Originally Posted by
PotatoChip
I hate to explain my previous post, because it’s not a cop out. I believe some people just want to believe what they believe and that’s that. However, I’ll make a feeble attempt at verbalizing something that I don’t have a first hand experience in...
I cannot ever understand what it’s like to be a female in the this industry. I will never understand how it feels to know that any cockpit you enter might aggravate the pilot you’re flying with simply because you’re a woman and now they’ll feel like that have to alter their behavior to not offend you. I’ll never know what it feels like to overhear “another empty kitchen” jokes, or field constant questions like “what does your husband think?” “Don’t you want kids?” “Are you going to quit for a family?”. I’ll never know what it feels like to have entire threads derail into “She was only hired because she was a woman” and then sit next to someone who believes exactly that. I can’t understand that and won’t pretend I do. If you don’t think that this is an immediate disadvantage, then I’m sorry. If you can’t have sympathy for those female pilots who just as hard as anyone else only for their peers to make jokes behind their backs or say they were only hired because of their anatomy, I’m sorry.
Does this fit every person? No. Do some people get hired due to some HR diversity matrix, undoubtedly.
Likewise, I won’t for a second pretend I know what it’s like to be black in America.
The truth as I see it is this, white males have an advantage simply because we are the majority. When you are in the majority you are not different. You have nothing to prove to anyone. There aren’t snide comments made about you by other pilots because of anything other than your crummy stick and rudder skills.
That’s the advantage. I’m not saying we don’t work as hard, or harder to get where we are. God knows I’ve done my time. But I’ve never sat in those other shoes.
PotatoChip,
So if I get you and ReadyRsv correct both of you believe it’s more difficult for some than others. Guess what, it is. I wouldn’t draw the line quite so defined along gender or sexual preferences. However I do think it can be harder for mold breakers or the first into a new area.
The first pilots died quite frequently, and there was no litigation network to help those who they left behind. The first crew airplanes did not have someone teaching them CRM. The first checklists came about because someone died. Again the pioneers in aviation paid with their lives to make it better for those who followed. As those pioneers in space who have done the same thing, as will social pioneers.
Maybe I’m just a little cynical but I flew with female instructors in the USAF in the late 80s, one of the first females in the F15 community in the mid 90s (and she was a good sh!t - that’s a seriously good compliment from a fighter pilot) and in the Airlines ever since. Do I think those who went first suffer friction along the way, sure do.
So when does it stop? When do people grow some skin, push back, or reach that level where the comments of someone else doesn’t impact them?
The first pilots paid with flesh and blood, and now some of those who follow pay with hurt feelings. Talk about a lopsided perspective.
You can’t control what others do or say, but you control how you feel and react to it.
It’s my lowly opine that there needs to be a appreciation for what we have here in the US as a whole, and the airline industry in particular.
Cheers,
Biff