How likely is it that anyone could commit any kind of sexual abuse on a plane without being discovered?

I can't imagine being able to discreetly have sex with my wife on a crowded plane and get away with it, so what is it they are worried that this guy might do?

I'd tell them unless they were moving me to first class to go fuck themselves, or at the very least move the kid. And then, knowing they wont do that as petty thugs never react well to having their bullshit authority challenged, I'd refuse to move and force them to return the plane to the gate and have real police escort me from the plane. Fuck up there day to the point that it thorws off the logistics for at least half a day

A few years back there was a woman who woke up being fondled in her sleep while aboard a plane. Maybe we shouldn't let women fly alone either.

I'd put money on kids being safer in an airplane than going to school.

> forcing men to switch seats when they're seating
> next to an unaccompanied child

I know that the most elemental components of my dignity as a human being are mocked by policies like this.

But still, I'm trying to see the downside. You're saying you want to move me AWAY from children, right?

Will you throw in a minature wine or two? Y'know, the ones with the sulfites?

No surprise on mainstream medias silence on this, or how quickly they would be screaming for blood if it were African Americans being moved to other seats for sitting near children.

Ironically, some male travelers may silently relish the idea of never having to sit next to a minor on flights, but most would be insulted by the stereotype underlying the policy.

Hardly. I'd love being moved away from a child... and the national paranoia over kiddie-fiddling has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the parents.

The real irony is that kids are most likely to be fiddled with by a family member or someone they know -- so if the airlines want to make sure they're not sitting next to Chester the M, the safest course of action would be moving them away from Daddy.

Also:

No surprise on mainstream medias silence on this

::: quick Google:::

Reported by ABC News, NBC News, Sydney Morning Herald, Telegraph UK, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Huff Post UK, Yahoo! News, dozens of Aussie papers...

Clearly one of those darn mainstream media conspiracies!

It is too easy to blame supposedly evil corporations for imposing their stupid will upon us. Those airlines are reacting to the threat of litigation. Maybe some other airlines are more brave or more politically connected, but I can't blame an airline for reacting to that threat and cost.

Consider. Some parent "entrusts" its child to the airline to fly alone, then threatens to sue when the child complains about the adult seated next to them.

The public perception is that men are more dangerous, and so the airline did not do what it "reasonably" could do to ensure the safety of the child. A stupid jury could easily decide that it would have been simple to seat the child next to a woman rather than a man, and so it is liable.

The public expects a riskless society, so airlines rationally juggle the seating arrangements for passengers.

I was thinking just the other day about the concept of "adults only" flights.

Why not make family-friendly flights? Ones with special small-sized seats in a "kids section" (think how many more you could fit!). Maybe with dry-erase boards on the seat in front of them (or around a dry-erase table) or with kid-visible kid-friendly cartoons being shown on a screen.

Unaccompanied minors (which I think only counts until you are 13 or so), would have to sit there, and parents could pay a few bucks extra to have their kids in the kids section and better entertained. Parents would have to be on the opposite side of the aisle or something, but given the vast amount of "parenting" on planes, they already might as well be on Mars.

Wait... does this mean that, as an all-American male, I can demand to be moved whenever I'm seated next to (or in front of) a young child? Probably not. Oh well.

I'm curious to see how this is going to work out if it spreads, e.g.: Delta, in its never-ending quest to nickel-and-dime its passengers to death, has in its infinite wisdom assigned someone to monitor FlyerTalk and figure out which coach seats the pax like best. So now they have various surcharges for these seats: $70 extra to be up front, $30 extra for an exit row seat, etc. So if I pay an upcharge to get a better seat, and then I get moved out of my seat to a less desirable seat because I was next to a child, do I get my money back?

(BTW, Delta plans to shut down Comair next month. More proof that in the airline industry, no good deed goes unpunished.)

They got away w/it cuz he's a SWAM (straight White American male). What's gonna happen when a homosexual is asked to move away from a child? A Black person?

> They got away w/it cuz he's a SWAM

Who will be expected to respond if there's a fire in the terminal, or in the plane?

London mayor Boris Johnson wrote about this phenomenon back in 2006, back when he was still an MP. (Google the title "Come off it, folks: how many paedophiles can there be?" to read.)

I thought this was interesting:

It is insane, and the problem is the general collapse of trust. Almost every human relationship that was sensibly regulated by trust is now governed by law, with cripplingly expensive consequences. I blame the media, I blame the judges, I blame the lobby groups, and in particular I blame the cowardly capitalist airline companies that give in to this sort of loony hysteria.

That's a lot of 'blames,' but I don't see 'I blame paranoid parents' in there.

There is an upside to this, other than being moved away from possibly annoying kids. If something DOES happen, then I, as the adult male removed, cannot be blamed!

This all reminds me of one of those TV shows (20/20 or something like that) that did a set up to see how many folks would help a child who seemed lost in the city. Most men did NOT stop to help. When the "reporters" asked them why the answer was almost always "I didn't want to be accused of anything." Can't say I blame them, trying to help could get a guy into trouble.

So, yep, don't sit me next to the kid - I'm okay with that.

"There is an upside to this, other than being moved away from possibly annoying kids. If something DOES happen, then I, as the adult male removed, cannot be blamed!"

You don't think so, huh?

Oh, PLEASE extend this to women so I don't have to sit next to someone's kid. PLEASE.

Shouldn't the child traveling alone be in the back next to the galley so the flight attendants can at least have a hope of keeping an eye on the kid?

I used to fly alone as a kid all the time and it too had to with divorced parents! I think this is why I love airports / flying so much. Well not anymore because TSA has almost made me miss several international flights. They don't know the difference between China and Japan grrr....

Anyways as a male you are most likely to get solicited by another adult male.....so this is what I propose before each flight all adult males are shown different type of pornos. That way we can asses what you're attracted to and not sit you next to them. Deal? Ok

Move me to first or business class. I'll put up with the shame, honest. Planes are full of people I'll never meet again. (Except, unfortunately for the mother with the three screaming brats who ended up one row in fron of us on the flight to Hawaii and one row behind us on the way home.)

The kid most likely has already been molested by the nice TSA agent, so I'm not going to worry about it overly much.

Yes Shannon! I'd love to be on that plane.

> I used to fly alone as a kid all the time
> and it too had to with divorced parents!

We did a thread about this years ago, now I have to dig it out.

Check this out:

http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/2012/08/10/uk-british-kids-play-center-bans-dads/

By lawyer Robert Franklin:

Just in case the British National Health Service didn’t deliver its anti-dad message loudly and clearly enough, here’s a daycare center in Birmingham (England) to do its part. Read about it here (Daily Mail, 8/7/12).

It seems that the Kids Go Wild center has declared itself off limits to men whether fathers or not. Just to make sure there aren’t any mistakes, it bans male children over the age of nine. Why? Well, according to the center’s manager, it’s located in a part of town with mostly Asian residents so….. what? Do Asian fathers not like their kids? Do their kids not like their fathers? Are Asian fathers uniquely dangerous? None of the above.

Quotes from the Daily Mail: "The manager of Kids Go Wild, who would not give her name, said: ‘It’s a predominantly Asian community here and we’re catering for that. ‘It’s not that men are an issue, ladies are more comfortable around women. Ladies have not questioned [the ban]. They’ve been asking for it.’ "

I come from the southern United States. I’m old enough to remember ‘colored’ restrooms and ‘colored’ entrances to restaurants. I’m also old enough to remember some of the patently insufficient excuses for those practices and one of those was, to paraphrase, “it’s not that blacks are an issue, whites are just more comfortable around other whites.” It was nonsense then and it’s nonsense now. It was a lame excuse for blatant discrimination then and it is now. It was done assuming certain negative characteristics to be true of members of a race of people then and it’s done now assuming certain negative characteristics to be true of members of one sex. Discrimination is discrimination. Period.

Now, someone might read the linked-to article and think “yes, it discriminates against men, but these are largely Muslim women and, in their cultures, men and women are often segregated, so why not in England?” Well, one reason is that it’s against the law. Public businesses are prohibited by law from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, religion, etc. But more importantly, the notion that the discrimination is based in Muslim culture is absurd. If it were really about that, would they also have banned 10 year old boys from Kids Go Wild? Do Muslim mothers pass off their boys to their fathers at age 10, never to see them again? Of course not. The ban bears a closer resemblance to those of domestic violence shelters that refuse to take boys over the age of 12, and of course their mothers too.

As to the “ladies” “asking for it,” I wonder who they are. The Daily Mail didn’t manage to find any......

(snip)

I recall an article linked to on Glenn Sacks site a few yrs back before he shut it down due to trolls that had an English paper article highlighting a new programs requireing fathers to submit to an indepth criminal background check and to be issued personal "I'm not a pedophile" ID cards to take their own kids to public parks

Lenona: I've got a rant in the Girl Scouts thread about groups who, while demanding access to the mainstream of society, also demand the privilge of maintaining their own excluding sub-culture. There's an awful lot of that around these days, such as the colleges that have integrated dorms, and then they have minority-group-X-only dorms. If you aren't in one of the favored minority groups, you have fewer legal rights and are by definition a second class citizen. Welcome to segregation, 21st Century style.

Couple more years and technically white people will be in the minority. I look forward to blaming the imperial actions of 18th century Spain for all the worlds problems