Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Sexism in the air... down under

From The New Zealand Herald (which makes its first appearance at The Reaction): "Air New Zealand and Qantas have banned men from sitting next to unaccompanied children on flights..."

Sexist political correctness way out of control or a sensible, precautionary policy? (Or is it perhaps that children are more comfortable around women?)

I'll go with the former: It's stupid, ridiculous, and insulting.

posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at 8:35 PM

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4 Comments:

  • now you know how gay males feel.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:24 PM  

  • ANZ assures us that the practice is almost global. Yeah, right!

    The prospect of an action under NZ's Human Rights legislation is tantalising...

    By Blogger The probligo, at 12:39 PM  

  • Having just gone through some "safe church" seminar training (I am ome of the instructors at a Sunday church school), I don't think it's a matter of being "PC" but of beiong afraid of being sued, if the airline did not make the default policy as safe for children as possible, and enforced the policy.

    It may be viewed as being "discriminatory," but recall that the overwhelming majority of identified sexual predators are males who are self-described as being "straight."

    So I guess that I'll just be branded as a "P.C. Liberal from now on."

    (and to offset/"cancel out" the passenger's statment about being the father of two young children, so am I, and I think I would be more likely, when it was explained just *why* I was being reassigned to another seat, to say, 'OK' -- But then I h=guess I'm just one of those wishy-washy self-effacing 'Murricans)

    By Blogger Craig R., at 5:03 PM  

  • The idea that keeping children away from men somehow makes them "safer" is asinine. The default assumption that men are predators shouldn't be allowed to stand. Conceptually it's no different than the default assumption (recently struck down by the courts) in Massachussets that noncustodial fathers are abusers that had to be certified each year to have access to their children's school records and such. They can do better than that, and should be expected to.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:48 AM  

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