Why would it appear that hetrosexual men are discriminated against in the recruitment of airline cabin crew (excluding pilots or those involved in the piloting of the aircraft). I have done a fair bit of online research myself and come up with nothing.
I eventually reached the conclusion that it is probably down to the captain wanting to have the pick of the females to himself and his male pilot colleagues.
I speak from my own experience of flying and can safely say that a grossly disproportionate amount of male stewards were either gay or extremely effeminate. Dont get me wrong as a straight man their sexuality dosent bother me at all, just the discrimination of the employers.
I also had the (dis)pleasure of spending an evening drinking with some austrian airline cabin crew in a hotel in Kuala Lumpa. The drinks moved from the bar to one of the crews rooms. The female staff were all over the senior male staff with lots of female undergarments being removed etc. I eventually left them at aprox 3am tired and in need of my bed. They seemed not a jot concerned that they were flying back out at 8am and even considered it funny! (anyway thats a whole nother story but does perhaps shed some light on the disproportionate recruitment of homosexual cabin crew)…
Ok, so having googled the definition of your statement, am I corect in reading it as meaning, because of what I witnessed my opinion is unfoundly biased?
and anyway that was just one occasion I was throwing into the mix…I had witnessed what I saw that night way before googling my original question and hadnt mentally considered that night at all. It was only afterwards when I came to the conclusion about the pilots wanting the very willing female staff to themselves that I actually recalled that evening…Therefore Confirmation Unbias!
Regularly, my flatmate who is a gay air steward, regularly calibrates my gaydar…He agrees with my statement of the disproportion though can shed no more light.
Incidentally his calibration device is on the end of his p3nis which he says the only way he can calibrate my gaydar is via my calibration dial in my anu$…
It means that you only notice when your stewards are gay, not when they aren’t.
The thing is, it’s the old correlation does not equal causation deal.
There are a disproportionate number of gay males in musical theater as well. This doesn’t mean that Broadway discriminates against straight men. It just so happens that the arts/theater is very tolerant and accepting of gay men, and therefore gay men tend to be drawn into those communities early in life as a sort of safe haven, where they are free to be themselves and express their talent. So, the pool has more homosexual men to draw from.
It is possible (though I don’t know for sure) that airline flight attendant culture is similar. It’s viewed as a great job without discrimination for homosexual males, so many are drawn to it as a career choice. I don’t have facts to back that up, but it is probably more likely than straight applicants being discriminated against.
Anyway, assuming there is a disproportionately low number of straight men in the industry, your first question should be why straight men aren’t drawn to it. It’s a job that is traditionally done by females, and straight men tend to shy away from those because of perceptions.
For what it’s worth, though, a friend of mine is a straight flight attendant for Delta and he says all the recruiters are gay men. Go figure.
I find that most men in “service” jobs (air cabin crew, waitstaff, hotel concierge) tend to be more subservient Beta-male types than Alphas. This can easily be mistaken for being “gay” by a person who does not know anything about actual sexual orientation.
You do know that airline captains are not exclusively male, right?
Also, as already mentioned, the captain has zip to do with hiring the cabin crew.
Do you make it a habit to ask flight attendants what their sexual orientation is? You must be a peach of a customer to serve.
Treating your OP as a serious question for a moment, you have to consider the following factors:
Historically only women were recruited for cabin crew, leading to the profession being seen as “women’s work” and thus not attractive to many men seeking work. Granted, this dates back to the days when women weren’t permitted to act as pilots for airlines. It’s all 40-50 years out of date but cultural attitudes take a generation or two to change.
There have been numerous threads in this very forum with men decrying “ugly” flight attendants and whining about why they can’t have young, attractive, buxom women serve them food and drinks - clearly a certain portion of the customer base desires women attendants and this might affect the hiring practices of the airlines, who have an incentive to please their customers.
If the people doing the cabin crew hiring are men this might also affect the male/female ratio of attendents.
Of course, the above reasons aren’t necessarily ethical or even legal, but they are potential influences.
And, as noted, confirmation bias: you may tend to notion “flamboyant” male flight attendants more than the non-flamboyant.
Oh, and this is a grown-up board with very few personal hang-ups. You can say your roomate wants to fuck you up the ass without munging up the spelling of perfectly normal words.
The captain, male or female, may have zip to do with recruitment, but like all people in a leadership role, must have some say in their team members. Surely?
I can see alot of sense in the fact that it is traditionally seen as a female role which many hetro males would shy away from.
Y’know, my gaydar isn’t all that great, but even I can tell that when a guy has scantily-clad women crawling all over him at a party, and he’s not doing anything to stop them, it usually means that he’s straight.
It was my first post, I wanted some answers before I was perhaps thrown off for using sexually explicit language. Thats all. Sorry if it offended you or may you feel as if I was patronising you like a small child.
Please provide us with numbers of applications made by women, straight men, gay men and the corresponding percentages of successful applicants of each type. Then we’ll talk.