Why I was mistaken for a pedophile

last updated 8 January 2015

United Kingdom

Boris Johnson

There I was, said Boris Johnson in the London Daily Telegraph, about to take off on a long-haul flight to India. I was filled with dismay at the prospect of sitting next to two bickering children, so imagine my delight when the British Airways stewardess approached and said, "Please come with me, sir." Aha, an upgrade, I thought. But no. With a gentle cough the stewardess let me know that they had "very strict rules" about men sitting with children, as I was doing, and that she was moving me to Row 52. She was only deterred from carrying on with her plan when the children cried: "But he's our father!" In that absurd exchange, you can "see just everything you need to know about our dementedly phobic and risk-averse society." Why treat every adult male on a plane as a suspected molester? I mean, "how many pedophiles can there be?" And the damage done by presuming that the entire adult male population is comprised of pedophiles isn't confined to air travel. The hemorrhaging of male teachers from our schools—their number down 50 percent within 20 years—is at least in part due to the pernicious view that "all adult male contact with young people is potentially a bit dodgy."