Do you want your airline encouraging strangers to use their inflight “entertainment” system to send their fellow passengers unsolicited gifts of drinks or food (with all the accompanying expectations) in a metal cage high in the air from which there is no way out?
Of course you don’t, because you’re not a perennial adolescent who doesn’t care whether your most-likely-younger, relatively lower-status passengers (who don’t fly so often) are likely to be made more uncomfortable and apprehensive by your most-likely-older, higher-status passengers (who fly all the time) using this “feature” as a licence to creep.
Content note: smarmy Richard Branson convinced his hyperbole is functioning as self-deprecating charm
h/t PZ at Pharyngula
Categories: ethics & philosophy, gender & feminism
QOTD for IWD: Aung San Suu Kyi 
This my axiom, by me, which is mine 
Grabbing somebody is Assault, and sexual touch makes it Sexual Assault. Stop minimising this. #rapeculture101 
Podcast: “Decommodifying Feminism” Panel at #FWF16 
Hoyden About Town 
This is kind of like Elevatorgate writ large, isn’t it? “Hey people, maybe when someone is literally trapped in a small metal tube with you for the next 12 hours you might consider not engaging in uninvited pressure to interact, k?”
‘Sir Richard Branson’s Guide to Getting Lucky.’ Yuck.
Damn it! I actually enjoyed Virgin’s “bottomless plane” April Fool’s (even with the very-much-momentary vertigo it triggered) but this is just not right. You briefly rose in my estimation, Branson! Now this?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100606150
Branson is such a giant creep.
I cannot imagine how this seat-to-seat thing isn’t going to turn very badly, very quickly, and not end up with someone hurt.
One wonders if this system will be governed by an anti harrassment policy?
Gross. I wouldn’t fly Virgin anyway, but this is just one more reason.
I presume this has actually always been an option in some ways (if I was to eg buy a sandwich for my older child who is sitting in a different row). The only thing new about this is the spin they are putting on it. Which is not a nice spin really.
I’m sure one has always been able to buy food/drink for another passenger from the stewarding staff. The point about this innovation is that it’s all done digitally via the “entertainment” console each passenger has, so that not only is an order placed with the stewards, but there is also a message sent to the other person’s entertainment console. I bet they don’t have a “block this seat number” feature either.
As someone with food sensitivities that are annoyingly broad, I also worry that something like this may be used to aggressively push something that I shouldn’t consume on me. There’s usually one thing on the in-flight menu that I can eat with no repercussions; the juice usually has too much sugar, unless I cut it with water.
Ack, that is worse. You don’t even have to work up the courage to pass your skeevy message via the steward.