Why are most male flight attendants...

Great Debates
21

Susanann: *The entire medical field will soon be considered effeminate.

In the future(with no end in sight given that comparatively few men go to college now), most/any carreers that require college or post college study will be considered “female”, and assigned as “effeminite”.*

Hmm, that sounds a bit overstated. AFAIK, the overall gender ratio among college students nowadays is only at most about 60% female/40% male. And that, I believe, is taking into account all recipients of bachelor’s degrees, which includes not just the usual 18–22-year old “college kids” but the older adult education crowd. (Many more adult-ed degree candidates are female, partly because the most profitable career paths for people without higher ed still tend to be mostly male-oriented—auto repair, etc.—so going back to school to get your degree has a bigger payoff for women, on average.)

So I don’t think you can plausibly deduce that the trend of growing female/male ratios in higher ed is going to continue “with no end in sight”, to the point where “most/any careers that require college or post college study” will be stereotyped as “feminine”. I seriously doubt that women will ever make up more than around two-thirds of all higher ed students. There are still plenty of reasons for men to go to college, and still plenty of men who want to. (And male students are still a significant majority in fields like science and engineering.)

22

Susanann, there’s a fundamental difference between number of women in a field and lingering perception of gender roles in the work force. Just because women are now entering this field or that in large numbers does not mean we perceive that role as a “feminine” one. Indeed, these day the effectiveness of those stereotypes are breaking down but they yet have some force in society.

You ask what fields we often stereotype lesbians as working in? Well the stereotypes are less, but construction worker, mechanic, etc. still carry a bit of that being too “masculine” for “normal” women.

23

Sorry to support the stereotype, but the only male cabin attendant I personally know is gayer that Christmas.

Still, I suspect the OP is not correct.

24

Because, in my experience, a lot of gay men are indeed effeminate. The majority? I dunno. About half of the openly gay men I’ve met in college would qualify as such to one degree or another. The simple fact is every gay male, whether butch or femme, has to cope with the “pansy” label in their own way. For some, they are able to defang it to a degree and remove the fear of being viewed as such. This is especially vital for those who are in fact sissy-boys. Also, not all gay men are attracted to the hyper-masculine guys. I myself find the gym bunny image rather annoying and not very attractive at all. As with any other community, different strokes for different folks.

In short, however, attraction towards another and what you yourself are actually can be two wildly different things.

25

I guess that’s why there are so many gay pilots. Not to mention all the lesbian flight attendents. Pretty much the whole aviation industry. [toungue-in-cheek]And, of course, as we all know, the Air Force. [/toungue-in-cheek]

26

I’m going to go out on a limb here and posit that there is a gay mindset. Not always applicable, necessarily. And not necessarily an attribute of every gay man. But I believe that the minds of gay men are superior in many respects to the minds of straight men.

It seems to me that having a compelling attraction toward men requires a certain tendency to nurture because men, frankly, are beasts. Gay men seem to appreciate the beauty in things, whereas straight men seem to appreciate nothing more than the utility. Even when lusting over women, straight men (generally, yes I know I’m generalizing a lot here) are not really thinking about how beautiful women are in the sense of a beautiful painting. It’s more about how well they’re put together — how useful they are.

So a gay man might be more attracted to the nurturing roles of flight attendant, nursing, and so forth. Not necessarily, and not always, of course. Just a rule of thumb. And a straight man might be more intersted in being a pilot or a doctor. His interest is in using the tools of the trade. That isn’t to say that gay men don’t want to be pilots and doctors, but if they do go for those jobs, they bring the advantage of their nurturing mindsets with them. They would care deeply for the well-being of their passengers and patients.

27

Well now that Libertarian has thrown nurses into the mix I can confidently say that there were many more gay nurses where I was nursing than there are gay office workers where I am now. My brother knows two flight attendants and both are gay. Yes they were able to have careers because they didn’t have family considerations but that isn’t why they chose the job. If it wasn’t something along the lines of Libertarian’s “mindset” why don’t we get jokes about the disproportionate number of gay offshore oil platform workers - they don’t spend lots of time at home either.

28

People are saying things like “why don’t we get jokes about the disproportionate number of gay offshore oil platform workers” as though they couldn’t possibly be true. There are plenty of gay athletes, but they can’t exactly be openly gay in that field. So who knows? Oil rigs could be overflowing with gay men for all we can tell, they’re just afraid to come out surrounded by such homophobia.

Oh and Libertarian, I wouldn’t call that a gay mindset whatever its prevalance in gay men v.s. straight. I know many quite happily married straight aesthetes who can certainly appreciate the beauty of a painting.

29

“Only” 60%?

That is a statistical landslide, esp when compared to just a few decades ago( Its like saying that its meaningless that “only” 70% of divorces are initiated by women).

Anyways, how does anybody know how many male flight attendants are gay? Who does the statistics on the sexual activities of airline personnel?

Maybe the males who choose to become flight attendants just prefer to travel and get paid to do it instead of being a cog in the wheel of a giant corporation?

Maybe they would rather have a high paying factory job but that job was moved to china.

Maybe they cant get another better job since much fewer men today dont go to college anymore. With women outnumbering men in college by 60-40, you better get used to seeing a lot of men in the future in low paying jobs, and women in powerful and high paying jobs.

Yes, I agree that male flight attendants probably are not as as economically competitive nor as interested in making a lot of money as other males(and females).

Seems to me, that you could make this same claim of any male who has a low paying job - telephone operator, waitress/waiter, massage therapist, retail clerk, gas station attendant, etc.

30

Just like most any specific statistic on sexual orientation, Susanann, a lot of the “facts” are going to be anecdotal. In my experience, for example, a lot of nurses (both male and female) are gay. I was raised in nurse lounges during the summer while my mom worked, so I do have a fairly wide pool to draw on here.

31

Susanann: *“Only” 60%?

That is a statistical landslide, esp when compared to just a few decades ago*

Yes, I know. But it doesn’t necessarily imply that the ratio is going to keep sliding “with no end in sight” to the point where, as you claimed, “most/any carreers that require college or post college study will be considered ‘female’”. You seem to be suggesting that women will end up dominating all the professions and careers that require higher education, and I see no reason to believe that.

For one thing, as high-paying jobs for men without college degrees dwindle, more men are going to start going to college, just as more women started going to college when they realized that they had few good career options otherwise.

Libertarian: *But I believe that the minds of gay men are superior in many respects to the minds of straight men.

It seems to me that having a compelling attraction toward men requires a certain tendency to nurture because men, frankly, are beasts. Gay men seem to appreciate the beauty in things, whereas straight men seem to appreciate nothing more than the utility.*

Lib, speaking as a heterosexual female who knows and likes many non-beastly, aesthetically-appreciative straight men, I think these generalizations are inane and bigoted to the point of downright male-bashing. If a woman said this to me I’d call her on it, and I’m calling you on it too.

(And speaking as a forty-year-old who remembers some of the turmoil of Women’s Liberation in the seventies, and the struggle that so many women went through to transcend nasty bigoted stereotypes about women, I’m appalled at the nonchalance with which so many men slap nasty bigoted stereotypes on themselves. (Even if they’re just copying what some male-bashing women say, that doesn’t make it right.) Brothers, I tell you that you are gonna regret this someday. As gender inequality diminishes in society and male privilege becomes less automatic, these labels will stop sounding like cute gestures of self-deprecation, and will start serving as excuses for serious sexist discrimination. Don’t think it can’t happen to you, and please don’t encourage it.)

Back to the thread topic, about male flight attendants: haven’t males always been stewards on ships? Was that perceived as an “effeminate” role? I don’t think so. In fact, it seems to have been considered rather experimental when nurse and pilot Ellen Church originated the all-female “nurse/stewardess” airline team back in 1930.

The airline stewardess caught on, and then got marketed as some kind of alluring hybrid of barmaid, waitress, and Playboy bunny, mostly to appeal to the business travelers who tended to be airlines’ best customers. Maybe that’s one of the reasons it’s perceived as a “feminine” job and the men who perform it as “effeminate”: because one of the implied duties was being physically attractive to male customers.

As for whether male flight attendants really are disproportionately gay, I have no reason to disbelieve the anecdotal evidence that they are, but I’d still like to see some actual statistics.

32

Sure. I appreciate beautiful paintings myself. But I didn’t say that straight men don’t appreciate the beauty of a painting. I said that they don’t appreciate the beauty of women the way they do the beauty of paintings. Women are beautiful conceptually because they have all the right parts in all the right places. To consider a man beautiful in that same way, I believe that I would need to be more empathetic and nurturing than I am.

Well, okay. But I still think that gay men are more nurturing than straight men. In general.

33

Anyone who doesn’t believe that male flight attendants are disproportionately gay relative to the male population is out of their mind. As Priam and Libertarian have said, the role is:

  1. Traditionally thought of as feminine
  2. Is a nurturing one which attracts feminized males
  3. Has/had the self-perpetuating cycle of stereotype to reality.

Hey I appreciate an open, unbiased mind as much as the next person but let’s not kid ourselves. In many cases–but not all–sterotypes have developed for good reason: Because they’re true.

34

I find it weird that so many people here are scoffing at the notion that many if not most male flight attendants are gay. That is the stereotype. Stereotypes don’t apply to everyone but they are rarely just made up out of thin air. I fly a lot and I can confirm antecdotally, that many are, in fact, gay.

35

Umm… no not really. You’d just have to be gay, y’see, because then men would have all the right parts in all the right places. That’s kinda the point. For straight men, women have the right bits in the right places (mostly) and for gay men other men have the right bits in the right places (again, mostly). Its no more or less aesthetic than any other form of sexual attraction. This is not to say that sexual attraction can’t be aesthetic as well, just that one is not necessarily reliant on the other. I have seen many aesthetically beautiful, even literally stunning, women in my time as a post-pubescent person. However, parts of my brain (and lower regions) don’t stand up and say “Yowza” quite the same way as I would assume your’s do. For a while I was trained not to find male bodies aesthetically beautiful due to conditioning in what a “straight” man should and should not be, but despite that I still found men very intriguing sexually and romantically. The aesthetic appreciation of the male body has developed since acknowledging that I could find it beautiful without shame.

36
  1. Women will end up dominating all the professions and careers that require higher education because this is a long term, so far, unchanging, trend. Women have been steadily increasing their participation in college since 1970, and its not going to change until men do actually start returning to college, and there is nothing/no reason to believe that they will, since they havent as the most recent data as of this year continues to report.

Your idea of men returning to college has no bases at all in fact, and is nothing more than a wish.

  1. You are right though about men being the first flight attendants, and it wanst until 1930 that the first 8 females were hired by United, 1931 Eastern, 1933 American Airways, 1935 TWA hired its first females, etc. according the my book: Footsteps in the Sky" by Helen McLaughlin

Furthermore, it was also required before ww2 that all female stewardesses be registered nurses until the war started and nurse shortages came about.

(As you all well know, originally most nurses were men, as well as most telephone operators were male)

This thread reminds me of the Candid Camera show, which recently replayed an old segment(from the 1960’s) when the spoof/gag was that passengers were informed that their pilot was a woman(Fannie Flag?).

The only thing you people are proving is the inherrent insecurity, prejudice, and weakness of males, who think that any men who take jobs that females currently/historically predominate in, must be either gay or whimps.

This does not bode well for those kinds of prejudiced folks after our college educated women soon become the majority of our attorneys, our doctors, our vetinarians, our dentists, our business leaders, our politicians, etc.

37

My wife is a flight attendant and she has many times remarked on the number of her male counter-parts who are gay. She is number 10 on the seniority list and number 3 is a gay male. The two of them are very good friends and she often goes to him on matters concerning their job. She has also talked about flight attendants that were straight males, who had to quit because they were not able to support their families on what they were making. I’m not so sure that flight benefits have that much to do with someone being a flight attendant. In my wifes case, we do take advantage, but many do not. There is the fact though that once someone has built up seniority, they have a good choice of schedules each month. That makes their work very flexible, which is the main requirement for being a flight attendant; being able to be flexible and enjoying that type of life style. I don’t know but perhaps that fits into the “gay life style” (whatever that means).

38

Maybe it’s my prejudice - but I have always suspected that guys who linger outside of bathrooms and smile at you as you go in ----- are gay --------- of course they could just be smiling straight guys standing outside the wrong bathrooms.

39

I’m thinking this is either the best ZING! I’ve seen all day or a very sad piece of naivete. I’m thinking the former.

40

Libertarian wrote:

Maybe it’s just that I do not know many gay people (About 7 or 8 that I can think of), but I would say that all of your statements are true, AND false, in general. Partially because the statistical base is so high, examples of straight men are both the MOST and the LEAST sensitive people I know, aesthetically and emotionally. Whereas the gay men I know do not tend to be absolute clods (well one or two are :)), but do come across as a bit self-centered, which precludes both extremities on the “nurturing” scale. Of course, this could be due to my lack of exposure, so to say.