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Personally, I don't understand why the people in the first article, that this one is about, were upset that someone of another religion wanted to adhere to thei

Personally, I don't understand why the people in the first article, that this one is about, were upset that someone of another religion wanted to adhere to their faith. It seems fairly reasonable that, on air planes non-the-less, that you will encounter many cultures that seem strange to you. Why would that aggravate you?

mr_luc 11y ago
Possibly because it inconvenienced them: by delaying their flight, or by making them feel social anxiety if they were asked to move or moved away from. Or they may have felt sympathy with others inconvenienced, like the flight crew and passengers. It seems like a pretty natural, human thing to dislike being inconvenienced. I dislike it myself, in fact -- don't you?
- Cyph0n 11y ago
  But that's something you have to live with, especially when on an airplane. I don't see why someone would make a big deal out of that.
- gravypod 11y ago
  I've been on a few planes in my life and I can tell you that none of them departed on time. Delays are a thing that go hand and hand with operations as complex as aircraft control and maintenance.
tronje 11y ago
I haven't personally experienced something like this, but I can come up with a few reasons. 1) maybe I just don't want to switch seats. Maybe I'm already settled in, maybe I like the fact that it's a window/middle/isle seat, etc. 2) imagine someone refuses to sit next to you, stating the reason as "that person is ugly" or "that person's choice of wardrobe disturbs me". If that happened to me, I'd certainly be offended and might refuse to move out of principle (though personally, I'd rather the flight was on time than make a statement). Those reasons are different from "I can't sit next to a woman", but they also refer to superficial, and frankly, childish, things.
- gravypod 11y ago
  For point 1, that does not seem evident in these tweets. They seem to move the man and woman to different seats, not the bystander passenger. One even noted that their seat was left empty. For point 2, that may have been the case for some of these tweets but I don't think that holds true for all of them. Some of these people understood that this person came from a different culture. One even said "the chasidic Jew." [sic]
  - tyingq 11y ago
    Chasidic isn't commonly used, but it's not incorrect.
judah 11y ago
It really is a case of some being too easily offended. One woman was offended that a Hasidic Orthodox Jew would not sit by her, thinking it was hatred of women. In reality, the man is following his convictions to avoid touching women other than his wife.
- sib 11y ago
  In that case, then he should follow his convictions and move, not request that the woman be moved, which is what has happened in many of these situations.
  - goldbrick 11y ago
    Can you point to exactly what makes you think that's a particular sticking point?
    - DanBC 11y ago
      First example: > the man assigned to the adjoining window seat arrived and refused to sit down. He said his religion prevented him from sitting beside a woman who was not his wife. Irritated but eager to get underway, she eventually agreed to move. Second example: > She was in a middle seat — her husband had the aisle — when the man with the window seat in the same row asked if the couple would switch positions. Ms. Heywood, offended by the notion that her sex made her an unacceptable seatmate, refused. Third example: > “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,” Mr. Newberger added, using a Yiddish word for fool. The forth example is one where the man moves; the fifth example is ambiguous.
      - goldbrick 11y ago
        Well, you appear to have a point. I was thinking that since, you know, planes tend not to have a bunch of unused seats lying around, the situation may just have not reached that point, but that's definitely not true.
afandian 11y ago
People have different standards of behaviour according to their social background. I think the average American or European would be unhappy if someone said "I won't sit next to this person because they're black" for whatever reason, personal, religious etc. The same people consider gender discrimination to be approximately as bad as race discrimination. The Hisidic person in question has some kind of problem with women because of their own background.
- gravypod 11y ago
  Would it be fair to say that since I am from America that I should get upset at anyone who wears a hijab for their own religious purposes? Covering women is very anti-American, specifically being prominent in the most recent generations. Yet, as civilized people, we can come to the understanding that even though I don't support something doesn't mean that I have to tell others how to live their lives or expect them to live their lives in a way that makes me happy.
  - maemilius 11y ago
    I think the closer analogy would be being asked to wear a hijab to satisfy someone else's religious beliefs. I don't think that's the same as being asked not to be seated next to a woman because it's looked down upon in your religion, but I can understand how people might be offended by it. If anything, I think it's more likely that the annoyance was caused mostly by the delay itself rather than what was causing it.
  - hluska 11y ago
    Oddly, almost this exact issue was a major issue in the recent Canadian federal election. The Conservative government attempted to ban niqabs during citizenship ceremonies. They went so far as to appeal lower court rulings that doing so was against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They lost the election and the new Liberal government ended the attempt to ban the Niqab. Interestingly, as the Conservative government kept falling in the polls, they even said that they would consider banning Niqabs for public servants!! It sounds so bizarre that a sitting Canadian government would suggest such a thing, but the 2015 federal election was a first class, direct flight to bizarro world. This is the best article that I can find on this issue. It isn't great, but if I have more time later, I'll replace it with a better citation. http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com//news/canada/liberals-end-attempt-to-ban-niqabs-from-citizenship-ceremonies-started-by-harper-government http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpo... On a style note, I have no idea if the word niqab should be capitalized. My iPhone autocorrects it to be capitalized, but it doesn't look correct. Can anyone help?
kzrdude 11y ago
Treating adults equally regardless of gender is a part of what we expect of others we interact with. It's a pretty major clash with something that doesn't really fall under religion, but the even more general social values we use to form a society. If this person wants to avoid women, he should do what other reasonable people do to accomodate themselves: arrange for it in advance, without inconveniencing others. Telling people to their face that you can't sit next to them breaks most social rules.
DanBC 11y ago
You have the freedom to practice your religion. You don't have the freedom to interfere with a planeload of other people. > When passengers started to board, he said, an ultra-Orthodox man stood in the aisle, refusing to move and delaying the departure for 15 to 20 minutes until another passenger volunteered to switch seats. That's wasting 75 hours because he didn't make his needs clear before hand, or didn't take the option of paying for an extra seat.
- gohrt 11y ago
  To be fair, it's not really possible for someone to even attempt to arrange gender-separated seating in advance , even if plenty of other passengers are perfectly content to cooperate (perhaps even desirous! there are many cases where even non-religious women are more comfortable not sitting next to a man)
  - DanBC 11y ago
    I haven't heard multiple cases of women who don't want to sit next to men so strongly that they're prepared to delay an international flight in order to rearrange the seats.
  - svachalek 11y ago
    Sure there is, just buy the seat next to you. Or book a private flight. Or drive. There's all kinds of things I don't like about commodity-priced airline seats either, but that's the choice we all have; either buy what you actually want or take what you paid for.
kazinator 11y ago
It's okay for you to adhere to your faith. If you ask me to move my seat, you're asking me to adhere to your faith. I say let him stand; the airline should deal with it. Finding an acceptable seat for him is their problem. I don't have a booking issue with my seat. If the airline wants me to move, they should either pay me two hundred bucks, or move me to business class, or first. They have no qualms about charging for cancellations or last minute booking changes; why should the passenger accomodate their problem free of charge?
- chc 11y ago
  He's not really asking you to adhere to his faith. He's personally trying to adhere to his faith and he's asking you for a favor that will help him. Similarly, when somebody asks you the time, they are not attempting to turn you into a watch, they're just looking for some help from a fellow human being. I'm not saying someone is necessarily wrong to consider the request unreasonable, but I think it's unfair to accuse him of shoving his faith on other people.
  - kazinator 11y ago
    A fellow human being is someone who doesn't hate/fear women. "Low effort" is the wrong way of looking at this; the moral compromise in caving in to this request is immeasurable. Having sex with someone is also "low effort". That doesn't mean you are obliged to have sex with whoever asks.
    - chc 11y ago
      > A fellow human being is someone who doesn't hate/fear women. Listen to yourself. You are literally dehumanizing Hasidic Jews here. I don't agree with this guy's religion, but responding to insensitivity with outright bigotry is not making things better. I never said anyone is obligated to comply — I might not either in these people's shoes. But accusing him of forcing his religion on others or being subhuman or hating women or what-have-you is toxic to conversation and not helpful.
      - deleted 11y ago
forgetsusername 11y ago
>It seems fairly reasonable that I don't really find it "reasonable", whatsoever, that someone can't sit beside another human being on a plane because SupremeBeingX doesn't want them to. In fact, "reasonable" may be the exact opposite description of the situation.
- gohrt 11y ago
  s/SupremeBeingX/personal beliefs about gender relations/
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Personally, I don't understand why the people in the first article, that this one is about, were upset that someone of another religion wanted to adhere to their faith. As I see it, they weren't upset that "someone of another religion wanted to adhere to their faith", they were upset that someone of another religion wanted them to take action to adhere to a prohibition of that other person's religion. > It seems fairly reasonable that, on air planes non-the-less, that you will encounter many cultures that seem strange to you. Why would that aggravate you? There's a substantial difference between encountering another culture and being asked to conform to that culture's taboos.
natch 11y ago
I think in some of these cases the man wanted the woman to move from her original seat. In other cases, there was an unwanted delay to travel. In all cases, one must weigh the perceived harm (delay to 200+ passengers, versus harm to one passenger) against each other. Although to the man, the perceived harm to the man is high, to others, the perceived harm to the man is low. So any alarm over the situation can just be a matter of differing perceptions. Then there's the question of were the people in the article even upset, or is that just your assumption? I'm not sure all of them were. They certainly thought the situation was remarkable, and they did remark on it, on twitter. That doesn't mean that every one of them was upset. But for those that were, see the reasons above.
jlarocco 11y ago
> It seems fairly reasonable that, on air planes non-the-less, that you will encounter many cultures that seem strange to you. Why would that aggravate you? Isn't that what's going on? If a person can't sit next to another person because of their goofy religious beliefs, then it's their own responsibility. It's unreasonable to throw a tantrum and insist everybody else move around. They should expect that on an airplane they may encounter other people that may seem strange to them or make them uncomfortable.
omginternets 11y ago
>Why would that aggravate you? Because it's representative of how the hasidic sect generally regards women: second-class citizens.
mdip 11y ago
My approach to answering this comes down to a very simple phrase that explains my political beliefs succinctly "my rights begin where your rights end." I don't think anyone has any problem with people wanting to adhere to their faith. The problem they have is with people of faith demand that someone else, who is otherwise "following the rules" do something that inconveniences them because of beliefs they don't share and probably don't agree with. I've had vegan friends who choose not to eat meals with me because I am a meat enthusiast. I'm fine with that and with their life choices. But if we're dining together and they begin dictating to me what I can and cannot eat on the menu, you can expect that I'll be aggravated and won't comply. It's wrong to ask someone else to accommodate your faith for you, especially when them accommodating might just as well fly in the face of their own, personal, convictions. Now, if this person attempted to purchase a second seat next to them and had that seat filled by another passenger, then I can understand them asking if they could be moved elsewhere. But if they're refused, the only remaining choice is to politely get off the plane and wait for a flight that you can be accommodated on. It's not "standing in the aisle and holding up the flight for 15 minutes". That person's religious convictions just ended up aggravating every passenger of that flight.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

mr_luc 11y ago

Possibly because it inconvenienced them: by delaying their flight, or by making them feel social anxiety if they were asked to move or moved away from. Or they may have felt sympathy with others inconvenienced, like the flight crew and passengers. It seems like a pretty natural, human thing to dislike being inconvenienced. I dislike it myself, in fact -- don't you?

Cyph0n 11y ago
But that's something you have to live with, especially when on an airplane. I don't see why someone would make a big deal out of that.
gravypod 11y ago
I've been on a few planes in my life and I can tell you that none of them departed on time. Delays are a thing that go hand and hand with operations as complex as aircraft control and maintenance.

tronje 11y ago

I haven't personally experienced something like this, but I can come up with a few reasons. 1) maybe I just don't want to switch seats. Maybe I'm already settled in, maybe I like the fact that it's a window/middle/isle seat, etc. 2) imagine someone refuses to sit next to you, stating the reason as "that person is ugly" or "that person's choice of wardrobe disturbs me". If that happened to me, I'd certainly be offended and might refuse to move out of principle (though personally, I'd rather the flight was on time than make a statement). Those reasons are different from "I can't sit next to a woman", but they also refer to superficial, and frankly, childish, things.

gravypod 11y ago
For point 1, that does not seem evident in these tweets. They seem to move the man and woman to different seats, not the bystander passenger. One even noted that their seat was left empty. For point 2, that may have been the case for some of these tweets but I don't think that holds true for all of them. Some of these people understood that this person came from a different culture. One even said "the chasidic Jew." [sic]
- tyingq 11y ago
  Chasidic isn't commonly used, but it's not incorrect.

judah 11y ago

It really is a case of some being too easily offended. One woman was offended that a Hasidic Orthodox Jew would not sit by her, thinking it was hatred of women. In reality, the man is following his convictions to avoid touching women other than his wife.

sib 11y ago
In that case, then he should follow his convictions and move, not request that the woman be moved, which is what has happened in many of these situations.
- goldbrick 11y ago
  Can you point to exactly what makes you think that's a particular sticking point?
  - DanBC 11y ago
    First example: > the man assigned to the adjoining window seat arrived and refused to sit down. He said his religion prevented him from sitting beside a woman who was not his wife. Irritated but eager to get underway, she eventually agreed to move. Second example: > She was in a middle seat — her husband had the aisle — when the man with the window seat in the same row asked if the couple would switch positions. Ms. Heywood, offended by the notion that her sex made her an unacceptable seatmate, refused. Third example: > “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,” Mr. Newberger added, using a Yiddish word for fool. The forth example is one where the man moves; the fifth example is ambiguous.
    - goldbrick 11y ago
      Well, you appear to have a point. I was thinking that since, you know, planes tend not to have a bunch of unused seats lying around, the situation may just have not reached that point, but that's definitely not true.

afandian 11y ago

People have different standards of behaviour according to their social background. I think the average American or European would be unhappy if someone said "I won't sit next to this person because they're black" for whatever reason, personal, religious etc. The same people consider gender discrimination to be approximately as bad as race discrimination. The Hisidic person in question has some kind of problem with women because of their own background.

gravypod 11y ago
Would it be fair to say that since I am from America that I should get upset at anyone who wears a hijab for their own religious purposes? Covering women is very anti-American, specifically being prominent in the most recent generations. Yet, as civilized people, we can come to the understanding that even though I don't support something doesn't mean that I have to tell others how to live their lives or expect them to live their lives in a way that makes me happy.
- maemilius 11y ago
  I think the closer analogy would be being asked to wear a hijab to satisfy someone else's religious beliefs. I don't think that's the same as being asked not to be seated next to a woman because it's looked down upon in your religion, but I can understand how people might be offended by it. If anything, I think it's more likely that the annoyance was caused mostly by the delay itself rather than what was causing it.
- hluska 11y ago
  Oddly, almost this exact issue was a major issue in the recent Canadian federal election. The Conservative government attempted to ban niqabs during citizenship ceremonies. They went so far as to appeal lower court rulings that doing so was against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They lost the election and the new Liberal government ended the attempt to ban the Niqab. Interestingly, as the Conservative government kept falling in the polls, they even said that they would consider banning Niqabs for public servants!! It sounds so bizarre that a sitting Canadian government would suggest such a thing, but the 2015 federal election was a first class, direct flight to bizarro world. This is the best article that I can find on this issue. It isn't great, but if I have more time later, I'll replace it with a better citation. http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com//news/canada/liberals-end-attempt-to-ban-niqabs-from-citizenship-ceremonies-started-by-harper-government http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpo... On a style note, I have no idea if the word niqab should be capitalized. My iPhone autocorrects it to be capitalized, but it doesn't look correct. Can anyone help?

kzrdude 11y ago

Treating adults equally regardless of gender is a part of what we expect of others we interact with. It's a pretty major clash with something that doesn't really fall under religion, but the even more general social values we use to form a society. If this person wants to avoid women, he should do what other reasonable people do to accomodate themselves: arrange for it in advance, without inconveniencing others. Telling people to their face that you can't sit next to them breaks most social rules.

DanBC 11y ago

You have the freedom to practice your religion. You don't have the freedom to interfere with a planeload of other people. > When passengers started to board, he said, an ultra-Orthodox man stood in the aisle, refusing to move and delaying the departure for 15 to 20 minutes until another passenger volunteered to switch seats. That's wasting 75 hours because he didn't make his needs clear before hand, or didn't take the option of paying for an extra seat.

gohrt 11y ago
To be fair, it's not really possible for someone to even attempt to arrange gender-separated seating in advance , even if plenty of other passengers are perfectly content to cooperate (perhaps even desirous! there are many cases where even non-religious women are more comfortable not sitting next to a man)
- DanBC 11y ago
  I haven't heard multiple cases of women who don't want to sit next to men so strongly that they're prepared to delay an international flight in order to rearrange the seats.
- svachalek 11y ago
  Sure there is, just buy the seat next to you. Or book a private flight. Or drive. There's all kinds of things I don't like about commodity-priced airline seats either, but that's the choice we all have; either buy what you actually want or take what you paid for.

kazinator 11y ago

It's okay for you to adhere to your faith. If you ask me to move my seat, you're asking me to adhere to your faith. I say let him stand; the airline should deal with it. Finding an acceptable seat for him is their problem. I don't have a booking issue with my seat. If the airline wants me to move, they should either pay me two hundred bucks, or move me to business class, or first. They have no qualms about charging for cancellations or last minute booking changes; why should the passenger accomodate their problem free of charge?

chc 11y ago
He's not really asking you to adhere to his faith. He's personally trying to adhere to his faith and he's asking you for a favor that will help him. Similarly, when somebody asks you the time, they are not attempting to turn you into a watch, they're just looking for some help from a fellow human being. I'm not saying someone is necessarily wrong to consider the request unreasonable, but I think it's unfair to accuse him of shoving his faith on other people.
- kazinator 11y ago
  A fellow human being is someone who doesn't hate/fear women. "Low effort" is the wrong way of looking at this; the moral compromise in caving in to this request is immeasurable. Having sex with someone is also "low effort". That doesn't mean you are obliged to have sex with whoever asks.
  - chc 11y ago
    > A fellow human being is someone who doesn't hate/fear women. Listen to yourself. You are literally dehumanizing Hasidic Jews here. I don't agree with this guy's religion, but responding to insensitivity with outright bigotry is not making things better. I never said anyone is obligated to comply — I might not either in these people's shoes. But accusing him of forcing his religion on others or being subhuman or hating women or what-have-you is toxic to conversation and not helpful.
    - deleted 11y ago

forgetsusername 11y ago

>It seems fairly reasonable that I don't really find it "reasonable", whatsoever, that someone can't sit beside another human being on a plane because SupremeBeingX doesn't want them to. In fact, "reasonable" may be the exact opposite description of the situation.

gohrt 11y ago
s/SupremeBeingX/personal beliefs about gender relations/

dragonwriter 11y ago

> Personally, I don't understand why the people in the first article, that this one is about, were upset that someone of another religion wanted to adhere to their faith. As I see it, they weren't upset that "someone of another religion wanted to adhere to their faith", they were upset that someone of another religion wanted them to take action to adhere to a prohibition of that other person's religion. > It seems fairly reasonable that, on air planes non-the-less, that you will encounter many cultures that seem strange to you. Why would that aggravate you? There's a substantial difference between encountering another culture and being asked to conform to that culture's taboos.

natch 11y ago

I think in some of these cases the man wanted the woman to move from her original seat. In other cases, there was an unwanted delay to travel. In all cases, one must weigh the perceived harm (delay to 200+ passengers, versus harm to one passenger) against each other. Although to the man, the perceived harm to the man is high, to others, the perceived harm to the man is low. So any alarm over the situation can just be a matter of differing perceptions. Then there's the question of were the people in the article even upset, or is that just your assumption? I'm not sure all of them were. They certainly thought the situation was remarkable, and they did remark on it, on twitter. That doesn't mean that every one of them was upset. But for those that were, see the reasons above.

jlarocco 11y ago

> It seems fairly reasonable that, on air planes non-the-less, that you will encounter many cultures that seem strange to you. Why would that aggravate you? Isn't that what's going on? If a person can't sit next to another person because of their goofy religious beliefs, then it's their own responsibility. It's unreasonable to throw a tantrum and insist everybody else move around. They should expect that on an airplane they may encounter other people that may seem strange to them or make them uncomfortable.

omginternets 11y ago

>Why would that aggravate you? Because it's representative of how the hasidic sect generally regards women: second-class citizens.

mdip 11y ago

My approach to answering this comes down to a very simple phrase that explains my political beliefs succinctly "my rights begin where your rights end." I don't think anyone has any problem with people wanting to adhere to their faith. The problem they have is with people of faith demand that someone else, who is otherwise "following the rules" do something that inconveniences them because of beliefs they don't share and probably don't agree with. I've had vegan friends who choose not to eat meals with me because I am a meat enthusiast. I'm fine with that and with their life choices. But if we're dining together and they begin dictating to me what I can and cannot eat on the menu, you can expect that I'll be aggravated and won't comply. It's wrong to ask someone else to accommodate your faith for you, especially when them accommodating might just as well fly in the face of their own, personal, convictions. Now, if this person attempted to purchase a second seat next to them and had that seat filled by another passenger, then I can understand them asking if they could be moved elsewhere. But if they're refused, the only remaining choice is to politely get off the plane and wait for a flight that you can be accommodated on. It's not "standing in the aisle and holding up the flight for 15 minutes". That person's religious convictions just ended up aggravating every passenger of that flight.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]