Funny Thing About Assumptions
Just a funny story that's not too much wtf, but still sexist yet most definitely made of epic win, even if I do feel terribly bad for my coworker.
My coworker's an aeronautical science major (that's the professional pilots, in case you didn't know) at my male dominated university. Over the weekend, he had an interview for an internship with an airline (I can't remember which one), and he was telling me about it. He ended up tripping up over one of the major questions of the interview because of an assumption he made, so as we're talking, asks me the question that his interviewer asked him. Here's how it goes.
"You get hired by the airline and it's your first flight with the company. You meet your Captain and the flight attendants and prepare for a flight to Las Vegas. When you land, you don't have any other flights for the day, so you and the crew decide to go out and spend the night on the town. So you get to the hotel and you arrange a time to meet. You get ready and you go down to the lobby where the flight attendants are already waiting. A few minutes later, the elevator door opens and your Captain steps out wearing a nice black dress. What do you say?"
Being my typical I'm-cool-with-everything self, the first question out of my mouth is, "Is the Captain female?" (Which, according to my coworker, is an appropriate response and totally not the one he gave.) After which I said, "'cause if she is, I'd say, 'Ma'am, you look nice tonight, should I have dressed up more?' and if he was male I'd say, 'Wow sir, I didn't know that about you.' but first I'd hope he looked damn good in that dress."
His response, as he told it to me, was more to do with some random crap he said under the false assumption that the Captain was male. The whole time, he said, the female interviewer just smirked at him until he finally caught on.
As funny as this story is (I am totally in love with this airline just for this question), I do feel bad for my coworker. He's been one of the strongest supporters of my club (a women's advocacy group that's probably even more unpopular than our school's Gay-Straight Alliance), and he is definitely one of those spectacular men that we need more of in the world. Sometimes, though, prejudices are ingrained so deep in us that it never occurs to us to consider an alternative. My roommate said she noticed the same thing when she was asked to draw what she thought a scientist looked like in high school. She and her classmates all drew pictures of men. She also, as an aside, made the exact same assumption as my coworker did when I asked her this question.
So... how many of you made the same mistake my coworker and roommate did? And what does that say about the way we perceive gender roles? Just a thought.
~Lockea (who has not made an ass out of herself)
My coworker's an aeronautical science major (that's the professional pilots, in case you didn't know) at my male dominated university. Over the weekend, he had an interview for an internship with an airline (I can't remember which one), and he was telling me about it. He ended up tripping up over one of the major questions of the interview because of an assumption he made, so as we're talking, asks me the question that his interviewer asked him. Here's how it goes.
"You get hired by the airline and it's your first flight with the company. You meet your Captain and the flight attendants and prepare for a flight to Las Vegas. When you land, you don't have any other flights for the day, so you and the crew decide to go out and spend the night on the town. So you get to the hotel and you arrange a time to meet. You get ready and you go down to the lobby where the flight attendants are already waiting. A few minutes later, the elevator door opens and your Captain steps out wearing a nice black dress. What do you say?"
Being my typical I'm-cool-with-everything self, the first question out of my mouth is, "Is the Captain female?" (Which, according to my coworker, is an appropriate response and totally not the one he gave.) After which I said, "'cause if she is, I'd say, 'Ma'am, you look nice tonight, should I have dressed up more?' and if he was male I'd say, 'Wow sir, I didn't know that about you.' but first I'd hope he looked damn good in that dress."
His response, as he told it to me, was more to do with some random crap he said under the false assumption that the Captain was male. The whole time, he said, the female interviewer just smirked at him until he finally caught on.
As funny as this story is (I am totally in love with this airline just for this question), I do feel bad for my coworker. He's been one of the strongest supporters of my club (a women's advocacy group that's probably even more unpopular than our school's Gay-Straight Alliance), and he is definitely one of those spectacular men that we need more of in the world. Sometimes, though, prejudices are ingrained so deep in us that it never occurs to us to consider an alternative. My roommate said she noticed the same thing when she was asked to draw what she thought a scientist looked like in high school. She and her classmates all drew pictures of men. She also, as an aside, made the exact same assumption as my coworker did when I asked her this question.
So... how many of you made the same mistake my coworker and roommate did? And what does that say about the way we perceive gender roles? Just a thought.
~Lockea (who has not made an ass out of herself)