Major airline IndieGo is to become the first in the world to give its female passengers the ability to avoid sitting next to men. Whilst many whoop and cheer, to me, this seems like a deeply regressive policy change, that wouldn’t look out of place in 19th century Jim Crow era America. Maybe I just missed the memo… One that warned the world that men are actually predators in waiting, secretly desperate to sexually assault whoever straps themselves into the seat next to them. You see that guy snoozing quietly, benignly eating peanuts, tapping away on his laptop, or agonisingly sitting through Lord of the Rings on a postage-stamp-sized screen… don’t be fooled… its a ruse… he’s dangerous. It seems like airlines needn’t take the safeguarding of their passengers seriously: why carry out criminal record or SA offender register checks, when you can simply tar all men with the same predatory brush, and pat yourself on the back for your ‘pioneering’ policy change? I’m bored of it. The world is full of performative policy that claims to combat worthy issues, but ends up doing nothing, and can even harm the very cause it claims to want to help. So I ask, if we are to treat male passengers differently, why stop there? What about black passengers? What about muslim passengers? What about gay passengers? Will we be treating them in the same way? Where does the pearl clutching paranoia, masquerading as ‘pioneering policy’ end? Sadly, those of you who are men, know as well as I, that this is not a new idea. It is simply the enshrinement of a gloomy, unfair, and all-too-familiar cloud that follows us round for our entire adult lives, raining hysteria and moral panic upon us. Man is bad. Man is dangerous. Man is a wild animal, quite literally more dangerous than a bear, I’ve heard; so who would want to be strapped into a chair, for several hours, next to one of these monstrous beasts? The language is as compelling as it is stupid. As alarming as it is useless. As as ‘pioneering’ as it is bigoted, sexist, and deeply anti-male. What do you think? - Images by Getty, Lukasz Lads, Kamran Abdullayev, and Ben Iwara.

2024-07-31