Erin Anderssen: Religious beliefs do not make it okay to shame and inconvenience other travellers
2015/04/11 1 Comment
A reminder that fundamentalism and extremism is not unique to any one religion:
According to The New York Times, there has been an increasing number of cases of Orthodox Jewish men refusing to sit next women during flights, and solving the problem by standing in the aisle until a flight attendant asks the woman to move (to the back of the plane, perhaps?) or finds them a more acceptable spot. For ultra-conservative Orthodox Jewish men, making physical contact with a woman other than their wife is prohibited. Their concern is realistic, given how cramped airline seating is these days.
Switching seats is arguably a minor inconvenience in the big picture, but this is only the latest angle on a recurring debate – how far do we go, both personally and as a society, to accommodate religious freedom in public spaces? Let’s say a fundamentalist Christian got on a plane and refused to sit next to an LGBT couple on their honeymoon – would this be okay? The airlines, on the perpetual hunt for more coin, could always offer passengers a “suitable seatmate surcharge” – choose the sex, gender, weight and race of your preference.
In the New York Times piece, one female passenger agreed to move – just to get the flight going when the man wouldn’t take the window seat beside her. In another example, a man delayed a flight for 15 to 20 minutes because he refused to accept the spot he’d been assigned. The situation has become so common, the Israel Religious Action Center has started a campaign urging women not to give up their seats. Anat Hoffman, the group’s executive director told The New York Times, “I have 100 stories.”
After observing an incident on a flight between New York and Israel, documentary filmmaker Jeremy Newberger told the Times, “I grew up conservative, and I’m sympathetic to Orthodox Jews. But this Hasid came on, looking very uncomfortable, and wouldn’t even talk to the woman, and there was five to eight minutes of ‘What’s going to happen?’ before the woman acquiesced and said, ‘I’ll move.’ It felt like he was being a yutz.”
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
I’m a passionate feminist and I’m equally passionate about religious accommodation. But an acceptable accommodation would have been HIM moving. Not the woman having to move.