Passenger sues Easyjet after crew asked her to move seat for ultra-Orthodox man refusing to sit next to women

Anyone being asked to move because of their sex - not their bad behaviour - should be offered an automatic upgrade. I would happily move seats on that basis.

There have been official airline policies of asking men to move for the crime of being sat next to kids on a plane that they aren't related to;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_seating_sex_discrimination_controversy

I've seen discussions on here when such cases arise, and nobody was sympathetic to the male passengers. Nobody said that the parent booking the ticket should book extra seats to keep their kids safe. So to pretend that only women are subject to discrimination on a plane just isn't true.

For the record, I think the men in the case of the OP are idiots and should not be accommodated. If you don't like it, you move, or get off the plane.

sexisim is as bad as racisim. I have been groped my numerous men during my life, I have had a man try to lock me in his house and assault me. While drunk my boss admitted to paying me and the other women in my team less than the males so we 'could save up for our maternity leave'. I could go on. Why should white women have to put up and shut up about these things?

Well, clearly we shouldn't. Barely a woman doesn't have some story to tell about sexually inappropriate conduct by men at some point in our lives. For many of us it gets far worse. #MeToo was a shocking insight into just how pervasive a problem this is. As a victim of rape in my teens, I've experienced one of the more extreme manifestations of masculine privilege at women's expense.

In terms of the thread, there is clearly a context and a legal precedent for this type of situation, and I do come down firmly on the side of the woman. It's always, always, the women who are expected to budge up and move over in order to make men more comfortable. By the second instance of it she must have been sick and tired of this, which I can't say doesn't have my sympathy.

Then I read the post by Eastie. She's had to put up with all the above by virtue of having been born female. Then there's a second and even more extreme layer of discrimination. On top of all the issues listed in the post above, she'll have had to face systemic and individual prejudice on account of being black. The racist, sexist epithet she encountered on that railway journey speaks succinctly (and hatefully) for itself.

Eastie, I'm very sorry you had to go through that. I also recognise the sex-based abuse I and others have received doesn't mean we don't have white privilege. FWIW, I do think it's a pity some black women feel they can't, or don't want to, engage in a feminism they see as predominantly white. Personally I think we need those voices more than ever.

Flashes From the Archive of Oblivion

www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ryanair-facing-criticism-allowing-passenger-directing-racist-rant-woman-stay-n922721

European airline Ryanair is facing criticism after the flight crew on a plane bound for London failed to remove a man who was yelling racist remarks at another passenger.

The incident on a plane taking off from Barcelona, Spain, on Friday was recorded on video by another passenger, David Lawrence. "RACIST MAN REFUSES TO SIT NEXT TO ELDERLY BLACK WOMAN on Ryanair flight calling victim an UGLY BLACK BASTARD and Ryanair - DOES NOTHING!!!" Lawrence wrote on Facebook.

A flood of commenters on the video, which has been viewed nearly 5 million times since it was posted Friday, expressed outrage that the man was not kicked off the flight, and some called for Ryanair boycotts.

Eastie

I'm making this point since several posters have been asking "what would have happened if the woman was Black". Well some Black women would move, some wouldn't. Exactly the same as a woman of any other race. We are not some kind of special species who think and behave differently from White women.

I read that as turning the situation into one regarding racism specifically. Not sexism.

So instead of saying I've got a sexist man here, can you move because you're female. It would be, I've got a racist man, here can you move because you're black.

I didn't read it as what would a black woman think about being treated in a sexist way. I can't imagine anyone on this board saying that and making a distinction on that basis. The women here are very clear that sexism is based on sex.

Not really. Anyone of any religion or none must pay extra if they want special seating arrangements on budget airlines. But I get your point.

Does anyone recall a budget airline trying to charge extra for wheelchairs and front row seating ?

@ProfessorSlocombe Yes, that’s correct. Everything is on timers so they don’t have to do it. They have to pre-tear toilet paper, and often they do not attend any other form of education than Shul (Torah School).

Trying to separate them via pre booking options doesn’t work. The point they’re making is to forcibly segregate the plane without having to make special provisions. This is about pushing their beliefs on others, and they do it to make a point. Flying to Tel Aviv in Economy is and probably always will be a nightmare worth every shekel of the upgrade. There is often a high degree of aggression and intimidation, and staff rely on passengers to do as asked by these men to avoid problems.

Living in the Middle East I quite commonly am asked to switch seats to avoid a local woman being seated next to or across the aisle from a man. Once I was given a seat in business for my trouble. Usually the ME flights aren't loaded with men sitting next to women they arent related to but people switch places or planes change at the last minute.
Never has it been a man objecting though.
I think it's swings and roundabouts.
I'd ask politely crew if I could sit with my children or husband and have asked to be moved when my children and I were in a row with a falcon and it's handler and another time travelling with a baby on lap in aisle when the man in the window (middle seat empty ) was watching porn on a laptop and stroking himself.

EasyJet is a budget airline. If you want special arrangements, you pay for them in advance.

And then you'd have howls of "I'm being discriminated against [made to pay more] because of my religion".

This man could have done so by booking an extra seat - costly, but if being next to a female bothers him that much, then tough

Not that costly - couple of hundred pounds at most.

By the way, spoiler alert for those of you frothing at the mouth about these men: they do not represent the entire Orthodox Jewish community

The fact this is a minority has already been made.

Interesting choice of language there -"frothing at the mouth". I don't see that anywhere.

I wonder were the management at El Al, KLM or Israeli legislators "frothing at the mouth" when they decided this behaviour was unacceptable?

I wonder if the man had contacted the airline in advance and explained this issue, they would have just managed the seat allocations to ensure no women were in seats where he was. End of problem without massive scene and embarrassment to women.

Well no, it's not an end to the problem. EasyJet is a budget airline. If you want special arrangements, you pay for them in advance. This man could have done so by booking an extra seat - costly, but if being next to a female bothers him that much, then tough. Also, if there was just one such man on a flight, his 'needs' might be easy enough to accommodate, but what if there were several, as there might well be on certain routes? It would be very difficult to ensure that they were all seated next to a male, and why on earth should an airline - esp a budget airline - go to that trouble to accommodate someone's religious intolerance?

Plus, where do you draw the line with this? Can anyone just contact an airline, claim to be part of this or that religious group and demand special treatment on that account?

Why is everyone ignoring the fact that this lady experienced being asked to change seats twice, on two different flights?

On the first flight she was asked by the Haredi men to switch with a man further up and she refused. A flight attendant intervened and offered her a hot drink if she agreed to switch seats, so instead of telling the men to pipe down, EasyJet came down on the side of the men. She apparently complied to stop the flight being held up.

I hate the fact I share a faith with these people, although as I'm a convert I'd just be a shiksa bitch to them anyway.

It's not quite that simple ... theydohave a right to express the view that you shouldn't eat meat on a Friday

And under the proposed Scottish hate law, it's debatable that if you responded suggesting you object to that view, you could be charged with a hate crime

Er don't think you've got that right. In a work place for example someone banging on about you should not eat meat on a Friday may well be harassing or even bullying fellow employees.

And bear in mind having no religious beliefs is protected too.

[quote sergeilavrov]@Eastie77 Because they were orthodox. Different to ultra orthodox.[/quote]
From a very dim memory ultra orthodox won't even use a light switch on the Sabbath ?

The suggestion upthread that airlines which fly in places where this is regularly an issue could designate a few rows as men only or women only seem like a good one to me.

Except outfits like Easyjet will immediately charge extra, and you know there will be people who won't pay and try and use their protected characteristic to bump themselves up.

And that's before you consider that for some flights there may be more men wanting men-only than the plane has. Or women wanting women-only.

And what about men and women with a child ?

Probably a much simpler solution to all learn to live in peace and harmony. I know I'm a bit of a dreamer, but I really think it could take off as a movement. We'd need a book of course, telling us to love one another and be compassionate. But I reckon in a few thousand years it might get somewhere.

The suggestion upthread that airlines which fly in places where this is regularly an issue could designate a few rows as men only or women only seem like a good one to me.

When flights are full and a lot of families are on board, that would create problems. What if a woman wants to book the last seat on a fully booked flight but the only available seat is in a 'male' row? Should the airline lose out on her fare and the woman be unable to fly just because some men don't like sitting next to women?

The man asked not the airline, the airline staff facilitated his request by other passengers moving voluntarily

The article is quite ambiguous, but reading it again, it looks like that might be the case.

She was sitting in the aisle seat and the son climbed over the back of his seat to get away from her, so he didn't have to touch her at all.

Which ever way you cut this up, the woman was in an awful position. I would absolutely hope that the cabin crew would intervene, in this situation. Awful though it is for them, too.

@Eastie77 Because they were orthodox. Different to ultra orthodox.

I think I would say that sex discrimination and race discrimination don't operate on the same basis, so it's not always correct to compare them. Race is very much a constructed entity, human beings are human beings. Sex on the other hand is an objective category that demands recognition in some circumstances.

So to me, this is a question of how do we deal with cultures that think differently about which of those circumstances around sex are significant or important, when they are all being thrown together on a space like an airplane.

My take on this type of thing is that while I understand why western style legal systems don't want to differentiate in this circumstance, I also think there is a valid observation in other cultures which wants to give some privacy or separation between men and women who don't know each other or have a family relationship, particularly where they are being squeezed together in very close quarters. If I were to flip the sexes around and it was women who wanted to avoid being stuck in such close quarters next to strange men, I think that makes a lot of sense to me - I'm a westerner brought up with almost no male/female segregation and I can be uncomfortable in economy class so close to men I don't know. To me these kinds of cultural norms aren't all about somehow discriminating against women, they are at least in part on a continuum with the kind of argument that says people need certain single sex spaces.

The suggestion upthread that airlines which fly in places where this is regularly an issue could designate a few rows as men only or women only seem like a good one to me. In fact I wonder, if they did that, that they wouldn't find that they were popular with other women as well.