’t you join the rest of us in the 21st century where women are enitrely capable of sexual and physical abuse of children?
Katie:
Have you actually bothered reading the Herald article Frog linked to? If Air NZ and Qantas maintained a ‘clear air’ policy around unaccompanied minors – which I understand other airlines do – in which nobody sat next to them, regardless of gender, I wouldn’t have a problem. To be honest, I was midly surprised that airlines would still carry unaccompanied minors in this paranoid, hyper-litigious world.
But what does offend me is the assumption – and one made with no better rationale than “the airline believed it was what customers wanted” – that I’m some horrible risk to children merely because I’m a man. Wow, and I guess the fact I’m an openly gay man means I shouldn’t be allowed on a plane at all in some people’s opinions – after all, there are millions who think I’m not fit to be a parent, or be a teacher or childcare worker.
My modus operandi is that the ingorance and prejudice of other is their problem. Try and make it mine, and I become your problem too. I guess I could say “well, welcome to my world breeder – suck it up and smile” but I’m not going to tolerate corporate pandering to ill-informed and irrational misandry any more than corporate homophobia.
BTW, Katie, I notice Qantas and Air New Zealand love presenting themselves to the gay market as tolerant, gay-friendly employers – especially when they’re touting packages around Madi Gras. Well, I’d like to know whether the same policy regarding men sitting next to unaccompanied minors applies to male cabin staff. After all, how can we be sure that one of those male trolly dollies isn’t a covert paedophile?
With all due respect Katie, I really wish you’d get the patronising sneers about “wounded male egos” out of your voice. I’ve lived my life in a society where the equation of male homosexuality with paedophilia has destroyed lives and careers. I have a t-shirt that reads “this fag bashes back” and I don’t wear it just because it makes my man-tits look big. Have a problem with that? Deal with it.
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On the “PC” question, Resistantsoy seems right in saying that PC is more associated with special treatment than equal treatment. Anti-male bigotry in general might be perceived as “PC” by some, which I assume is why they apply the term to this case.
Regardless, I’m proud to see the Greens standing up for what’s right in this case (as they also did in relation to our sexist rape laws). Keep up the good work!
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A number of people seem to be arguing something like: “most child abuse is caused by men, therefore men are potentially dangerous and should be treated differently.” That is the same as saying “most terrorists are muslims, therefore muslims are dangerous and should be treated differently”. That is to say, it is bigoted and wrong. There is no sanity in judging individuals by averages of the group they belong to. You must judge individuals by their own actions, rather than the actions of others and innocence must be presumed until guilt is proven. This is a basic human rights issue.
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Oh well-caught sir!
“Mapp’s comment “What do they think men are going to do that women won’t?â€? makes him sound like a complete drongo, isn’t it obvious?”
Well actually, Mapp’s comment is political correctness gone mad!!! and he deserved to be crucified for it.
The whole thesis of political-correctness-bashing, is that PC is about protecting or promoting those who are discriminated against, even when this runs counter to “common sense”. Well. A quick look at the statistics on paedophilia will supply an easy response to Dr Mapp. (what’s the percentage of female perpetrators?)
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Airline staff are in loco parentis during a flight. They are entitled to make whatever decisions they feel necessary for the security of children in their care : their parents explicitly delegate authority to them. A statistical probability of a greater number of incidents, however minor, concerning men and children, is ample reason for them to apply such a policy.
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Lots of boiling blood. “Fear and misdirected anger can never effect positive change.” Thanks for the unintended irony, Huskynuts.
You need to evacuate the hurt feelings before rational debate is possible. Also, you perhaps need to get in touch with your masculinity, and understand and own it.
This reminds me of the “All men rape” controversy from my university days. I instinctively recognised the underlying truth behind the provocation. Men who believe that rapists, paedophiles and wife-beaters are fundamentally different from themselves, need therapy.
Sorry to patronise, guys.
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Really? Funny how statistics have a long history of being used (and abused) to justify any prejudice you can imagine but that’s a very very big can of worms to open another time.
Just as a matter of interest, if you’re going to make a comment like “A quick look at the statistics on paedophilia will supply an easy response to Dr Mapp. (what’s the percentage of female perpetrators?)” Well, Alistair, I think you might like to talk to Sue Bradford about that. In Wellington a few years back, there was a case where a swimming instructor at a Council-owned pool was fired for initiating a sexual relationship with an underage male client AFTER making sure she couldn’t be charged with statutory rape. You see, the law as then stood was not gender-neutral; only men could commit the offence. And as far as I’m aware, the legal definition of rape still excludes men as victims and women as perpetrators.
I guess sometimes patriarchal-defined gender-roles can work for women.
As I said above, its a simple fact that the perpetrators of terrorism, hijackings and so-called ‘air rage’ incidents are overwhelmingly and disproportionately men. Perhaps New Zealand’s flag carrier should seek an exemption from the Human Rights Act so it can fire all it’s male pilots and cabin staff, and refuse to carry adult male passengers? Yeah right… I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but airlines also have statutory obligations to protect the health and safety of their adult employees and customers, that doesn’t give them carte blanche to ignore employment and
human rights laws because “we felt it was what our customers wanted.”
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* first priority : the child is in a position where they can be easily supervised, beside an empty seat.
* If the plane is full : someone will have to be seated next to the child. The airline would be entitled to interview candidates, and select one in particular. This would not be discriminatory in any way : they are acting in loco parentis. But in general, they don’t have time to do that. As a general rule, a woman is likely to be more considerate and nurturing of an unknown child than a man is (don’t get your knickers in a twist guys, I’m sure I could find scientific back-up if I had to). That’s an amply sufficient reason to prefer to seat a woman, rather than a man, in the special seat beside an unaccompanied minor.
On international flights, the problem of moving someone doesn’t arise because it’s handled at ticketing. I’m assuming that seating is open slather on CH-AK flights, hence the incident. No doubt the situation should have been pre-empted by the steward, but he has no grounds whatever to contest whatever arbitrary decision made by airline staff concerning the child’s welfare or comfort, acting as they are (once more with feeling!) IN LOCO PARENTIS!
Full disclosure : I have two young children. The question has not yet arisen, but it will.
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Sorry Craig, that’s an anecdote, not a statistic.
You really don’t get “in loco parentis”, do you?
Children are not adults. That completely invalidates all the analogies about muslims, maoris, homosexuals etc. And terrorism is not the issue here, it’s a red herring.
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It’s not a human rights issue. Nobody has a “right” to sit next to an unaccompanied minor on an aeroplane.
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*sigh* I do understand what in loco parentis means, but it doesn’t become a magical trump card that allows any organisation to arbitrarily trump every other law in creation. I guess you don’t really get that, which is a shame.
And, Al, it’s a shame you really had to dismiss the serious point I was trying to make by sniffing “that’s just an anecdote” – especially when you’re busy making a string of assertions (some of which I find incredibly offensive) without any logical argument or supporting evidence. If women aren’t legally considered capable of committing an offence, how the hell can they be included in statistics? And if so, what did your assertion about paedophilia statistics really prove? Nothing?
Anyway, as I think there’s really no point in talking past each other without any kind of reasoned engagement. If you “instinctively” don’t see any fundamental differnce between a rapist, a paedophile, a wife-beater and, well, someone who has consensual intercourse with an adult they don’t beat… Well, I really think someone needs to get in touch with his own internalised misandry, understand and own it.
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Rape, paedophilia and wife-beating are, overwhelmingly, male behaviours. You and I are intrinsically capable of those behaviours BECAUSE we are male (well I might let you off the third rap:) ). A man who has consensual intercourse with an adult they don’t beat is not exhibiting (at that time) the reprehensible behaviours enumerated repetitively above
. If he never does so, it’s either because he has a strong moral compass, like you and me, or because he is surrounded by sufficiently strong mechanisms of social control.
Not letting strange men sit next to one’s children is one of those mechanisms. Sad, isn’t it?
There it is folks : the tragic truth about men.
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At first look, it doesn’t pass the laugh test. But I’m sure the subject has been studied, if not in NZ then elsewhere. Judicial statistics are not the only or best way of assessing it. If you’ve got some numbers, we could have a look.
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The fear that strange men are likely to molest children is just that – a fear – largely irrational, based on regarding the event (molestation) as catastrophic, and the risk (tiny), but because the event is seen as catastrophic “you can never be too safe”. The same mentality that causes people to fear large aggressive looking men vs small frail looking old women – and a similar mentality regarding race – there are plenty of people of different races who fear those from other races, because of the perceived risk of being attacked or intimidated.
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The child porn ring that was busted in Belgium a year or two back included women amongst the ringleaders. Yes, men are disproportionaty offenders. No, their gender is not the *cause* of their offending.
Until this lie is firmly laid to rest we’ll bring up new generations of men with a sense of shame and fear about their masculinity. Do you think this will help make the problem of male violence go away? – well my experience is that self-shame helps nobody behave better.
Thank you Alastair and Fastbike but I have spent a long time getting a good grip on my masculinity. Having grown up surrounded by messages that the problems in the world were somehow at heart the fault of men, I had to. And having had to struggle through weeding through all the cr*p I was fed, then yes, I do get angry to think that other boys are going to be taught through actions like this that they have inherited some abusive gene by virtue simply of being borne a man.
It’s completely possible to teach people what acceptable and unacceptable behaviour is without resorting to abusive blanket attacks.
Fastbike – the statistics are horrific. Women’s refuge are a wonderful organisation. But I’m going to defend my gender in the face of slander in the same way I wouldmy family or nation.. this is what *healthy* anger looks like.
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I do get it. It means that they have the same rights and responsibilities as parents regarding the childrens’ welfare. But parents do not have any right to rearrange seating at will either.
Nobody has yet given a reasonable refutation of the point raised by me and others on this blog that there exist any number of easily recognisable demographic characteristics x, such that P(passenger will molest child/passenger is a member of x) > P(passenger will molest child/passenger is not a member of x), but the characterisitc x=male is the only one we are allowed to pick on in a discriminatory fashion. What would the reaction be if a cabin crew member asked a Maori, Samoan, Muslim or parent of the child to move away from an unaccompanied child on the same basis?
BTW the paranoia over paedophilia is out of all proportion to its actual chance of happening. The probability that a male stranger sitting next to a child will abuse them in any way is virtually zero. Has anyone actually got any evidence for sexual or physical abuse happening on an aeroplane? It usually occurs either in deserted places (by strangers), or, far more commonly by somebody who knows the child.
Children are far more likely to be killed or injured by a motorist than a paedophile. It is a pity the same degree of safety consciouness is not found in our transport policy. If it was, then we would already have laws in place that cars must be accompanied by someone in front waving a flag!
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Kiore1 says: it does a great deal of harm when men are stigmatised and ostracised… the man should have stood up to himself, but perhaps he had been so browbeaten by feminists and by male quislings (the worst sort of men) that he had simply lost all confidence.
Alexei says: Whether or not men are suffering from this policy is irrelevant.
Craig says: No Sam, you sound like the complete drongo. Why don’t you join the rest of us in the 21st century where women are enitrely capable of sexual and physical abuse of children?
In reverse order, did I ever say women weren’t capable of abuse? Nope.
It’s irrelevent whether men are suffering? Really? Opposition to discrimination is based on the fact that people suffer from it, not (I hope) some meaningless philisophical principle.
Kiore1 uses the standard idiot’s tactic of equating your opponent (in this case pro-feminist men) with Nazis. Sheer thoughtless stupidity.
And is asking someone to sit elsewhere really ostracising and stigmatising their gender? Personally, my reaction would be “OK, I know I’m not a threat, but I can see the reasons for it, so … whatever”. Much the same as if I was told not to take a potential weapon onto a plane. I wouldn’t feel the need to get up and start ranting about how I’m being dubbed a potential criminal.
The reality is that grooming for paedophilia is a disproportionately male behaviour. This doesn’t imply that all men are at fault. I suppose airlines could demand references and police checks of all passengers, but, that being ridiculous, have simply decided on a course of action that somewhat mitigates a small, but real, risk. No big deal.
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Well, if you’re confortable with that fine. Being a gay man in a society where a foundation of homophobia is the casual equation of gayness with sexual abuse of children and other forms of paraphilia, I’m not going to be that tolerant.
And I note both you and Alistair use the justification for this policy that, well, just look at the statistics for sexual offence convictions. Aha! Overwhelmingly male!
I notice neither of you have rebutted (though Alistair manfully tried to change the subject0 my point that if *in law* women aren’t considered capable of perpetrating sex crimes or violence within the family unit – which, in large part reflects the dominant patriarchal idealisation of women, female sexuality and the family unit when they were written – then citing statistics doesn’t prove what you think it does. As Sue Bradford eloquently pointed out earlier this year, the way we define rape in law still is not gender-neutral – only men can perpetrate rape, and only women can be victims.
And while we’re on the topic Alistair wrote:
QUOTE
Sorry Craig, I misunderstood your swimming pool anecdote. You’re actually asserting that, if only we had the statistics, it would turn out that women commit as many acts of paedophilia as men.
END QUOTE
Um, no – you see, that’s a conclusion that I couldn’t draw from the data either. Why don’t we just leave tendentious distortion of statistics to the Maxim Institute?
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And I didn’t ever refer to statistics for sexual abuse convictions. Anyway, so far as I know, laws aginst child porn, which is probably the closest you are going to get to a proxy for likely grooming behaviour, are gender neutral.
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Besides which, why does equating behaviour with Nazism show a lack of intelligence. The argument goes like this:
Nazism is wrong;
x shows behaviour consistent with Nazism
Therefore x’s behaviour is wrong.
Please, oh great enlightened guru of logic and all-knowing one, tell me what is stupid about that?
I actually agree with Craig, in spite of being a heterosexual male. “Homphobia” seems to have been augmented by “heterophobia” when the heterosexual in question is male.
The point I was making before is that the harm resulting through discrimination and stigmatisation (is that a word?) of men, and the harm to the individual is far in excess of the risk from a child on an aeroplane being abused by a stranger. But if you can provide reputable evidence on the numbers of sexual abuse cases conducted on aeroplanes (ie EVIDENCE, not ABUSE) then I will revise my view.
The case of someone bringing a nail file, while similar in one respect (it shows paranoia out of all proportion to the risk), is dissimilar in one other relevant way. Can you spot what it is? I’ll give you a clue. Is a nail file detachable?
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For an airline carrying children, the main priority has got to be keeping them quiet and in their seats. An extremely difficult job for busy staff. I think this policy is aimed at that, not at protecting them from something that would never be the airline’s fault anyway.
But carry on this whole paedophile thing, I’m sure it’s going to lead to plenty of really fruitful fact free rants and polarization of positions, and plenty of pet peeve stories.
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Airlines are businesses and have every right to their rules. Vote with your dollar if you’re really bitter about it. I bet that doesn’t happen, that Qantas will still be popular, and if it isn’t, I’ll fly it just to get away from the whingers. If I don’t get to sit next to kiddies, I really don’t mind. So long as they don’t keep me up all night with their crying, anything that quiets them is a godsend.
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x shows behaviour consistent with Nazism
Therefore x’s behaviour is wrong.
Please, oh great enlightened guru of logic and all-knowing one, tell me what is stupid about that?”
OK – Nazis encouraged outdoor sports, does that mean anyone who goes tramping is wrong? Nazi’s hated Soviet communism, therefore hating Soviet Communism is consistent with Nazism. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Nazis also oppose free trade agreements and tend to be quite environmentally conscious.
As for not mentioning Nazis, yopu said “perhaps he had been so browbeaten by feminists and by male quislings”, who do you think Quisling was?
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However, trying to just rid of discrimination results in equally disturbing futures. About to get married? Hmm, to someone your own race huh? Are you too racist to marry anyone else? That’s it, I’m taking you to court over unfair marriage discrimination! And then you have employment. Currently you’re not supposed to discriminate but it’s completely impossible: people will always discriminate, even unconciously. They’ll hire the more attractive person without knowing it. Are we going to try to track down all of this?
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In this particular situation there is no reason why Air NZ can’t just have a “clear air” policy to keep all people away from unaccompanied children. This would be totally acceptable to everyone as it treats everyone equally. I see no reason why they can’t implement this option apart from stupidity.
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“Why bother checking further?â€? This already happens anyway (see Insurance, for example).”
Yes, commercial enterprises make commercial decisions based on statistical data. In my opinion, that’s a good reason for using mutualist (or even, gulp, government-provided) insurance. viz. Accident compo.
Ben:
“For instance, whether you are male or female should rightfully affect your insurance premiums.”
Absolutely not. Insurance premiums should be affected by risky behaviour that the person can do something about (e.g. nothing wrong with a higher premium for a smoker or a skier) but there should be solidarity for the rest. Are you alleging that women should, as a class, carry the cost of their generally higher health risks? That’s a lovely little can of worms!
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That doesn’t work, because planes are often full. Airlines want to avoid trouble, but not to the extent of renouncing a full fare for every unaccompanied minor.
I just thought of something else. When seating is allocated in advance, then a random male may end up sitting next to our U.M. The “risk” of that man having paedophile tendencies can be assumed (for the sake of argument) to be pretty low.
But if seating is not pre-allocated, and any man can then cruise up and install himself next to the U.M (which, I’m guessing, was the case on the Ch-Ak flight), then this self-selecting sample is a greater risk. i.e. if there happens to be a paedophile on the flight (and if there are 100 men on the plane, we can’t discount that), then he may well seek out that U.M.
But, as Ben says, there’s no indication that paedophilia was even a consideration in the airline’s policy. The whole outburst of male hypersensitivity has been pretty revealing : the immediate assumption that sexuality is the issue, and that their sexuality is being insulted…
get over yourselves guys!
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It’s about the fact that we want to be trusted around children as much as women are. Men can be loving and parental just as women can. And we both have the potential for neglect or abuse, too. We have human rights. One of those is the right to freedom from discrimination. It is discrimination in essence to suggest that a man of the same personality under the same circumstances will react differently to a woman of the same personality under the same circumstances. It may be statistics that suggest we have a less empathic personality, but profiling through statistics is not generally a good idea ;p
Personally, the only special seating arrangements I would see as appropriate would either be having UMs sit next to the aisles so that they can be seen more easily by attendants, or to have a dedicated club or group of volenteers who are checked out for such abusive behaviours/caring natures and are willing to help UMs on flights :p
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But if seating is not pre-allocated, and any man can then cruise up and install himself next to the U.M (which, I’m guessing, was the case on the Ch-Ak flight), then this self-selecting sample is a greater risk.
I reply:
Um, no. I take your point but in this particular case Mark Worsley was in his assigned seat on a fully booked (probably over-booked, knowing airlines) flight.
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I decided to e-mail a friend of the family who used to be a trolly dolly and get her perspective, and her reply was rather interesting. She said that when she was in the industry (quit about ten years ago) her main concern wasn’t male passengers, but under-staffing and lack of training.
The airline I really hope things have changed, because I don’t think I’d want an inquisitive child going walkabout while all the cabin crew are otherwise occupied doing meal service or having to deal with a problem elsewhere in the plane.
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The evidence that most pre-pubescent sexual abuse is perpetrated by men is far less clear cut than is commonly thought – see for example http://movingforward.org/v2n6-cover.html
I chose this paper because the author is female. Similar discussions can be found in the US and UK literature in a number of places.
If we are to have a discussion about child safety then we need to recognise that (i) “stranger danger” is very very rare; most abuse is done by relatives/friends; and (ii) that certain assumptions about male versus female sexual abuse need careful consideration against facts.
The phenomenon of new male partners killing other men’s children, male violence towards women and the phenomenon of adolescent sexual abuse, may not be a good basis for developing policies for protecting younger children in public situations. Both these have distinct cultural and anthropological antecedents.
I would also note that sexual abuse is only one form of abuse of children. Parents can damage children through emotional abuse in a variety of ways – many of which are every bit as damaging as sexual abuse in the long run.
To chose one example – “I love you so much I am staying with your father/mother even though it makes me unhappy” is an almost perfect mindfuck for a small child. The message is “my misery is your fault”.
We desparately need to recognise that children need love, consitency and stimulation in their lives. Sexual abuse is just one of may ways in which adults betray children.
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For instance, a young man has to pay a lot more to get full insurance on a car. This is because young men cost insurance companies the most. I don’t think that’s unfair. It’s just a reflection of the reality.
I don’t know if racial profiling happens in insurance – that’s much more of a can of worms. Certainly it is that case that some races have far worse health cost statistics than others. But I can see problems with allowing discrimination in this way.
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Thank you – it’s a pleasure to agree with a thoughtful, nuanced and well-expressed comment.
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do you also advocate a total ban on male school teachers in New Zealand?
after all, teachers–with both authority and ample opportunity–must surely be far more of a threat to small children than passengers on an aircraft with not a single spare seat.
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The term Quisling, while coined in WW2 is now used to mean any traitor or collaborator. According to your logic I must avoid any WW2 terms, so to talk of “taking the flack” or a “blitz” on drunken driving would lead to arrogant assumptions of my lack of intelligence.
And that gets me back to my point which is certain men that have been so brow beaten by feminist propaganda that they have become self-loathing jellyfish, willing to denounce members of their own sex as paedophiles to score kudos with the feminist N –oops almost used the “N” word … Mafia.
I can actually see where the feminist men haters are coming from and have a certain sympathy for them even though I can’t agree with any policy based on hate. But collaborationists and traitors are the lowest form of pond-scum.
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I’ll take that as a compliment … considering that you see yourself engaged in a war of the sexes.
My point of view is that we’re all in this together.
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Yes, I am. Is the differential sending a useful message to someone? Do young men think “hey it costs a bomb to insure my car, that’s because I’m part of a high-risk group, makes ya think eh, I’ll try to be rilly careful”…?
More likely, it provokes a “well, I might as well get my money’s worth” attitude. Or makes absolutely no difference at all to behaviour.
The fact is, the young male can’t actually change his young maleness, so it’s purely a commercial matter of the insurer covering its risk. This is an exceedingly slippery slope.
A higher premium for powerful motor bikes, or sports cars, is justifiable, because the higher risk is voluntary.
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That’s interesting… not apparent from the original article. In that case, it’s purely a ticketing blunder : the airline should have applied their rule at that stage, and the whole issue would never have arisen.
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Sorry if my posts gave that impression, jgg. In fact, in bracketing together three behaviours — rape, domestic violence and paedophilia — that I characterised (perhaps incorrectly, concerning paedophilia) as predominantly male behaviours — I was trying to make a point about “political correctness”.
I believe that the PC tendency to pretend that men and women are functionally identical (other than the direct physical sexual attributes) is profoundly dangerous, and that differential treatment of men and women in order to reduce risk, is justified in some cases.
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Ultimately, reason prevailed, but only by the dodgiest backdoor method ever, and for reasons that luckily fell in my favour. The flight to Barcelona that I was on was overbooked. I appealed again to the checkin lady to let me just stay in Amsterdam, I didn’t want to waste the next 6 hours of my life in planes and airports just to get back to Amsterdam. She said I should jump on the chance to be stood down on the flight. I said why do I even have to go through with this charade, wasting at least 2 hours of my life getting through passport control to get to the gate lounge to wait for the inevitable stand down, and all the mucking around involved? She thought about it for a bit, saw that I had a point, that the strictness of the rules hurt the airline and me, and came up with a truly dutch solution.
She suggested I check my bags in on the flight to Singapore right then, and then do whatever I liked until it the flight got here. And if anyone ever asked about the flight to Barcelona to just say I had been on it. And to never let anyone know I had been told to do this, and to forget her name and she would deny ever having seen me. She then showed me how to manually check my bags in, got me a boarding pass and disappeared into the crowd.
It worked, I had a nice day in Amsterdam instead of a horrible 6 hours of arsing around in planes and airports. Sometimes it does take someone who realizes the rules suck to do the right thing, even if it’s the wrong way.
That’s what the hostess on this AirNZ flight should have done – she should have let the guy sit there, and told the airline about the problem with their software. C’mon the odds of that particular guy being a molester are miniscule (if that’s what the rule is about, which I’m STILL NOT CONVINCED ABOUT IN CASE ANYONE HASN’T HEARD), the reputational damage potentially large. But I think kiwis are either less imaginative or more blindly honest than the dutch, so here we are, 20,000 outraged posts later, and still none the wiser about what really happened and why.
Grist for the bitterness mill, that’s all this story is. The lame NZ bitterness mill that grinds on relentlessly, getting us nowhere, acheiving us nothing.
I suppose the only good thing about this, is that we might end up on Clive James getting mocked again for treating the story of a guy having to change seats on a plane as national news. If that’s all that gets NZ’s (or shoud I call it the Shire’s?) dander up, then we mustn’t really have that many problems.
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I’m happy to consider any thoughts that provide a useful explanation of the world, regardless of whether or not it comes from my own gender, race, political viewpoint, nationality or any other category. If you want to abuse me for not sticking up for my own kind, right or wrong, who cares?
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And I am quite willing to consider LOGICAL reasons why men should not be allowed near children on aeroplanes. So far I have not read any that would not apply equally to many other groups. The context of my original comment was a quite reasonable question from Paulense about why the man in question did not make a fuss. I was not aiming my comment at you in particular, but I have certainly met the types of self-loathing jellyfish I have described, and this seems to be a common feature of anti-men rhetoric.
With regard to the plane being overbooked, when I have booked a seat on a domestic flight on the terminal at the airport, it gives me a choice of seat based on which ones are empty, but it does not describe the passengers in the other seats. It would therefore not be possible to deliberately choose to sit next to a child, or to avoid sitting next to a child.
But perhaps a different ticketing method was used?
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