Indian airline tests feature that lets women book seats away from men

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 485 points –
Indian airline tests feature that lets women book seats away from men
cbsnews.com

India's largest budget carrier, IndiGo, is the first airline to trial a feature that lets female passengers book seats next to other women to avoid sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a man in a move designed to make flying more comfortable for female passengers, according to a CNBC report.

The airline's booking process is fairly standard except for the seat map which highlights seats occupied by women with the color pink. This information is not visible to male passengers, according to the airline, CNBC reported. IndiGo did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment on the new feature.

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I think it’s terrible because the take treats women as things that defuse incels. Like sacrificing some women is worth it. Feel gross and dehumanizing.

I'm not ever saying women are dispensable tools in this fight (something you imply I said) or that we should "sacrifice" someone - the safety of every person is hugely valuable - I'm just saying that going separate is not gonna make things safer in the long run. There are other factors at play here that will show up, and we should not strive for knee-jerk solutions.

I doubt that separation alone is gonna help much, and I'd love to see comprehensive evidence for or against my take, if any exists. I want to see what is the best evidence-based solution that would actually improve safety of everyone.

If anything, I want to make sure as little women as possible are ever victims of such accidents, I'm just concerned over whether this is a best approach.

You just speak about women in a dehumanizing way that removes agency. It feel gross. Reminds me of doctors from the 90s that said we need studies to tell if inserting IUDs causes pain.

Thanks for pointing it out. I will see what I can do to correct it.

Is it something about the way I put it, like if I decide for women how it would be better for them?

Because my real position here, outlined clearly from my point of view but maybe not from someone else's, is that we should better study the consequences of that approach to make a more informed decision.

One could come from a strictly individualistic approach, to allow and empower people to act as they see fit, but the moment we set examples of things already resolved, people start thinking otherwise.

I'm gonna get another hate wave for this comparison, but this is just illustrative example, so hear me out first: should we allow white people to make separate white-only spaces on the same planes? We can absolutely try and justify it by the same "giving agency" argument, all while pointing out people of color do more crimes and can be, on average, more "dangerous".

All of which would be complete bullshit that omits any nuance that the very segregation puts people in conditions that promote such behavior and there is nothing about being black or hispanic or whatever in itself that promotes it. So we should absolutely fight back against any such idea.

Similar themes here, except the conditions here are less material (in fact, men even have somewhat of an advantage here) and more purely social. Externally isolated communities often promote dangerous behaviors, and to combat that, we should avoid forming such communities by not alienating them by the arbitrary category of gender in the first place. Otherwise, we are gonna see communities similar to incels grow and get more dangerous.

I just suppose that the risk of alienating men and them getting more violent may outweigh the immediate benefit of increased plane safety, eventually turning against women themselves. But to prove or disprove that point, I'd love to see more numbers. Before that, I do not welcome radical solutions that are not informed by a solid body of evidence, as they often carry questionable consequences.

This is actually reasonable. If you explained it this way in the first place maybe people would have stopped being pissy and taken you seriously. Before this comment your position seemed flimsy, but comparing it to racist practice made it make a lot more sense.

While I don't agree with the idea that isolating someone from women on a plane will make them rape someone else somewhere else, I think your point about alienation driving extreme views is very pertinent. The more you try to vilify a group the more that group will try and make it a self-fulfiling prophecy, or otherwise go against the people vilifying them.

Thanks - in any case, I'm happy I've got my point across to someone.

Correct on interpretation, and solid wording :)

I am going to ignore the weird race stuff. I don’t agree with it but don’t want to spend the energy.

I will speak about this:

I just suppose that the risk of alienating men and them getting more violent may outweigh the immediate benefit of increased plane safety, eventually turning against women themselves. But to prove or disprove that point, I'd love to see more numbers

This again dehumanizes women and removes agency.

You are saying that women are the tools that are used to prevent male violence. By treating women as a means to reduce violence without considering the women themselves as people you are dehumanizing and removing agency.

Women are people just as men are people. Women are not the tools to reduce male violence.

You also say giving women the choice to sit with women is radical. Women having the chose to protect themselves is not radical. It is a basis for a moral society.

You shouldn’t need studies to prove how effective or not using women as tools to reduce male violence is.

Women are not tools.

Women are not tools - and I never said that. Women, as all people, may have to sacrifice this short-term benefit for the long-term effect and actually lasting safe environment - that's my point. In a world where people radicalize and suggest knee-jerk solutions, I want to step back to see if evidence is there to back them up.

I say that sometimes people make irrational decisions that hurts the bottom line for themselves and others, and game theory means sometimes we have to all sacrifice something to maintain a better position than we could achieve individually - in this case, a world where we don't have to isolate ourselves to be safe and live in fear of someone.

If allowing women to "protect themselves" by letting them choose male-free spaces is gonna cause the rise in male violence, this will undermine the very purpose of this initiative. And since individually every woman is still better off separated, this will perpetuate even further, even if collectively women lose big time.

I'm concerned about this particular risk. Should it be about men instead of women, I'd be same kind of concerned. This is not meant to be misogynistic (or misandric for that matter). This is rather collectivist, choosing a solution that could bring people together and let them actually solve the problem that requires both ends to solve. And a suggested initiative only makes this goal father away, proliferating the general issue that causes the concern in the first place.

Separating people based on inherent traits is never the solution, which we somehow understand in any case but this one.

Until you see:

  1. Women are people
  2. People should not be used as a means to an end

I don’t think this discussion is worth having. I hope you are never used as a means to an end.

Until you see that by going for short-term solutions, we may end up causing way, way more harm and have more women sexually assaulted, I don't think this conversation is worth having, either.

I sincerely hope we will be able to direct our attention at treating the source of a problem instead of applying patches. And I absolutely hope you or anyone here won't ever be abused by others.

But for now, farewell.

I can't see them saying this at all. The only person treating people as not being people here is the way you treat men. If you discriminate against a group of people as is clearly happening here towards men, then of course that group is going to turn against you. You don't remove sexual assault by pretending men are the only perpetrators and never a victim. You don't remove sexism by adding discrimination against men.

Get ready, he's got another 5 paragraphs of petulance brewing.

Yah. Lol. I was trying to avoid all the sidelong tangential points but the guy just does not see that using women as pawns to prevent male violence is a bad thing.

You don't get it at all. Creating this kind of system for only one gender is discrimination. It's exactly the same kind of thing you see white supremacists doing because they only want to be sat next to other white people. It's this kind of behavior that drives men to sexism in the first place. How you don't see this after it's been explained to you is shocking. It's also hilarious that people only talk about men assaulting women and never about women assaulting women, women assaulting men, or men assaulting men. Not only does it not reflect the reality of sexual violence, it's also heteronormative and sexist. Pretending that only men have the power to be abusive, and that women are always the innocent part is sexist thinking.

I'm gonna get another hate wave for this comparison, but this is just illustrative example, so hear me out first: should we allow white people to make separate white-only spaces on the same planes? We can absolutely try and justify it by the same "giving agency" argument, all while pointing out people of color do more crimes and can be, on average, more "dangerous".

Big, "People will call me racist for this" energy. You knew what you were gonna say was gonna be racist and shitty, but you said it anyway...

Do you have a humiliation fetish or something? It's like you want the downvotes...

Not that I care of downvotes when I'm right.

Yet you don't seem to listen, instead going for labels and trying so so hard to make it personal in several threads at once.

I don't think this kind of conversation can remain productive.

Bruh they are making at least one good point here. Meanwhile you are trying to do a character assassination and make baseless accusations. Fucking stop it.