WestJet Captain receives passenger's sexist note

[shimmydampner]

In most of the natural world, its the male of the species which is the one driven to compete and the one who's driven to agression, and unfortunately, violence.

Right you are. lt's one of those things you can't talk about lest you be branded a misogynist, but male and female hormones are very different in their effects on the brain and have been shown to account for markedly different behaviours. Testosterone has been linked to more agressive behaviour and is found in greater abundance in males. But I digress, we shouldn't let science get in the way of thinking males and females are the same.

[Meecka]

They're going to be more competitive for jobs and activities they feel are high risk, high reward. I hate to say it, women don't work in aviation because in general they're smarter and percieve it correctly as a high risk career. Both from a personal standpoint and a financial one.

I take exception to that statement, it seems you forget that there are some of us who do work in aviation. That statement implies that we are not the smart ones.

[Shiny Side Up]

I take exception to that statement, it seems you forget that there are some of us who do work in aviation. That statement implies that we are not the smart ones.

Can you really say that your aviation career has put you at the top of the world? Remember, I work in aviation too. I'm certainly not as wealthy as I could be, and it certainly has impacted my personal life, and has a strong likelyhood of increasing my chances of being divorced. Its certainly increased my chances of being killed. None of these things in a lot of circles could be considered a "wise" or "sane" choice by society's normal standards. Remember, that's what we're comparing it to, and to be honest aviation society wise, is a bit of an outlier. Personally I think it gets attention in this regard since its percieved as a high prestige/high pay sector too, which anyone on the inside quickly finds is false. It may be that while in the past that was correct, now that the secret is out, it will continue to gain less traction.

Aviation one should also note, occupies a specific niche when it comes to the world of work. By the rest of society's standards, what we do is crazy. Most of us (men and women) are involved in it for more esoteric reasons than the usual ones people choose occupations. Why should it suprise us that a certain segment of the population is less interested in it and is less likely to view it as a good idea? The question might be better asked, not why women aren't interested in aviation, but rather why men are interested in it.

My personal opinon is that aviation by its nature, tends to reward the aggressive and fosters competition. Two things that appeal to men more than women. How much women and men are different due to nature vs nurture, is up for debate, but one can't say that its all nurture.

[GyvAir]

Women make up 10% of the US Army helicopter pilot corps, and are responsible for 0% of the accidents. 0%. This is an important statistic because it shows we could have FEWER ACCIDENTS. It suggests we should DO SOMETHING.

It's not an important stat at all and it does not show us that. One could easily find an equal or greater sample size of males with ZERO accidents. It certainly does not guarantee that an increased number of females would keep that 0% record. But the beauty of stats is how easy to manipulate they are based on what you're trying to prove.
Finally, it's time to put the roof on this thing by completely abandoning all critical thinking. On the one hand, you might say something like:

It's also an inaccurately quoted statistic. The zero percent accident rate is only on the AH-64 Apache fleet, not all US Army helicopters.

Ten out of every 100 Army helicopter pilots are women — but they account for only three out of every 100 accidents. That’s the bottom line in an Army report that, in an effort to study the impact of women on the front lines, compares accident rates of men and women flying U.S. Army helicopters from 2002 to 2013.

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Ar ... 553-1.html

[Meecka]

Can you really say that your aviation career has put you at the top of the world?

Actually I quite enjoy what I do for a living. Have tried to imagine what I would do instead, and have yet to come up with anything.

Remember, I work in aviation too. I'm certainly not as wealthy as I could be, and it certainly has impacted my personal life, and has a strong likelyhood of increasing my chances of being divorced. Its certainly increased my chances of being killed.

Simple question for you, do you enjoy your job? If not, why are you in aviation?

None of these things in a lot of circles could be considered a "wise" or "sane" choice by society's normal standards.

There is a difference between suggesting someone is unwise, and suggesting they are less intelligent that the "majority". I know plenty of very intelligent folks that are far from "wise".

Aviation one should also note, occupies a specific niche when it comes to the world of work. By the rest of society's standards, what we do is crazy.

No, what we do is a job. Simple as that, we are no different than the rest of the functioning members of society. We get up, go to work, repeat as often as required until we retire. Just like pretty much everyone else.

Most of us (men and women) are involved in it for more esoteric reasons than the usual ones people choose occupations.

I agree with you here. Most of us chose this industry because we have a passion for it.

My personal opinon is that aviation by its nature, tends to reward the aggressive and fosters competition. Two things that appeal to men more than women.

[/quote]
Yes there is a fair amount of pretty aggresive competition, but I can honestly say we can be just as, if not more, competitive as men. Its all a matter of a person's personality, has nothing to do with gender.

[Shiny Side Up]

Simple question for you, do you enjoy your job? If not, why are you in aviation?

Of course I enjoy it. Well today I didn't enjoy it, but that's a specific different matter. On the whole its what I'd rather do. The point you're missing though is that by the rest of the world's definition, what I do sounds insane. I have no real set work schedule. I certainly don't earn as much money as I could if I was in a different field. To the layman - that is the rest of the people in the world I interact with - I can't explain my choices. I avoid telling people I'm a pilot, It just saves me a lot of explanation, blank looks and the inevitable question of why I don't work for Air Canada or WestJet. Either way,

No, what we do is a job. Simple as that, we are no different than the rest of the functioning members of society. We get up, go to work, repeat as often as required until we retire. Just like pretty much everyone else.

Actually no we aren't like the rest. I hate to say it but people in our industry are really out of touch with what the rest of the world of work is like. Lots of people get stuff like weekends off. Don't work away from home. Aren't on call. Aren't fearful that TC is going to stick it to you one day. Aren't fearful they're going to lose their job for medical reasons. Maybe you're on the maintenance side of things in one of the positions where you get a more regular schedule. I know there's some people in this business who are nine to fivers, but they aren't many, and definitely none on the flying side of things. Did I mention the somewhat hazardous nature of the work?

That's not like "everyone else".

Yes there is a fair amount of pretty aggresive competition, but I can honestly say we can be just as, if not more, competitive as men. Its all a matter of a person's personality, has nothing to do with gender.

I would beg to differ. Sure there will be exceptions. I frequently get told by my wife that men just don't understand women. I fully agree, but the flipside is also true. Women just don't understand men. Sure they have lots in common. Again, nature vs nurture. How much is learned and how much is due to our genetic make up is debatable, but not that both have a role in what we are and who we become.

Humorous, yet maybe offensive, definitely NSFW, Louis CK gives you a good insight into the male mind.



Somewhere in there is some of the deep down roots of what makes men and women different. For maybe a more PC look into the difference - more historical reference, an excerpt of historian John Keegan might help.

Half of human nature - the female half - is in any case highly ambivalent about warmaking. Women may be both the cause or pretext of warmaking - wife stealing is a principal source of conflict in primitive societies - and can be the instigators of violence in an extreme form: Lady MacBeth is a type who strikes a universal chord of recognition; they can also be remarkably hard hearted mothers of warriors, some apparently preferring the pain of bereavement to the shame of accepting the homeward return of a coward. Women can, moreover, make positively messianic war leaders, evoking through interaction of the complex chemistry of femininity with masculine responses a degree of loyalty and self sacrifice which a man might well call forth. Warfare is, nevertheless, the one human activity from which women, with the most insignificant exceptions, have always and everywhere stood apart. Women look to men to defend themselves from danger, and bitterly reproach them when they fail as defenders. Women have followed the drum, nursed the wounded, tended the fields and herded the flocks when the man of the family has followed his leader, have even dug trenches for men to defend and laboured in workshops to send them weapons. Women, however, do not fight. They never fight amongst themselves and they never, in any military sense, fight men. If warfare is as old and as universal as mankind, we must now enter the supremely important limitation that it is an entirely masculine activity.

- A History of Warfare

The aggressive competitive nature, is significantly pronounced in men. One could redo Louis's bit with male aggression, male competitiveness. One could say that between the two viewpoints above, it has been the bane of our species. Don't matter, its who we are.

Either way, its easy to observe that differences are there very early with groups of children. As soon as they're capable of meaningfully interacting with their world, one notices the difference in how they act. I'm not sure why the world likes to resist the idea that men and women are different. It just is, its product of billions of years of evolution.

In the end it only matters if one feels that there is a problem. I personally don't feel that there are bars to entry for women in aviation, especially since I can say I've both worked for them, hired them and trained them. If they've left aviation, its not been because of a specific gender related bar to their progress.

[Meecka]

WOW.

[ahramin]

Gyvair, thank you for the correction. I should have referred to the study again before quoting it. That should have been 10% of US Army Apache Attack Helicopters.

I'll answer your post when I've got more time Shimmy but I'd like to ask you a question in the meantime: Do you have any children or any siblings with children that you see often?

[Meecka]

Half of human nature - the female half - is in any case highly ambivalent about warmaking. Women may be both the cause or pretext of warmaking - wife stealing is a principal source of conflict in primitive societies - and can be the instigators of violence in an extreme form: Lady MacBeth is a type who strikes a universal chord of recognition; they can also be remarkably hard hearted mothers of warriors, some apparently preferring the pain of bereavement to the shame of accepting the homeward return of a coward. Women can, moreover, make positively messianic war leaders, evoking through interaction of the complex chemistry of femininity with masculine responses a degree of loyalty and self sacrifice which a man might well call forth. Warfare is, nevertheless, the one human activity from which women, with the most insignificant exceptions, have always and everywhere stood apart. Women look to men to defend themselves from danger, and bitterly reproach them when they fail as defenders. Women have followed the drum, nursed the wounded, tended the fields and herded the flocks when the man of the family has followed his leader, have even dug trenches for men to defend and laboured in workshops to send them weapons. Women, however, do not fight. They never fight amongst themselves and they never, in any military sense, fight men. If warfare is as old and as universal as mankind, we must now enter the supremely important limitation that it is an entirely masculine activity.

- A History of Warfare

If you truly think like this then you are no better than the folks who belive women have no place in aviation, or any other job that has been coined as a "man's job".

[ahramin]

While I'm waiting for an answer, a riddle for everyone:

I was in the hotel shuttle heading to the airport and with me was a couple with their two children. The girl was about 9 and the boy about 7. The dad was explaining to his son how PAPIs work as we went by the runway and I made a small correction to his explanation "The lights are red and white[/], not green." When he asked me how I knew that I was forced to admit my profession. He immediately turned to his son and said "wow that's cool, we've got an airline pilot with us. Would you like to be a pilot?" The boy said yes so I did my usual "Do you like school? How are your grades?" but when I was done I looked at the girl and asked her "How are your grades? Would you like to be a pilot?" The mom jumped in at that point with "Yeah! Would you like to fly planes?". The girl's answer was quite indignant: "NO! I want to fly helicopters." I was quite saddened by this turn of events and her father was flabbergasted but after a bit of thought her mom figured out where this previously unknown love of helicopters had come from.

Anyone care to guess at what had happened in the last month that caused the girl to answer the way she did?

[Pop n Fresh]

They watched Courage Under Fire?

[CpnCrunch]

It looks like male GA pilots have more accidents than female pilots, and a higher portion of the male accidents resulted in fatalities:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15676598

No significant difference for airline pilots, when age is controlled for:

http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jomega/v24 ... 3-450.html

[Shiny Side Up]

If you truly think like this then you are no better than the folks who belive women have no place in aviation, or any other job that has been coined as a "man's job".

What's there to believe? That's merely how history has turned out. Don't be silly, there's no such thing as a "man's job". But can one really say that men don't have more of a predisposition for violence than women do? The point from Louis's bit is that men think different. Not better, just different. The two just don't think the same. We can pretend they do, but they really don't. there's different things that drive our thought processes. Again, that doesn't make them better at things, but it certainly will affect what they might be more interested in, and who they become as people and as adults. I'm sorry if that's offensive to you.

Do we really believe that history occurred the way it did by random chance, and it was only a random choice which prehistoric people did what and it has just been handed down all these millennia?

I hate to say it, but if one were to take a look at many other professions, we'd find the gender balance off set somewhat as well. I suppose we can be busy and be angry with it, but I can think of better ways our world can spend time and effort.

FWIW, you're talking to someone who's business it is to get women into the flying world. They're business, their dollar talks as well as anyone else's. Flight training spends a huge amount of effort attracting girls (take a look through any WINGS issue that focuses on flight training and take note of the ads), but few come. Few continue. I don't know why. There's plenty of parents encouraging their daughters, there's lots of money being spent. In fact when I think about it, 40% of my pilot hires have been girls. Way less of them have continued in aviation though. AFAIK all of them are now out of aviation, taken different careers, even the ones who moved up and on, one I heard quit after making captain on multi turbine. Hard to believe since to most it seems like getting there's the hard part. By comparison the boys who have moved up and on have stuck with it. Even the ones I've had to fire (no girls have been fired I should note - there's that male tendency to do risky stupid stuff that crops up I might add). Now that's a reasonable sample size, which to me says either a) something in aviation drives women out - which I have yet to directly encounter, unless stuff like the note that generated this thread are that damaging, or b) they have different priorities and interests than men.

[Colonel Sanders]

At the risk of incurring powerful PC wrath,
I will admit to being mystified at this whole
"Let's introduce women to aviation" movement.

Long before I was born, women were flying.

1906 E. Lillian Todd (USA)
First Woman to Design and Build an Aircraft

1908 Therese Peltier (France)
First Woman to Pilot an Aircraft

1910 Blanche Stuart Scott (USA)
First Woman to Solo an Airplane

1910 Raymonde de Laroche (France)
First Woman in the World to Receive Pilot License

1911 Melli Beese (Germany)
First Woman in Germany to Receive a Pilot License

1911 Harriet Quimby (USA)
First U.S. Woman to Earn a Pilot Certificate and to Cross the English Channel

1915 Katherine Stinson (USA)
First Female Aerobatic Pilot

1918 Marjorie Stinson (USA)
First Woman Airmail Pilot

1921 Bessie Coleman (USA)
First African-American (male or female) to Receive a Pilot License

1922 Tadashi Hyodo (Japan)
First Woman in Japan to Receive a Pilot License

1927 Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie (USA)
First Woman to Obtain an Aircraft Mechanics License

1929 Louise Thaden (USA)
First Winner of All Women's Air Race

1929 Florence "Pancho" Barnes (USA)
First Woman Stunt Pilot in Motion Pictures

1929 Bobbi Trout (USA)
First Woman to Perform In-flight Aerial Refueling

1930 Amy Johnson (UK)
First Woman to Fly from England to Australia

1931 Anne Morrow Lindbergh (USA)
First U.S. Woman Glider Pilot

1932 Ruthy Tu (China)
First Woman Pilot in the Chinese Army

1932 Amelia Earhart (USA)
First Woman to Cross the Atlantic Solo

1934 Helen Richey (USA)
First Woman to be Hired as a Pilot for a U.S. Commercial Airline (Central Airlines)

1942 Mary Van Scyoc (USA)
First Woman Air Traffic Controller

1942 Nancy Harkness Love (USA)
Commanded the Women Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS)

1942 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP, USA)
First U.S. Women Pilots to Fly Military Aircraft

1943 Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES, USA)
First U.S. Women Navigators for the Military

1943 Janet Waterford Bragg (USA)
First African American woman to earn a commercial pilot's license

1947 Ellen Shaw Carter (USA)
First Woman to Receive a Helicopter Rating

1953 Jacqueline Cochran (USA)
First Woman to Break the Sound Barrier (in a Northrop T-38)

Lots of guys here can only dream of doing the above.

[snoopy]

@ahramin .....

Thanks for making reading 5 pages of this thread not a complete waste of my time. (and @Meecka and @Tom H) And thanks for the anecdote - that makes my day.

Cheers,
Kirsten B.