How Will Gender (or Color) Play in Your Story?
by Liz Booker
I came to the realization in the past few years that I’ve been confused about gender my whole life. I’m not talking about sexuality—I’m very attuned to mine; and I’m not talking about my lady parts—they’re all where they were originally issued, mostly. I’m talking about gender norms, gender expectations, and the ways in which gender impacted my life and career as a pilot.
I grew up in two worlds—city girl, and country girl. I’m no Pancho Barnes, but I was brought up, an only child, by academics who had champagne taste and taught me proper table manners so I wouldn’t inhibit their ability to patronize the finest restaurants in every city where we lived or visited. In contrast, I spent all of my summers and vacations in rural Texas with grandparents who treated me like the son they had lost when he was sixteen at a Boy Scout camp some thirty years earlier (electrocuted—absolutely soul-crushing). I gardened, milked cows and goats, birthed dead calves, gutted deer and fish, went ‘kicker’ dancing, and learned to drive on an old WWII Jeep Willys when I was nine years old. No one in my family was a pilot, and I can’t exactly remember when I decided I wanted to fly, but by the time I was five years old, that’s all I ever wanted to do.
No one batted an eye at this. Like the educated, liberal parents they were, mine encouraged my interests, exposing me to as much about aviation as their access allowed. I lived in Houston during adolescence where I spent birthdays at Johnson Space Center, and had my first discovery flight at eleven. I was both smart and lazy as a student—aced my tests but never did any homework, so it was a small miracle that I was even accepted to the Ross Shaw Sterling Aviation Magnet High School. I spent a year-and-a-half at this school, until we moved to a small debutante town in South Georgia, derailing my flight plan for ten years, but that’s a story for another time.
At Sterling, I was aware that I was one of few girls in the program, which, frankly, was fine with me. I had more than my fair share of the boys’ attention as a nerdy, gawky, awkward girl in that context than I ever would have had (and ultimately didn’t have) at a mainstream high school. But there was never even a hint of negativity anywhere—among the staff, or the student body—about me being a girl who wanted to fly. We were all there for the same reason and I was just another student. In fact, the Magnet school was placed at this particular location because of its proximity to Houston Hobby Airport, and MLK Boulevard, to bring in the “white quota”. As a result, I was also surrounded by Black girls and boys in the program, so I was both gender- and color-blind in this context.
I took a circuitous route to finally arrive at Naval Flight Training in 1997, having already been enlisted in the Coast Guard for five years. I had been in the second wave of women assigned to two ships, so I experienced first-hand the fumbling leadership of women’s integration in the military. I had lady issues, like having to educate my command on pregnancy policy, and there were infrastructure issues, like no women’s berthing or bathroom at some units—but I still didn’t feel disadvantaged in any way. I worked hard, my intellect was recognized and rewarded, I was encouraged to apply to Officer Candidate School, and I never once felt discriminated against because of my gender. I spent my first officer tour at an Air Station, as the only woman in the Wardroom, and the only non-pilot. I wasn’t savvy about officer politics at the time, but, looking back, because of my rank, I was no threat to anyone there. To a man, every single one of those pilots took me under his wing and encouraged me to pursue a Flight School slot. I was their little aviation sister.
It was when I reported to NAS Pensacola that I first began to see where my gender set me apart in ways I didn’t anticipate. They were subtle. Insidious. No one came right out and said, “What do you think you’re doing here?” But I felt it. I didn’t know if it was because I was a Coastie, prior enlisted, a mother, in another awkward body and hair phase—basically an alien creature to them—but I felt marginalized. Left out. I didn’t know how to access the ‘gouge’ that everyone else seemed to have, and I had instructors do things on flights that made me question—Is it just me? Some things were overt. Like the time I was on a night-trainer flying over the Foley Outlet Mall, and my instructor said, “You must be familiar with this spot. Everyone knows women love to shop.” I thought, really? Do they? Because I don’t. And what a weird thing to say on an instructional flight. From the moment I stepped into flight training, and throughout the rest of my career, I was reminded in some way of my gender difference every single day—sometimes in overtly harassing ways, and sometimes in those subtle, insidious ways. I always referred to it as the static in my headset. Can I fly with it? Yeah. But it sure does wear on you after a while.
As I became more senior, the power dynamics got more complicated and cut-throat, and I became more threatening—not because I was walking around with a banner that said, “Down with the men,” but because I was using my personal and positional influence to network women and advance our issues. And we made progress. None of this progress took anything away from our male peers, so I continue to be baffled by some of the responses; but respond they did.
I spent two years in a position where I was responsible for flight school selections and pilot accessions. At the same time, I was actively participating in annual Women in Aviation conferences, and I sat on a couple of military work-life balance panels. I noted that I was the only woman on those panels who was a mom in an active flight status. I used that awareness to the Coast Guard’s advantage by writing articles for Aviation for Women Magazine to highlight the Coast Guard as an employer-of-choice. The organization was, after all, trying to improve its diversity. I was toeing the company line. I decided I’d take the positive approach. Share the good stuff and keep the dirty laundry where it belonged—in the laundry room. When I vetted my first article through the Chief of Coast Guard Aviation, as required, he told me I made the Coast Guard sound like summer camp for girls. Yep—the problems went all the way to the top.
After a year-and-a-half of retirement, I’m still unpacking all of this baggage. Trying to organize it, throw out what doesn’t ‘spark joy’, and launder the things that are still serviceable. The gender stuff is complicated. There are the mores and attitudes that people bring with them to the cockpit (or the cabin) every day, not all of which align with a woman at the controls. There are the expectations of appearance and physical sexuality—is a ‘better-looking’ woman more, or less likely to be successful in aviation? Do the same rules apply to the men? How do the men react to their own feelings of attraction, or lack-there-of, in a professional situation? There are the power dynamics: Men-93, Women-7. (How, btw, do 93 men feel threatened by 7 women? Or is it when we get to 10 in a room that their shorthairs stand on end?) There are also personality types. It was very instructive for me to learn that my Myers-Briggs ‘INTJ’ comprises only .08% of women. Does this explain my friction in a gender-constructed world?
I know I’m going to have to incorporate these things in my writing eventually. I warned my writing partner that she will have to endure pages upon pages of feminist garbage at some point to get all of this shit out of my system before I get to some cohesive and meaningful product. I loved the way Erika Armstrong handled some of her less-than-pleasant experiences in A CHICK IN THE COCKPIT—with a sense of humor and light. But my experiences just don’t feel funny to me. They still feel traumatizing and oppressive.
I am writing for the next generation—for the young women who will replace us, hopefully in much larger numbers than we’ve experienced in our careers. I don’t want to misrepresent what the experience has been, or might be for them, but I intensely want them to live my innocence, as much as I want to return to it myself—my complete and blissful ignorance of my gender as an issue when it comes to pursuing a career in aviation. I have chosen to write my first couple of Young Adult novels in a “casually diverse” way, to borrow a phrase from a writer friend—to make diversity, as on a Disney show, just a normal part of life, and not deal with the challenges that come with it. It’s a Utopian view, I know, and I remain conflicted about it. Maybe I’ll write something for us hardened gals later about the realities of being less that ten percent, but this is the choice I’m making for now.
How will gender or color play in your writing?
