Unaccompanied minors: straightforward safeguarding based on passenger sex

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

I skimmed through a thread earlier which amongst other things had various posters describing how unaccompanied minors are looked after during flights, from the perspective of air crew, parents/guardians and adults who had flown as unaccompanied minors. Over and over again it was explained that the unaccompanied minors would be seated together if possible, but if they had to be on the same row as other passengers they were placed next to women, not men. I didn't see it mentioned but would not be surprised at all to find out that the airline staff looking after unaccompanied minors in the airports are mostly female. They are all trained and checked to ensure they are safe to work with children.

How is it that everybody can see this is obvious common sense but the likes of Webberley can deny that there is any difference in risk between men and women, as she did repeatedly in her 'debate' with Julie Bindel last week? A few short years ago she'd have been laughed at openly and she certainly wouldn't have been given a platform for her batshit views. Now she goes on podcasts and says that if young people nowadays were settting up refuges and rape crisis centres they would take a more modern and inclusive approach and invite all women in (i.e. the self-identified kind as well as the uterus havers). Dangerous idiot (at best). I think money is at the root of her adherence to gender ideology. If she were to be told that she couldn't charge for her company's services any more it would be shut within five minutes, and to hell with the outcomes for her exceptionally vulnerable patients.

I was left wondering what happens if the passenger manifest says a given seat is going to be occupied by someone with a female sounding name and F on their passport, but when said passenger boards the cabin crew can see this is a natal male. Does an unaccompanied minor get seated next to them or not?

I suspect that the minor would be moved.

Mainly due to a court case some years ago where an airline was taken to court for discrimination for making a male move from their seat due to an un accompanied minor being placed next to them.

But at one point it would have been normal practice for the airline to move the male.

That's an interesting point OP. I wonder...
As a child from about 11 onwards I was often an unaccompanied minor on what were then BOAC flights from Heathrow to the Middle East. I was at boarding school and my parents lived in Kuwait, my DF worked for an oil company. I never had a 'universal aunt' type person to accompany me. My grandad took me to Heathrow, my parents collected me at the airport at the other end.
I honestly cannot ever remember anyone being seated beside me except once, an older girl of about 14 who persuaded the cabin crew to sell her a carton of 200 cigarettes. This must have been on a return flight as cigarettes were dirt cheap in Kuwait. I was probably about 12 and easily impressed.
I also have a terrible photo of me getting off the plane at Frankfurt wearing a dreadful skirt suit and kitten heels. I look about 35 but I would have been 14 at the time.
(At the time the planes made two or sometimes three stopovers to refuel, in places like Rome, Frankfurt and Beirut. I presume I got off the planes like everyone else and waited in the transit terminals.I don't think anyone batted an eyelid. Different times...)

Young boys use the mens & we do permit our children to be unaccompanied in all sorts of other situations without female supervision like travelling to school, to the shops, to friends homes & in community clubs, schools, sports participation etc.

If this is the argument that most men are fine then that’s true.

But airlines are playing the numbers.

Seating UMs next to females only should cut assaults by ten to twenty times vs seating randomly (more vs seating next to males only).

That’s obviously relevant and I’m glad airlines still seem do it.

They sit them next to women because they assume they will be more caring if the child needs that. It isn't because they think the man will harm the child. It is because they think the woman will love the child.

Surely it's both. https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/bussinessman-sexually-assaulting-girl-flight-5HjdBHz_2/ This poor child was 15 and not safe from a middle-aged man sitting next to her. And here's another pervert, this time from the US. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/san-diego-man-pleads-guilty-sexual-abuse-14-year-old-girl-airplane

Yes, and? The point is not that females should be supervising children at all times or that males never should. I am making the obvious point, made many times before by feminists, criminologists and anyone with a vestige of common sense, that men as a class are far more likely to be sexual predators than women as a class. As we don't know which individual men are dangerous we keep them all out or away in circumstances where their potential victims are potentially vulnerable, e.g. changing rooms, toilets, dormitories, sitting on a plane next to a stranger with no trusted, known adult on your other side.

And the work place where most sexual harassment/assaults take place?
See where this goes?

@godtierKaren

No, where does it go? Spell it out for me.

Its far more likely that women have always been expected to guard unsupervised children because they'd annoy the men thinking about important things like their jobs and politics. Think about Mr Banks in Mary Poppins.

Society isnt insightful enough to acknowledge the predatory behaviour of men. Society would never say "men are dangerous so we have to keep kids away from them". We just assume women will be caregivers and have nothing better to do.

Nothing to do with safety, everything to do with sexism.
Of course women are happy to take care if an unsupervised minor. Their sleep/work/movie can wait, its only a hobby anyway, they love to be on call.
Of course men can’t be expected to interrupt their work/sleep/movie by being sat next to an unsupervised child.

And because it is sexism, I wouldn't be quick to reinforce it. Even if it means we can say something negative about men.

My young teen niece regularly flies between Uk and N America unaccompanied. She is often sat next to males.

I'm not seeing commercial airlines as beacons of light when it comes to safeguarding vulnerable people. I think it's far more likely that they are worried about being sued if someone comes to harm in their care - financial hit plus reputational damage > quietly doing the sensible thing.

I am equally sure that there is also a sexist element of 'let's not bother the important men, let's give the child-loving ladies a little treat' going on.

I ended up with an UM once on a flight to Hong Kong when DD was about 8. (I’m a single parent so the cabin crew must have thought their childcare prayers were answered). The lad was about 8 as well and it was a bit of a surprise to find him there when we got to our seats. Tbf it worked out quite well. He and DD basically watched the same movies, chatted and played a bit throughout the flight. I don’t know if the cabin crew were keeping a quiet eye on us or not but the only time they came near us was to give the lad his meal first.