Grumpy Traveller: Plane politics

I’m not hugely proud of this, but while I am theoretically inclined to take the side of The Subjugated Pakistani Woman, I’ve come to learn that this is a different thing from actually having one at my side. What I specifically object to is the now customary routine of being requested shortly after boarding to swap places because of them. It is the reasoning that kills me; I am to trade seats with a male passenger so that a woman can sit, as is appropriate, next to another woman. A decade ago this happened from time to time, and the stewardess would apologetically inform me that a particular woman wasn’t comfortable sitting next to a man. In the past few years, it’s become more of a given, “She wants to move because she’s, you know, a lady.” Suggesting that a woman sit next to an unfamiliar man for an hour and a half on an airplane is a vulgar Western imposition upon our sacred traditions, but apparently air travel itself is not, which is why none of the women to whom I’ve suggested travel by camel as an appropriate alternative have been amused.