Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight AttendantsIn this vibrant new history, Phil Tiemeyer details the history of men working as flight attendants. Beginning with the founding of the profession in the late 1920s and continuing into the post-September 11 era, Plane Queer examines the history of men who joined workplaces customarily identified as female-oriented. It examines the various hardships these men faced at work, paying particular attention to the conflation of gender-based, sexuality-based, and AIDS-based discrimination. Tiemeyer also examines how this heavily gay-identified group of workers created an important place for gay men to come out, garner acceptance from their fellow workers, fight homophobia and AIDS phobia, and advocate for LGBT civil rights. All the while, male flight attendants facilitated key breakthroughs in gender-based civil rights law, including an important expansion of the ways that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would protect workers from sex discrimination. Throughout their history, men working as flight attendants helped evolve an industry often identified with American adventuring, technological innovation, and economic power into a queer space. |
Contents
The PreWorld War II Gay | 14 |
The Cold War Gender Order | 42 |
Homosexual Panic and | 60 |
Flight Attendants and Queer | 80 |
Flight Attendants Womens Liberation | 109 |
Flight Attendants and the Origins | 136 |
The Traynor Legacy versus the Patient | 168 |
Queer Equality in the Age | 194 |
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Common terms and phrases
activists airline's American Airlines Archives ATTENDANTS AND LIBERATION ATTENDANTS AND QUEER aviation Band Played BFOQ career carriers Celio Diaz City Civil Rights Act claim cold war corporate court customers decade decision Denneny Diaz's domestic partner domestic partner benefits Eastern Air Lines economic EEOC employees epidemic EQUALITY AND NEOLIBERALISM federal feminist flight attendant corps flying folder Gaëtan Dugas Gär Traynor gay community gay rights gay-friendly gays and lesbians headline hiring HIV/AIDS homophobia homophobic homosexual panic Ibid interview by author JetBlue labor unions lesbians LGBT male flight attendants McNeil Miami NEOLIBERALISM NOTES TO PAGES numbers Pan Am's passengers Patient Zero PATIENT ZERO MYTH pilots plane Press PREWAR GAY pursers PWAs QUEER CIVIL RIGHTS queer equality Randy Shilts Rickenbacker role San Francisco Schockett sex discrimination sexism sexual Shilts's Simpson Slater stewardesses stewards Title VII U.S. airlines United Airlines United's University victory women workplace York