So this isnt talking? I’ll be back quick sharp with some figures. Now shhh till then!
For the very same reason there are so many gay waiters, duh. Service requires caring about trivial shit like proper cutlery and table linens mixed with a huge dose of smiling sweetly and sucking it up from some jerk. Really simple to see why heterosexual males find such work too demeaning.
Yes, there are straight waiters and stewards, of course!
Read first, then participate. Otherwise a person can seriously mis-read Board culture and inadvertently look like an ass.
Never suggested there wasn’t! Perhaps try reading my first post properly and not just skimming.
Must try harder!
Back in the 80’s when Qantas was an international only airline the gay steward was a well established stereotype. It isn’t a new thing. Some of the above points remind me of a conversation I had with a friend recently. She is floor manager at a large up-market department store, in the section where all the cosmetics, perfumes, and insanely overpriced girly knick knacks suited to a bit of lunchtime retail therapy are sold. She observed that recently there had been a turnover in staff, and now she had a very large number of male statff members - all gay. That they were gay wasn’t just perception, they all spoke openly. It had started a while ago with one gay guy joining, and over time he had let friends know about jobs going, and slowly they had been moving in. There are obvious commonalities with stewards.
All jobs have pros and cons. These store jobs don’t exactly pay well (although by US standards they get a princely wage) - but the duties are easy, they all enjoy the atmosphere, they don’t care about the perception of femininity associated with it. The balance of poor pay against the upsides mean that they will be a clear fit. International airline steward is not a job for everyone. Guys that do it need to have personal reasons that balance the mediocre pay, the lifestyle that is not conducive to a good social life at home, and the weird hours. The very good (if weird) hours, and the allure of international travel can fit with certain lifestyles. And if you find a company that already has a lot of like minded people working there, it will grow. It would be interesting to see how the demographics varied company by company. I suspect you might see a lot of random accidents of history, where some companies have much higher number of gays (or other social subgroups) relative to the main population.
If there really is disproportion, I would assume this rather than any kind of discrimination. But I’m not sure that I notice an unusually high proportion of male flight attendants who might set off the gaydar these days. Once upon a time, yes, because it was thought of as a “woman’s job,” but I really don’t feel it to be that way today. Maybe I just have a gaydar with very low sensitivity.
No, they don’t.
Oh, if there’s a major personality conflict the airline might re-assign people but no, the pilots have no say in the cabin crew.
No, I can’t. Apparently I was born wholly without gaydar. Or maybe I just really don’t care about the sexual orientation of other people I’m not intimately involved with.
Well, yes, I can detect over-the-top flamboyant queens and bull dykes but you have to really batter me over the head with it before it registers.
In the airline industry there has traditionally been a lot of discrimination in the hiring of the cabin crew. Since the early days of commercial flight when women first became stewardesses (apparently replacing men originally) men were excluded from the job until equal hiring laws began to be enforced. The women were also discriminated against, single women were preferred, and they had to meet an appearance standard that resembled that for Playboy Bunnies. Simple observation indicates that the men who eventually were allowed to gain the position mainly look like stereotypical gay men, probably based on similar appearance standards, none of which have anything to do with the job. I don’t know who is gay and who is not, apparently I have no ‘gaydar’ and I don’t judge people on appearance, but you will never see a steward who looks like me (picture Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn). This is still out and out discrimination as if the job were equivalent to waitressing at Hooters.
NarmSayin, you were given a rough greeting here, so let me say welcome to the SDMB, and I’m sorry some of my fellow Dopers have been acting like assholes, BECAUSE THAT’S MY JOB AROUND HERE!
Hope you enjoy your flight.
Each group will have their own union with their own rules for assigning crews to flights. Surely the flight attendants’ union won’t bow to the whims of the pilots’ union.
As someone else mentioned, you need to know whether qualified, straight men are getting their applications disproportionately rejected to say there is discrimination.
Gaydar is weird - at least it is to me - speaking as a boring straight guy. I have never been able to pick any but the most overtly gay guys or girls. Other than that I have absolutely no idea, and am as likely to pick a slightly effete straight guy as gay as the converse. Which is really just responding to residual stereotypes rather than anything else. Gay friends of mine utterly confound me with an ability to pick other gays. The lesson for me was to simply never bother to guess, because I know I’ll get it wrong.
So from the point of view of the OP’s question - I would be very dubious of my ability to see any sort of meaningful view of the demographics of airline stewards. I would be very inclined to doubt most other peoples ability too. For us straights, the trite stereotypes are really all we know, and they don’t work.
I see a lot of WAGs from the OP of the ‘I don’t know but it looks like to me that___’ type. If you know you’re ignorant about the facts of something, why fill in the blanks w/ your worst case scenario? Why not assume that A) you don’t actually **know **who the people around you are attracted to for sure and 2) those you think are being discriminated against simply aren’t trying to get that job?
Also, learn to multi-quote, it’ll save you no end of effort and will help you to better understand what people are saying to you by making you read it twice.
I too believe that there are a higher % of gay men in the occupation as flight attendant, than gay men represented in the overall population. That may also be confirmation bias, but I don’t think so.
But I also don’t believe that is because of discriminatory practices by the airlines, for which the pilots have zero say on who hires the crew or even which crew works on their flights.
I believe that this is more likely because fewer heterosexual men desire to be flight attendants, than the representative population % of hetero sexual men.
No discrimination.
I enjoy a feeding frenzy as much as the next guy, but I’m surprised at the PC police here. I’ll add my two cents.
First, I couldn’t care less who the crew of the plane sleeps with.
But, I have to admit, that there does seem to be a higher percentage of effeminate (for lack of a better term) male crew members than that of the population at large. No I don’t have a survey, but that’s what my eyeballs tell me and I’m surprised that’s not at least being acknowledged here.
Given that, I don’t see that as discrimination, but rather a choice that some are more interested in this line of work than others.
Wow! Dual post
Given that the OP is apparantly not based on any factual information but rather on unsupported opinion, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I don’t think it’s confirmation bias either. I would bet my life more than half of the men who work as flight attendants are gay.
Thanks for your answer Francis. Its nice to get a well thought out reply and not a kneejerk reaction.
Thanks Tri, I really wasnt trying to troll, I had been googling it for some time before I came across this forum. This forum seemed like a decent place with alot of posters where I could garner some more input to my question. Yes I clearly do have way too much time on my hands. Thanks again for the welcome.
WOW, when did I say it was proof?
If I had proof I wouldnt have been here garnering opinion! So in future I should completely ignore my own experience, dismiss it as bias as its mine? Bizarre!
When I took some teaching classes, the subject of why so few men are in elementary education (or even secondary) was discussed. The two main reasons were cultural (“Teaching 2nd graders is a female job”) and pay (“Don’t make enough to support a family”) which I suppose is partially cultural as well when men see themselves as required primary breadwinners.
Anyway, I assume the same reason apply heavily to flight attendants. It’s traditionally seen as a female job due to its history and doesn’t pay enough (or keep you in one place enough) for a family. At least airline pilot has pay and prestige going for it.