Tea at Trianon: Sexual Misconduct in the Skies

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Sexual Misconduct in the Skies

You may not want to fly ever again after reading this. From End Sexual Exploitation:

My fellow crew members, whether in my crash pad, in the crew rooms, or on my flights, did not know what to do in these situations any more than I did. In fact, just last month I spoke with the Director of Inflight Training at my old airline and was sad to learn from her that there is still no written curriculum for preparing trainees and recurrent students on how to address these problems.

According to recent stories, it seems that this issue is not only occurring at the airline for whom I worked but rather it is an industry-wide problem. In May of this year (2018), a woman aboard a Southwest Airlines flight was witness to the man seated next to her masturbating while watching pornography on his iPad. When she reached out to Southwest via Twitter, she was offered a lame apology and a meal voucher. A similar incident happened in June on a United Airlines flight. A woman saw a man masturbating, but this time alerted the flight crew directly. In response to the woman’s concerns, the crew joked about the man’s actions but did nothing to stop him. All they did was allow the offended passenger to move seats. Both cases show a lack of proper crew/employee training on dealing with the issues at hand.

As a former flight attendant, a woman, and a lover of air travel, I implore the airlines, from the smallest regionals to the giants like Southwest and United, to start educating their employees on how to properly and effectively deal with such inappropriate passenger behaviors as these. An educated crew is an empowered crew, and an empowered crew is much more able to handle difficult circumstances when they present themselves. (Read more.)