Airline fake rape crisis

Let's fight this anti-male propaganda.

In 2020, within days of the government announcement that I was to be honoured for my work for men, Victoria's Attorney-General Jill Hennessy called for me to be stripped of my award, arguing my "dangerous" views are an insult to abuse victims.

"Ms Arndt's views and activities diminish the devastating experiences of victim-survivors of family and sexual violence, promote division and discourage victim-survivors from taking steps to ensure their survival and safety," she told the ABC. Any number of government heavy-weights lined up to agree. 

They did their best to have me cancelled and succeeded in shutting me out of most mainstream media.

Now imagine what will happen if the government’s misinformation bill is passed. Labor’s Misinformation Bill - likely to be presented to parliament next session - puts the onus on social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook to avoid promoting “misinformation,” particularly that “result in harm or contribute to it.” That’s most of my work, according to my critics in the media and in the government.

Faced with the prospect of massive fines, social media companies are bound to err on the side of caution – by choosing to silence me totally. That could remove the few remaining opportunities I have to spread the word about what is happening to men.

The Misinformation Bill is an outrageous infringement of our civil liberties, putting our freedom of speech into the hands of a government-appointed entity. We all saw how that worked out during the Covid years. As I have pointed out many times, this concentration of power is bound to result in even more draconian laws and regulations adversely impacting on men - with feminists running so many of our institutions.  

We saw this with the eSafety Commissioner’s  claims that women are “almost always”  the major victims of online abuse; ignoring the risks to men and boys of sexual exploitation – read my blog here.   

So, this is an urgent call to all of you who support what I do. Please do your best to stop this bill getting through – by writing letters or, ideally, getting appointments to lobby the vital crossbenchers in the Senate who will determine the bill’s fate. The Libs have promised to vote against the bill (although they still say they will cook up their own version later).

Here’s a petition you can sign – but the personal approach is far more effective.

We can’t afford to let this one go through to the keeper. We have allowed so much to slip by which has created a poisonous culture for men and boys. We set young men up for rape charges by allowing school sexual consent courses to teach girls that drunk sex is sexual assault.  We allowed feminists to invent and criminalise coercive control as the latest weapon to lock up men. We let Labor get away with removing all protection of children’s rights to contact with their fathers in last year’s Family Law bill. The list goes on. 

Day after day our society becomes less tolerable for men and boys – and male suicide rates continue to climb. Right now, the government is seeking feedback on the latest National Suicide Prevention Strategy which, like all previous strategies, strenuously avoids properly addressing the fact that 6 of the 8 suicides each day are male, downplays the key issue of relationship breakup as one of the major triggers, and proposes strategies which will ensure most funding continues to go to women. It’s an utter disgrace. Please spend the time to examine it properly and send in your scathing critiques here. My blog will give you relevant background.  

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The nonsense taking hold in our airlines might seem trivial in comparison – just one more insult in the never-ending male bashing. But it is worth taking a look at what is happening here…..

Journalists are claiming a dramatic increase in sexual assaults on board aircrafts. Evil male hands creeping under blankets of sleeping women. Arms straying over armrests to nuzzle into a stranger’s breasts. Vulnerable women at the mercy of threatening predators.

Dig down into the alarmist reports and we discover that at the heart of the most recent news stories was an FBI report based on 96 cases of in-flight sexual assault allegations in 2023. That’s from over 800 million passengers on domestic flights! How’s that for a storm in a teacup?

No, no, no, they tell us. This is about keeping women safe! No matter how tiny the number of actual allegations, this is an issue of international importance. For years, journalists across the world have been lining up to make sure we get that message.   

There are real cases being reported – such as the 22-year-old woman who woke up during a flight after a deep sleep taking various medications to discover a fellow passenger groping her body. His DNA was found by the FBI inside her underwear, and he was charged with sexual assault.  Of course, it’s essential that measures are in place for reporting such crimes and protecting women.

That makes sense but, as always, there’s no sense of proportion. Instead, we find the whole issue being blown up into a major crisis, with women demanding special treatment to protect them while travelling. Look at this nonsense from New Zealand columnist Kate Whitehead urging airlines to introduce women-only rows, after flying ‘cattle class’ and facing the horror of male elbows protruding into her space:

“Unless you are prepared to press your arm against the man’s — which will allow you to feel the rise and fall of his breath and is, I feel, too intimate a connection with a stranger — then you have lost two inches of your seat.

“I hope that in the wake of the #MeToo movement, people will come to realise that the airline armrest is a gender political issue. The first airline to establish ‘pink rows’ will have my custom.”

And the response to this type of hogwash and scaremongering about sexual assault? The airlines haven’t just set up “pink rows”. They are offering women the choice of seating – so that they can avoid sitting next to men.

A few months ago, Indian low-cost carrier IndiGo became the first airline to allow women travellers to choose a seat next to another woman.  Starting from August 2024, a trial has been taking place allowing female travellers checking in online to be able to see which adjacent seats have been booked by other female passengers – and make their seat choices accordingly.

The low-cost carrier is a codeshare partner of Qantas, and Australian passengers travel on-board its planes for destinations such as India, as well as within the country. Singapore Airline’s Indian subsidiary, Vistara, is similarly allowing women but not men to avoid middle seats. What’s the bet we will see more airlines following suit with this blatantly anti-male practice?

All this follows many years of airlines imposing other discriminatory policies against men, by prohibiting them from sitting next to minors on flights.  

Boris Johnson, back in 2006, wrote a funny piece about flying in steerage and being approached by a British Airways flight attendant. “Please come with me, sir,” she commanded. Johnson was delighted, assuming he’d been upgraded. “In my mind's eye, I saw the first-class cabin, the spiral staircase to the head massage, the Champagne, the hot towels.”

But no. She was proposing to move him back to row 52, because “We have very strict rules.” He was baffled. She explained: “A man cannot sit with children.”

“But he’s our FATHER,” chimed the children. The matter was ultimately sorted out when the truth dawned that Johnson was travelling with his own children. “Very sorry,” said the flight attendant. At that time this future Prime Minister was happy to rant about the injustice of it all:

“In that single lunatic exchange you will see just about everything you need to know about our dementedly phobic and risk-averse society…I mean, come off it, folks. How many paedophiles can there be? Are we really saying that any time an adult male finds himself sitting next to someone under 16, he must expect to be hustled from his seat before the suspicious eyes of the entire cabin?”

He eagerly listed various villains: “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.”

Yet here was a man who, when acquiring the reins of power, did absolutely nothing to protect the rights of men. Speaking at a G7 summit during the Covid years he proposed countries must “build back better and fairer,” which he described as “a more gender neutral and perhaps a more feminine way."  He lobbied for better global education of marginal children – in programs which targeted only girls. And even after a UK inquiry exposed prosecutors withholding key evidence in rape trials, Johnson grovelled to the feminist lobby which had created this mess, promising to push more rape cases into court - as William Collins explains in his new book, The Destructionists.

Let’s face it, men in power invariably avert their eyes to the gross distortions occurring in our anti-male society, desperate to avoid being accused by the feminist mob of having a “women problem.”

Here in Australia, we have just seen David Crisafulli, the Queensland Opposition leader who seems set for a huge win in the upcoming State election, promising to step down if he isn’t successful in bringing down crime numbers. Does this dodo not realise that the Queensland government is about to roll out their absurd coercive control laws, which will inevitably send domestic violence crime rates through the roof? Talk about an own goal.  

There’s no magic wand. The only way we are going to change this poisonous culture is by all of us who care about men and boys getting active and fighting against it.. Don’t write to me and say, “You should do this or that.”  You need to take a stand.

Women reading this who are offered a choice of seats in flights must not only refuse this option but write to the airline saying how offensive it is to treat men in this way. We also need more men running anti-discrimination cases against the airlines - hedge fund manager Mirko Fischer sued British Airlines in 2020 and succeeded in getting them to change their policies. Unaccompanied children are now seated in a separate section.  

Media stories exposing how degrading it is to ask men to move in this circumstance can also put pressure on airlines – as shown in this story about a firefighter humiliated on a Virgin flight which apparently caused Virgin to review their policy.

And we need to expose the fact that the absurd exaggeration of the risks of  in-flight sexual assault inevitably encourages false allegations – as shown with the false accusations made against NFL player Brandon McManus, with two flight attendants seeking $1 million in damages, claiming McManus rubbed himself against them during a September 2023 flight. The case, which McManus’ lawyer described as an “extortion attempt”, was dismissed last month by a Florida court.

Yes, it is simply one more battle ground. But if we really want to address discrimination against men it is a good place to start. It rests on such flimsy foundations that we’d have a huge cheer squad, of men and women, if we decided to take it on.