This is the title of Francesca Rivafinoli's article on the vasarnap.hu portal, which you can read in its entirety below.

There was some uproar this week at the news that Lufthansa Group flights no longer have ``ladies and gentlemen'' but instead ``our dear passengers'' or other similar, for example gender-neutral addresses are used - although what actually happened is that the German company has now fallen on its knees there , where its competitors were years ago. The Canadian airline, for example, has been using the charmingly respectful "Hello, everyone!" for some time. uses address; brain trouble therefore massively permeates the entire developed world.

At the same time, Lufthansa's innovation certainly raises some questions. In Germany, since the end of 2018, anyone can go to the office and request that their gender be registered as "neither male nor female" for themselves or their children. In the first two years, a total of 413 requests in this direction were received , let's round this up very generously to five hundred, since a few months have passed since the last statistics. Even so, we have to assume that

Only 0.0006 percent of Germany's population of 83 million is non-binary.

(I know, I know, in fact many more people are, they just didn't ask for the official transcription. However, this is their individual decision: in a 2018 European survey , out of 1,040 actually intersex respondents, only twelve declared that they did not classify themselves as either gender, everyone else he put the box in the "man" or "woman" square. Voluntarily, because he felt that was his gender.)

So 0.0006 percent. Let's take the most typical plane of the Lufthansa fleet, the Airbus A320-200, which can accommodate up to 168 passengers: statistically, we can thus guess 0.001 non-binary passengers on board per flight (double that in the case of the largest Boeing).

The problem is that with similar frequency there may also be a passenger who does not identify with the role of "passenger". He simply has no passenger identity. For example, he is terrified of flying and suggests to himself that he is actually sitting on the couch at home; or simply transgender and feeling like a crane (or perhaps a Arctic Tern). Let's not deny anyone the possibility of this, because identity is identity. It is now easy to see that they can feel left out when the otherwise neutral words "our dear passengers" come from the mouths of the flight attendants. It's not good at all - there's something wrong with being nice. Perhaps the best solution would be to say "Hello, everyone", only the sane conservatives, who make up half of the passengers, would have a stroke, that's enough.

But if it were flight and non-discrimination, there would be a literally more massive problem here.

If I may come forward, I myself would be a member of the SVTABMI+ community (Skinny, Thin Body, People Living with Low BMI), and something bothers me too: many airlines charge thin people for the kilos that their larger passengers can take on board for free. If I weigh 48 kilos and want to check in a 20 kilo suitcase (thereby loading the plane with a total of 68 kilos, i.e. still below the average body weight), I have to pay up to HUF 12,000 more than a 98 kilo person who weighs 10 kilos travels with checked baggage (and thus increases kerosene consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by a total of 108 kg).

Since American Airlines previously achieved savings of $40,000 per year by putting one less olive in the salads served on board for weight reduction purposes, it is easy to see that the primary purpose of baggage fees is to reduce and control the total weight - but a SVTABMI+ passenger fulfills this wish he already fulfills it, so it is unfair that he is also harassed for his package. If there were a total weight specified by gender, which the passenger can take with him free of charge, either in the form of body fat or in the form of a suitcase, this discriminatory practice would cease. In addition, the measure could even be favorable from a public health point of view, since every regular passenger prone to gaining weight would become interested in a health-conscious lifestyle.

Which would directly lead to a decrease in the carbon dioxide emissions of the plane, i.e. under a puff of smoke we would also put a smile on the face of the poor forgotten Greta Thunberg.

But, of course, the suggestion in this form is absurd: it would be a sick degree of prosperity and a misunderstanding of proportion, if the practices of the airlines were to be reorganized and the skinny and the overweight. The only thing that would be more perverse than this would be if this fictional SVTABMI+ community not only lobbied large companies, but also went to schools and advertised among children with body image disorders why there is nothing wrong with losing weight well. Fortunately, this does not happen.

Featured image source: Pixabay