Just got off the horn with a friend (ex-fiancée). She was a pilot in the 101st Airborne during the Gulf War. She says she doesn’t like telling women she used to be a pilot. Guys think it’s cool, but she says women tend to be put off. It’s not that she’s bragging (she avoids telling people because she doesn’t want to be seen as a braggart); it’s just part of who she is and a significant part of her past.
Why would women be put off at finding out another woman used to fly helicopters?
Because they don’t have anything in common to talk about, I think. Essentially most women aren’t too interested in mechanical things. When they are talking to a man they’re at least subconciously looking for a mate so see the pilot stuff as a positive. Talking to a woman it’s a negative because they have to actually talk about it, and if you’re not interested in it it’s bloody boring.
Actually, think about what you would do with a bloke who was a fashion designer compared to a woman who was, and it’s the same kind of thing. Doesn’t mean you’d hate him or anything, just means you’d be bored unless the subject changed.
(Warning: Someone is following me around and claiming I’m a misogynist if I admit there to be any difference between women and men, if they appear ignore them)
It’s not that she wants to engage a person in conversation about it. Someone might ask about her background. If she says she’d been an Army pilot in combat, she detects hostility from women. Women seem to be OK if she says that she’d been in the Army and that she’d been deployed to Iraq, but they get weird if they find out she flew.
Oh, well I can’t help with that, sorry!
I know a couple of woman pilots and an woman who used to be an ex air traffic controller. I’ll ask them…
(But they’ve never said anything like that to me before)
Johnny, bear in mind that your first responder doesn’t like women very much. ( I know he says you should ignore me but please don’t.) I think maybe your friend has just had some bad experiences since I am a woman and I would enjoy talking to someone who has flown a helicopter. I also know several other women who would too. I even know women who are engineers and I personally worked in the service department of a car dealership for many years, so I do thnk maybe the unhappy poster doesn’t know very many women.
I think it’s different in the civilian world. Of course A) I’m a guy, and B) I’ve never been in the military. But ISTM (i.e. anally speaking) that a civilian woman who flies might be seen as ‘having an interesting hobby’ and ‘Of course, she’s just having fun. She’s not a real pilot.’ Being a pilot in the Army who flew in combat is like, ‘She must be a lesbian,’ or ‘She thinks she’s shit-hot.’ She isn’t and she doesn’t, but this seems to be the reaction.
She had a patient last week (she’s graduating nursing school in a few days) whom nobody liked. Patient is studying aeronautics, and is a pilot. She (friend) told her that she’d been a pilot and they hit it off. An older, egotistical CNA didn’t like the patient, but when she was told the patient was a pilot she gained some respect for her. I don’t know if CNA know my friend flew.
My friend who was an ATC was in the RAF, so I’ll ask her especially. I don’t know any ex-military female pilots, but it may be interesting to see if this effect is universal.
As a woman, I’d think it was cool. I can’t imagine why anyone would be put off by it.
I have a couple of WAGs.
[ul][li]She’s an Army pilot? Obviously she’s a lesbian.[/li][li]If you were a pilot, why are you working here?[/li][li]They’re intimidated because nothing they’ve done can match the achievement.[/li][li]Pilot? That means she’s an egotistical bitch.[/ul][/li]
Some people are hostile to homosexuals. If a woman thinks she’s a lesbian, she might not like her on those grounds alone.
It’s expensive to get the necessary licenses for civilian work, and many aviation jobs pay poorly. Heck, if flying were free I’d be doing it every day! So her choices would have been to go into debt to earn her Commercial and Instructor ratings and then get a low-paying job teaching people to fly, or get a ‘normal’ job and pay the rent and buy the necessities of life.
I’ve got nothing. I think most people can achieve any reasonable thing they want to. They just have to set a goal and work toward it. Why they would be intimidated by someone else’s achievement, I don’t know.
Pilots stereotypically have well-developed egos. Most don’t shove it in people’s faces, but some do and the stereotype exists. Some people will just equate ‘Pilots = assholes’.
I don’t think that most guys would think a woman is a lesbian just because she flies. I don’t think we care much if she is. Maybe women are less comfortable around lesbians? As for not flying as a civilian, you’ve got to make a living. You’re not a failure if you’ve achieved something and then do not have the resources to make it a profession.
Dude, no one sane is going to think a woman is a lesbian because she’s an army pilot. Seriously, that’s totally bizarre.
As a woman, I’d think it was cool, and I have no kind of military background myself.
But there is a significant subcategory of women who don’t like to see other women stepping out of gender boundaries, at all. I’ve run into this at work, where (for instance) certain admin assistants consistently undermine female execs, and put down other women who try for advancement rather than just a job.
I can’t explain it, other than that. I’m hoping there are not too many women who want other women to stay inside some kind of arbitrary box, and I haven’t run into many. But the people I hang with are not that kind of person anyway, so I wouldn’t, and that kind of woman wouldn’t be someone I’d select as a friend, either.
PS edited to add quote, and I can’t remember who to attribute it to: “It ain’t bragging if you’ve done it.”
Since leaving the Army, my friend has lived in rural areas with depressed economies. I wonder if that’s part of the issue; that in certain communities women are expected to fit into certain roles and leave other ones to the men-folk?
Tangental question: How big a deal are Air Medals? (She has two.)
This is what I came to post. Her anecdote really surprised me.
Both my sister and my wife believe that women are much meaner to other women than men are to women. They feel that there is often an unspoken level of competition and hostility between women that men often don’t detect. BTW, have you asked your friend why she feels women are put off?
Count me in on that too
Not directly, but I think she thinks as you do; that women can be mean to each other. Hell, we guys are too. But for us, ‘cutting’ isn’t really taken seriously.
It depends on why she got them. For the most part they are only a big deal to civilians and people whoo don’t know any better. I have three but I got each one for flying 20 combat missions in Iraq. Like I said, mine just sound impressive but aren’t really, I don’t deserve them.
Now, if she did something to deserve them that is a completely different story.
Yup, I’ve been told this too, but it seems to be very much the other way - putting down the little guy (what’s female for guy?) rather than envy of the big guy (ditto question).
That’s the impression I had. Not to belittle the achievement, of course. Not everyone gets to fly a multi-million dollar aircraft in a combat zone.