The two ages of the male
08 December 2005
By LINLEY BONIFACE
Many years ago, I spent three hours sitting on a plane next to a red-haired, green-eyed, freckle-faced, profoundly kickable boy who informed me shortly after takeoff that he was famous in New Zealand for appearing in a TV ad for meat. He then sang me the jingle.
I recognised it and continued to every one of the several thousand times he sang it between Wellington and Sydney. I was vegetarian for the next decade.
It was this boy I thought of when it was revealed Air New Zealand and Qantas had decided that only female passengers would be lumbered with the chore of sitting next to unaccompanied children. Men would be spared from having to share airspace with noxious whippersnappers like the meat boy.
If women have to put up with children travelling by themselves, surely it's only right that men be officially allocated their fair share of potentially annoying seatmates: passengers who attempt to show you their holiday photos or nervous fliers who spend the entire flight hyperventilating at the thought of being crushed by falling luggage.
It seems surprising that Air New Zealand and Qantas have no qualms about accusing half their client base of potential paedophilia. Men, it appears, are such filthy, immoral, perverted beasts that even those who appear relatively decent on the surface cannot be trusted to withstand the temptation of being seated next to young flesh.
Almost as surprising is the news that paedophiles, who we're always being told are exceptionally cunning and devious, would feel comfortable abusing children in an environment teeming with onlookers. In economy class, at least, you can hardly help yourself to a beer nut without elbowing a couple of other passengers in the face.
It's interesting that the two airlines haven't attempted to justify their extraordinary ruling by citing a long list of cases in which men were convicted of abusing unaccompanied children on flights –- indeed, they haven't bothered attempting to justify it at all.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAir New Zealand's part in all this is particularly baffling. In my experience, which consists of several wrist-slashingly awful long-haul flights with my children, Air New Zealand couldn't give a flying Fokker about the welfare of kids. Which leads me to think that this bizarre edict is a product not of the airline's concern for the safety of its youngest passengers, but its fear of lawsuits.
The two airlines aren't alone in regarding all men as predators and all children as prey. The biggest threats to the children of most of us are road accidents, drownings, burns and poisonings, yet child abusers cast an unnaturally large shadow.
Perhaps it's the newspaper photos that do it: all those well-groomed middle-aged pakeha men leaving the courtroom in their shirt and tie after being accused of raping their daughters. Drug dealers look like drug dealers; gang hit men look like gang hit men; child abusers look like the rest of us.
A friend in her late 50s counsels the adult survivors of child sexual abuse but says that when she was raising her own kids, she didn't even know there was such a thing as child sexual abuse. In the space of three decades, we've gone from assuming all adults are the natural protectors of children to accepting that some of them will betray that trust in the most unspeakable manner.
Most of my male friends are far better fathers than their own fathers were, yet few would feel comfortable left alone in a room with a child who was not their own. The obvious person to point this out would have been Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, who presumably has an interest in encouraging men to have good relationships with the children in their lives.
Instead, she has commended Air New Zealand and Qantas for putting thought into their policies and for endeavouring to keep children safe.
My son is four. I'd like to ask Dr Kiro at what age she'll stop regarding him as a potential victim of sexual abuse, and start regarding him as a potential abuser. Because, apparently, those are the only two options left for men.
Linley Boniface is a Wellington-based freelance writer.
