So yesterday I got on a plane for the short trip (45 minutes or less) from Columbia, SC to Atlanta, and found a man sitting in my assigned aisle seat. When he saw me stop at that row he leapt to his feet and gallantly gestured toward the interior seat. “I think I have the aisle,” I said. “Wouldn’t you prefer the window?” he asked. I shook my head and he finally moved in. A few minutes later the man sitting behind us pulled the same move, this time successfully, on a young boy. When he realized that the boy’s parents were sitting nearby, he sheepishly volunteered to relinquish the aisle seat, but luckily for him the boy actually did seem to prefer the window.
I boarded a much larger plane in Atlanta, one that had three seats on either side of the aisle, and took my assigned aisle seat. I was the first one in the row, so I left my seatbelt off to expedite jumping up and letting others past. It was reputed to be a “full flight” and the airline had been looking for volunteers to give up their seats at the gate. It was also going to be a fairly long one. My attention wandered to some reading material as other passengers jostled for space in the overhead bins, when suddenly, I felt a hand apply a friendly grasp to my upper arm. A male face leaned over and the man wearing it said with calm authority, “You need to move in.”
“No, I don’t think I do,” I said, as I attempted to stand so that he could take his assigned seat which, big surprise, turned out to be the one in the middle. “It would be easier if you just shifted over,” he replied, blocking me from rising out of my seat. “Not going to happen,” I replied. He gave an enormous sigh, clearly disgusted with my appalling manners.
I always request an aisle seat, and because I am a “frequent flier” and I book early, I usually get one. I given them up for people with mobility impairments, or to reunite familes with children. I’ve also had them taken from me, appropriated by men who were backed by flight attendants who ordered me to find an empty seat elsewhere. So far, however, I have not been successfully bullied out of one by random passengers. I sure wish they would stop trying.
–Ann Bartow
for some reason this really, really makes me mad. i mean, you’re a grown woman. why would anyone treat you so disrespectfully or like you’re a child who will bow to their commands?
it’s like the men who yell at me when i don’t smile on command. i wonder why they’re so insulted – they’re the ones who verbally assaulted ME! and i’ve NEVER heard a man tell another man to “give me a smile” or that he’d “be so much prettier if he smiled”. it’s infuriating.
and i’ll bet no man ever expects another man to move from a seat that he wants. they feel totally free to take up as much space wherever and whenever they want and we’re just supposed to shrink or move out of the way to suit them. i’m sick of it.
i’m glad you didn’t give in! maybe they won’t be so quick to try it with the next woman. although, they probably will.
xoxo, jared
good for you Ann! I am curios about “appropriated”. so they had a pressing need or a very good reason? or just a well conected or good friend in a position of airline authority? unless it was a dire need, this too seems wrong!
I guess I look like someone who can be easily pushed around. Someday as a result, perhaps I will be sued for for false advertising!
On several occasions when I have told a man that he was in my seat, a flight attendant has immediately butted in and said, “here take this seat over here instead.” I don’t know why this happened, or what the backstories were. A couple of times other women passengers have offered empathetic eye-rolling or some other form of solidarity. Talk to any woman who travels alone a lot, she probably has enough stories for a book or two! I know I do.
Good for you! I agree, as a woman who has traveled alone frequently, these kinds of things happen all the time.
middle seats on aircraft are the absolute pits. it’s almost guaranteed that i’ll end up next to at least one guy who claims ownership of all the armrests and a couple inches of clearance past them. my level of comfort with strange guys in my personal space is very low. at least on the aisle, i can scootch in that direction and gain a few inches.
[i haven’t figured out a graceful way to say “back off” if the person isn’t actually touching me. “it gives me the willies when guys are in my space” probably sounds paranoid without context i’d rather not explain, such as that certain gropings of the past put me on high alert.]
airport concessions are lots of fun, too. there is a certain breed of guy who will step right in front of me as i wait my turn — they are usually big guys, and i can’t settle on whether they believe their mission is much more important, or if they manage to delude themselves that i don’t exist because i’m short and therefore below eye level.
the airline i usually fly doesn’t have assigned seats, just boarding groups. line-jumping entitled guys [it is almost always guys] are generally bumped to the back of the line by general uprising, since they are disrespecting not just one person, but everyone behind that person. democracy in action.
This is really interesting, and one anecdotal evidence that this is gender-specific behavior is that I’ve flown a fair amount and this has never happened to me.
Hi, CoolAunt here using a different handle because of issues with WordPress.
I’m so glad that you brought this up because I have a gripe that I hope you don’t mind me venting here.
Along the same lines of men being disrespectful enough to appropriate your seat on planes and to demand that MsJared smile, there are quite a few who feel I owe them an explanation of my posture. I have spinal stenosis in several vertebrae (spelling?) in my neck, most likely caused by being slammed head first into the windshield when I totalled a car at age 19. I didn’t become aware of the damage caused way back when until 20 years later when the muscles in my shoulders and back finally started screaming in protest of having to do my neck muscles’ job of carrying the weight of my big, fat head. By that time and still, the muscles in my shoulders and upper back are not only overdeveloped but also just plain out of whack, resulting in me unconsciously hunching my shoulders, throwing my neck forward and then tilting my head back to counter the weight of my big, fat head so that I don’t land face first on the floor.
As if I’m not already self conscious enough about my posture, I’ve been asked by probably half a dozen men – strangers to me, of course – if I’m cold. Wtf if I am? What do they care? Are they planning to give me their sweaters or jackets if I say that I am? I’ll just be walking along, minding my own business just as I was doing yesterday, pushing the cart of goods out of a local retail store, when a man walking toward the entrance and me asked me, “Are you cold?” To which I replied, “No.” Maybe a second or two later I had the unbearable urge to turn back over my shoulder and ask, “Are you stupid?” I hope it wasn’t too late for him to hear me but if it was, there will be another man asking me if I’m cold any time now and guess what he’s going to hear in response? Hehehe! :D
Incidentally, women have asked me that question before but not one of them have been strangers to me. We apparently have more common courtesy than to ask strangers intrusive questions. Or maybe, as I did when I asked a strange woman when her baby was due only to learn that she wasn’t pregnant!, all women learn the first time that we insult a stranger by being intrusive not to do that again. Some of us really don’t like to hurt others’ feelings. The rest are men.
My standard response to wildly inappropriate demands is to ask, with deep concern and compassion, “Are you mentally ill?”
They either recognize their bad behavior or they turn it up a notch and then I ask, “Do you need to take your medication?”
They usually notice their outrageousness. But maybe I can get away with it at 6ft+ and 200lbs+
I understand that your goal is to startle bad actors into recognizing what they are doing, but there might be better ways of doing this, that aren’t hurtful to the perfectly polite people standing neaby who struggle with (e.g.) depression.
I think the problem is a sense of sexist entitlement among some men who seem to think women are supposed to cater to them, defer to them and make their lives easier.
Ms. Bartow,
Your comment presumes that the person in question, i.e. me, does not struggle with depression, take medication for it, etc. Such a presumption is not warranted. Maybe that is why I feel comfortable throwing such questions around…
But in any case, I think that asking a jackass “Are you crazy?,” “Do you need some help?” is unlikely to hurt the feelings of someone nearby.
But maybe I’m a bit hard hearted.
Best wishes,
— SCAM