It is wrong to assume that it was a man. Second, yes, in the vast majority of cases, it is a voluntary action that should be frowned upon when performed in public. At least that is the case for me and the people I am familiar with and respect. In the comfort of their own homes or the middle of the vast prairie, they can pass gas on their companions or poor herbaceous plants as much as they want.

I didn't expect such a strenuous defense of people who fart like cows on an airplane and make other people's lives significantly worse.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Flatulence is as much voluntary as sneezing, sure you can try to hold it in but 1) it's not always possible and 2) it might actually be bad for you.

And for some people it can just start happening out of the blue in the wrong moment.

I'm sorry, but it seems like you're talking to a bot, some kind of artificial intelligence entity, or an alien who has never experienced the sensation of having gas in their stomach.

After this attempt at gaslighting (how dare you complain about someone who farts every 15 minutes, out of the blue, during a 6-hour flight, spreading a nauseating smell throughout the plane and making the flying experience miserable for dozens, if not hundreds, of other passengers), I wonder if the times I held back from farting, I was tapping into some latent superpowers I didn't know I had. Or, by doing so, I was putting my health and the safety of my organs at risk, and it was only by some lucky coincidence that I didn't end up in the emergency room.

There's always a convenient rationalization for bad behavior. People screaming on a plane? Maybe they got fired, were having a nervous breakdown, and holding back the screams would have landed them in the hospital. People singing at the top of their lungs during a flight? Maybe it's their way of coping with the stress of a breakup. Or maybe they're just annoying people who were never taught how to behave in public.