Amy Hamm: Women-only plane seats a shameful feminist attack on men

Imagine you didn’t have to sit next to anyone you don’t want to on an airplane. Would you choose babies — those wailing little things — people who hog both armrests, or snore, or perhaps the poorly socialized who, profoundly lacking in self-awareness, see their plane neighbour as a hostage they can hold a one-sided conversation with for five hours? All of the above? How about men? Any man. All men. Would you avoid them?

One of India’s largest airlines, IndiGo, is now offering the latter option — women can pre-select their seats beside other women only. When choosing a seat, female passengers see available spots colour-coded in blue or pink — an option not viewable by male travellers. Western feminists have floated, in the past, a similar idea to mandate pink airplane seats, both to deal with “manspreading” and as a response to #MeToo. IndiGo’s CEO, Pieter Elbers, said the company has yet to analyze data on how the change has affected sales or customer satisfaction since it was introduced as a trial in May, but claimed that social media feedback has been positive. Men are OK with this insulting initiative? Really?

It smacks of Western liberal feminism, the same divisive, riddled-with-contradiction movement that lauds pornography and prostitution and burka-wearing — such empowering choices for women! — and declares that all women are to be believed at all times, while men, well, they’re just patriarchal trash (unless they identify as women). Why would anyone want to sit next to a hulking pile of trash on an airplane if they didn’t have to? Maybe those icky men should get in the cockpit where they belong!

Elbers, who is Dutch, became IndiGo’s CEO two years ago, which could explain how this Westernized ideology infiltrated the South Asian airline — he likely (and predictably) intends to give the brand international appeal by impregnating it with a Western “diversity, equity and inclusion” scheme. He has tragically given no indication of how the airline intends to deal with “non-binary” persons who identify as neither male nor female — let alone men who identify as women — or the persons who have taken up a newfangled, bespoke gender that is far too nuanced for us binary simpletons to comprehend. How exclusionary of IndiGo.

But oh well, at least they’re enabling us women to avoid toxic masculinity fumes while we’re cruising at altitude — which totally aligns with the company’s self-professed “#GirlPower ethos.” Of all the things that make air travel a nightmare, it’s about time someone addressed the lack of Girl Power in aviation — starting with our ability to not catch cooties from boys. Yuck!

In seriousness, there are and should be female-only spaces and services — but an airplane row is frankly not one of them. Women, and their children, deserve dedicated spaces when they expect to be in vulnerable states, or a state of undress; it’s why we have (or at least had, in Canada) female sports, prisons and rape shelters.

This is not to say that women are always safe on public transportation, either. Women are attacked and assaulted in public as well as private spaces, and there were media reports of two female IndiGo passengers being groped on flights in 2023. That is not acceptable. But the solution is not to pander to a liberal feminist agenda that positions all men as bad — and pretends that male violence can be solved via arbitrary acts of discrimination. Which is exactly what IndiGo’s new policy is: frivolous, unwarranted discrimination. How about hiring a security guard to wander the aisles during flights (particularly overnight ones), rather than putting the onus on women to choose a “safer” seat, while painting all men as a threat? If another woman is groped, but she didn’t choose to sit in a “pink” row, is she then to blame for her own assault?

Far deeper societal issues must be solved to end male violence against women. Pink and blue airline seats, much like rants about all men belonging to a patriarchy, are not going to cut it. Moves like IndiGo’s will only further pit men and women against one another, and won’t improve women’s safety. It’s a testament to how pervasive this idea — man bad, woman good — has become within popular culture. It’s always an ugly instinct to tarnish entire groups of people we don’t belong to, which seems obvious until you begin to notice that certain groups (males and white people, lately) are expected to tolerate it.

It would never fly to allow airline passengers to not sit next to racial minorities — or even women. We would easily see that as insulting and demeaning. But when it comes to men, there is a clear double standard. May my own sons never experience such socially acceptable and degrading treatment.

IndiGo, which has referred to female staff as “lady pilots” in official communications, has also admitted that 86 per cent of its pilots are male. I’ve got an inkling that it’s more than hiring practices that are responsible for the sex divide. The company might want to remember who the majority of its operators are the next time it yields to divisive identity politics — surely it realizes that it can’t fly all those planes with #GirlPower alone.

National Post