India’s largest budget carrier, IndiGo, is the first airline to trial a feature that lets female passengers book seats next to other women to avoid sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a man in a move designed to make flying more comfortable for female passengers, according to a CNBC report.
The airline’s booking process is fairly standard except for the seat map which highlights seats occupied by women with the color pink. This information is not visible to male passengers, according to the airline, CNBC reported. IndiGo did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment on the new feature.
I get what you’re saying, but we don’t fix the issue of men sexually assaulting women, especially in a country that has such profound issues with this like India, by forcing women to remain vulnerable.
If allowing women to avoid being seated next to men on flights reduces the chance of sexual assault from taking place during flights, then I am all for it.
It just needs to be understood as a harm reduction technique, not the solution to the overall societal problem.
This is like saying cars shouldn’t have seatbelts because it isn’t discouraging people not to crash their cars. Seatbelts don’t solve this issue, they just reduce harm. Think of this airline’s decision as implementing a sexual seatbelt for women.
In politics, this WILL BE the solution because a half-measure ‘solves’ it.
You put it into words perfectly. Thank you.
My concern is that the same men, frustrated at being unable to do this on flight, will do it somewhere else anyway. Also, some could be pissed off by this measure just enough to have a negative shift in mentality towards women (see incels that are driven by alientation). So does it really significantly reduce harm? I’d love to see numbers if anyone has got them.
This is a terrible take.
If he’s saying “normalize people being next to one another so anti-social nutjobs can get over themselves instead of being violent” then I can see where he’s going. It’s like the “co-ed bathroom” craze we had for a while.
I’m not sure whether it’ll help aggressive incels actually talk to gurls like people instead of sublimating from “I can list all the dinosaurs” to “you frigid ho” themes, but it could place other comfy male-company people in range or just someone burly to slap the actual shit out of someone who steps outta line. Equality has two sides.
I think either that solution or the segregation or the actual fix to the issue, they’ll all take a lot of emotional growth, though; and we lack the people to help us do that here, let alone in places where misogyny creeps ever closer to the default.
I think it’s terrible because the take treats women as things that defuse incels. Like sacrificing some women is worth it. Feel gross and dehumanizing.
I’m not ever saying women are dispensable tools in this fight (something you imply I said) or that we should “sacrifice” someone - the safety of every person is hugely valuable - I’m just saying that going separate is not gonna make things safer in the long run. There are other factors at play here that will show up, and we should not strive for knee-jerk solutions.
I doubt that separation alone is gonna help much, and I’d love to see comprehensive evidence for or against my take, if any exists. I want to see what is the best evidence-based solution that would actually improve safety of everyone.
If anything, I want to make sure as little women as possible are ever victims of such accidents, I’m just concerned over whether this is a best approach.
You just speak about women in a dehumanizing way that removes agency. It feel gross. Reminds me of doctors from the 90s that said we need studies to tell if inserting IUDs causes pain.
Thanks for pointing it out. I will see what I can do to correct it.
Is it something about the way I put it, like if I decide for women how it would be better for them?
Because my real position here, outlined clearly from my point of view but maybe not from someone else’s, is that we should better study the consequences of that approach to make a more informed decision.
One could come from a strictly individualistic approach, to allow and empower people to act as they see fit, but the moment we set examples of things already resolved, people start thinking otherwise.
I’m gonna get another hate wave for this comparison, but this is just illustrative example, so hear me out first: should we allow white people to make separate white-only spaces on the same planes? We can absolutely try and justify it by the same “giving agency” argument, all while pointing out people of color do more crimes and can be, on average, more “dangerous”.
All of which would be complete bullshit that omits any nuance that the very segregation puts people in conditions that promote such behavior and there is nothing about being black or hispanic or whatever in itself that promotes it. So we should absolutely fight back against any such idea.
Similar themes here, except the conditions here are less material (in fact, men even have somewhat of an advantage here) and more purely social. Externally isolated communities often promote dangerous behaviors, and to combat that, we should avoid forming such communities by not alienating them by the arbitrary category of gender in the first place. Otherwise, we are gonna see communities similar to incels grow and get more dangerous.
I just suppose that the risk of alienating men and them getting more violent may outweigh the immediate benefit of increased plane safety, eventually turning against women themselves. But to prove or disprove that point, I’d love to see more numbers. Before that, I do not welcome radical solutions that are not informed by a solid body of evidence, as they often carry questionable consequences.
I am going to ignore the weird race stuff. I don’t agree with it but don’t want to spend the energy.
I will speak about this:
This again dehumanizes women and removes agency.
You are saying that women are the tools that are used to prevent male violence. By treating women as a means to reduce violence without considering the women themselves as people you are dehumanizing and removing agency.
Women are people just as men are people. Women are not the tools to reduce male violence.
You also say giving women the choice to sit with women is radical. Women having the chose to protect themselves is not radical. It is a basis for a moral society.
You shouldn’t need studies to prove how effective or not using women as tools to reduce male violence is.
Women are not tools.