Kids and men on planes.

[oldrider]

It's not the kids they want to protect, the airlines are just worried they'll be sued by the parent of some kid who claims to have been 'molested'' by another passenger imho.

Of course sitting next to or near the flight attendant would make her/him safe. :slap: Why didn't I think of that!
How do they qualify for an exemption? Can I get one? Cheers John.

[froggyfrenchman]

What exactly were you doing at the playground MDU?

Sitting on a park bench. Eyeing little girls with bad intent.

Snot running down his nose, greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.


Not a personal attack on MDU!

[froggyfrenchman]

What about the women leaders of the scouts (if there are any) or the women leaders of the Guides? Would they be ok to do it? (Not a loaded q - genuinely interested)

They are alot moe free in what they can do, not by the rules, but by how parents and kids react to woman rather than men that choose to spend a few hours of their spare time every week helping kids learn and enjoy the bush etc, things their own parents wont do with them

[Wolf]

My email to Cindy Kiro.

Have yet to write the ones to Air New Zealand and Quantas.

email:

Ms Kiro

As the father of two wonderful young boys and soon to be the father of a young daughter, I would like to express my extreme displeasure at your commendation of both Air New Zealand and Quantas for their sexist policy vis a vis the moving of men from seats near unaccompanied children.

In supporting their actions you are conveying the message that all men are violent paedophiles.

To claim, as you have, that the policy is not discriminatory is to completely misunderstand the term "discrimination".

If I went up to a random stranger in the street and called him a child molester, I would expect that he would be mortally offended and I would not be surprised if he pressed defamation charges against me.

If I went up to a female stranger and informed her she could not be somewhere or do something because she was female I would expect both her anger and swift retribution under the Human Rights Act.

The policies you have commended are in no significant way different from those scenarios.

Approaching a stranger on a plane, solely because he is male, and telling him he must vacate his seat lest he molest a child in a crowded airplane is discriminatory, defamatory and downright insulting.

New Zealand law is supposed to incorporate the Human Rights Act, which it would appear you have never read. That Act prohibits any discrimination against *anyone* on the grounds of sex (amongst other things) - it does not just apply to women being refused jobs.

Judicial process is based on an assumption of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty", which you also seem not to have heard of. That premise means that even if specific charges of paedophilia are levelled against a man, the evidence for that case must be individually examined and the jury must decide *beyond REASONABLE doubt*, that the alleged offences occured.

The policies that you have commended presume that all men are likely, given close proximity to a young child in a crowded aircraft, to sexually molest that child. That presumption is a clear breach of both the central premise of our judicial system and the Human Rights Act.

I feel that the Human Rights Act has been seriously undermined as no lesser personage than the Children's Commissioner has effectively said "It's OK, it's not really discrimination so long as you only do it to men."

I am, as I said, the father of two, soon to be three, children - none of whom I would wish to have harmed and none of whom I sexually abuse. I have no past history of sexual abuse. I have never been alleged to have sexually abused a child.

Were I on a plane and asked to move because an unaccompanied child was to occupy the adjoining seat, I would feel highy insulted in a very personal way.

And thanks to your commendation of those sexist policies, I would have a difficult time seeking redress against the company that chose to discriminate against me based on the fact of my sex.

In extreme displeasure,

[DATA EXCISED]

[Indiana_Jones]

PC bollocks gets up my nose, half the people my age fucking go along with half of it, it's f*cking crazy.

oh oh remember there's no Christ in Christmas, some Mulism or Hindu might feel left out...awww... I'm sorry

-Indy

[Wolf]

As I said before - get the kiddie fiddlers and lock 'em up, chop bits off or do what's needed to keep our kids safe, no matter where they are.

Damn straight! If they want kids safe on planes and playgrounds or walking home from school (the latter two being far more risky than the first):

Don't let the kid-fuckers out of jail! EVER!

Then the rest of us, who don't molest kids, won't have to worry about sexist airline staff and sexist policies.

[James Deuce]

.. of statistics.

My wife has worked in Paediatrics in the Hutt for 20 years. The greater percentage of child abuse statistics that reach hospital can be attributed to mothers. Not all abuse is sexual in nature. The greatest number of false accusations are raised against men, often by the female perpetrator of the abuse. Men are responsible for a greater percentage of violent child abuse, but not all violent child abusers are men. Neither are all paedophiles male.

Paedophilia and the potential for a relative to be a victim has been sensationalised beyond what could be called reasonable levels of caution.

[Wolf]

The same middle-aged white male who today is insulted by being asked to move may tomorrow be a concerned father sending his child off unaccompanied. If the airline staff were to ask him whether he is happy for his child to sit next to a strange man, or whether he would prefer them to make "more appropriate" seating arrangements, what do you think his answer would be?

My though would be that in an environment like an airplane there would be little scope for someone to molest a child. Personally, I would be more concerned with the prospect of my children playing unsupervised at a park or walking home from school alone than travelling on public transport.

I would never think that randomly deeming a stranger "unsafe", purely based on his/her sex, more appropriate. Suspicious behaviour, OTOH, fair enough.

[ducatilover]

very good email wof

[kerryg]

The outrage being expressed on this thread is understandable because (I feel safe in assuming) none of the posters are paedophiles, and they take offence at a policy which tars everyone with the same tainted brush. Fair enough, I'm with you on that. But there ARE paedophiles about (who are these three people who buy all the child pornography....??) and to feed their creepy appetites they blend in, appear inconspicuous, are good at befriending kids. They look like most of us, I'd guess. Doesn't mean we should be made to feel like criminals though. The airline who asked the guy to move to another seat was pretty cack-handed in its handling of the situation if you ask me . It need not have arisen, and no-one would have been any the wiser, if the seats were allocated properly. So, where's the harm?

[ManDownUnder]

The outrage being expressed on this thread is understandable because (I feel safe in assuming) none of the posters are paedophiles, and they take offence at a policy which tars everyone with the same tainted brush. Fair enough, I'm with you on that. But there ARE paedophiles about (who are these three people who buy all the child pornography....??) and to feed their creepy appetites they blend in, appear inconspicuous, are good at befriending kids. They look like most of us, I'd guess. Doesn't mean we should be made to feel like criminals though. The airline who asked the guy to move to another seat was pretty cack-handed in its handling of the situation if you ask me . It need not have arisen, and no-one would have been any the wiser, if the seats were allocated properly. So, where's the harm?

Agreed - but the harm is with the assumption behind the policy.

Air NZ and Qantas have decided that men shouldn't sit next to kids if there is another option.

I'd love to hear a good reason why...

[Wolf]

Here's the last paragraph from today's editorial on the Herald:

"All in all, the 2 airlines have what amounts to a reasonable risk management strategy-as grating and unfair as it is to men. This recognises the devious, well organised or opportunistic nature of abuse. It also provides the maximum protection for children. There will be no complaint from the parents who trust their sons and daughters to the care of those airlines."

I find that reasoning pretty hard to fault in all honesty

I don't. As a parent, I would find that assuming that women are "safe" (despite the number of women who have physically, emotionally and sexually abused children) and that men are "dangerous" sends the kind of message I would not thank any organisation to drum into my children. I want my kids to grow up with a balanced viewpoint and the ability to assess situations on a case-by-case basis, not live their lives following someone else's prejudices.

I would not send my children by either airline as they have proven, by their actions (no assumptions on my part) to be sexist and are conveying messages that are contrary to the tenets of respect for fellow people - tenets on which our "innocent until proven guilty" and the Human Rights Act are based.

I ask this: would you send your child to an organisation that teaches "all white people are superior, fear/hate the nigger" or one that says "don't let the woman do it, they're not fit for anything but cooking and bearing children"? (Serious replies only!)

Why should I use the services of an organisation that blatantly discriminates against any sex and delivers messages to young children that one sex is good, the other is evil? Fuck that! Especially if they were children in shared custody flying between parents as has been suggested a s likely scenario. Gee, what a great message to impart on a kid with separated parents: "Not safe to be alone with men or they'll rape you" - as if the kid is not going to have enough issues with "why did daddy leave, doesn't he love me?" and all the anger than can go with that. "Hey, let's give the little tyke a "healthy" dose of sexual discrimination and paranoia." For a follow-up they could kill the little bugger's dog and then inject the child with HIV.

Suuuuurrre, they're helping the kids - every kid needs to feel alienated from a large chunk of society. People aren't fit for society unless their mind has been totally warped into the latest fashionable bigotry - once it was "Niggers are sub-human", now it's "all men are kiddy-fuckers".

Fuck I hate "society" as an entity. Burn down all the cities and go back to tribal living with autonomous chieftains - sure, people died in intertribal wars but at least within the individual tribes there was a community spirit that seems to have died somewhere along the Road to Nationalism.

[kerryg]

Agreed - but the harm is with the assumption behind the policy.

Air NZ and Qantas have decided that men shouldn't sit next to kids if there is another option.

I'd love to hear a good reason why...

The assumption that men are far more likely to molest a child than women? That assumption?

[ManDownUnder]

The assumption that men are far more likely to molest a child than women? That assumption?

The assumption that the threat is imminent enough to warrant the relocation of the man - yes. Or to rephrase, the assumption a child is better off not in the company of a man, but rather with a woman.

If you're looking at it from a statistical perspective, consider sitting kids next to a white person instead of a black person due to the relative rates of imprisonment for violent offending. It's a nonsense. The statistics say the rates are far higher and yet it's PC bullshit to base everyday policy on it.

[Karma]

Would you rather sit next to Don Brash, or Helen Clark... hard choice.

It's all about scaremongering. Some focus group says men are dangerous based on no particualar facts, then the law swings against us.

I swear it's the feminist movement... they got their equal rights, and now they're rolling right over ours. Men are evil!