4 minute read
Under the Cover
ADDRESSING THE CAREER STEREOTYPE
For years certain jobs have seemed to attract people from the LGBTQ+ community more than others. What might be behind this phenomenon?
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There are LGBTQ+ people working across all manner of professions and environments, as evidenced by our themed features this issue. But some jobs are seen as more stereotypically ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ than others – the most obvious that spring to mind being hairdressers and flight attendants for men, bus drivers and plumbers for women.
The question of why this might be has long been the subject of academic discussion, and we turned to James Ravenhill, a senior lecturer in the School of Applied Social Science at Brighton University, to try to get some answers.
James’ interests lie in LGBTQ+ health and wellbeing, and in gay, bisexual, and trans masculinities, and he has a wealth of knowledge in the various academic theories that lie behind the ‘gay job stereotypes’.
There are many different ways of looking at the issue; one explanation is around “refuge and safety”. Because certain pursuits are deemed by society to be more masculine and others more feminine, “one reason why gay people might end up in careers that are ‘gender discordant’ is because they learn really early that the pursuits more typically associated with people of the other gender provide safer domains,” says James.
“Boys in particular are socialised in the demands of masculinity, what it takes to be a good boy… like chasing the girls, being naughty, troublesome, doing all the gender playing. They learn that that’s what it takes to be a good version of a boy, and when they fail at that the world is really hostile so they find sanctuary with the girls. The girls aren’t bothered about bullying them or calling them poofs, so homophobic discourse is used by men in particular to police boundaries of masculinity.”
One idea James says he loves is that “gay people are free of the gender role constraints that some straight people almost unquestionably feel they are subject to”. He continues: “We get to queer everything. We get to go, ‘I know men are normally bus drivers but I’m a woman and I’m going to be one. Screw you…’ A gay identifying woman goes, ‘I don’t feel constrained by the gender expectations people have of me because I’ve already fucked it all up, look at me, I sleep with women. I’ve already fucked up femininity because women sleep with men.
Another theory addresses the phenomenon of cabin crew, and James gives the example that a working man’s pub in the Midlands could exclude gay men, but “when they take off from Birmingham International airport and they’re in charge of that craft, they get to exclude. It’s their domain.
“Airlines are really interesting because onboard a plane is like a microcosm of gender power relations. There are two or three pilots who are most likely to be men, and they’re in charge, then the cabin crew have a really important safety job but it’s a domestic job too, it’s cleaning and serving.”
He refers to a research paper around cabin crew and it being “a feminised job, they do fairly domestic duties and yet they are in charge of, what, 300 people, including powerful men, so gender plays out really interestingly on a plane. You’ve got the masculinity in the cockpit, the femininity in the cabin. But then these people that are doing this feminine role, if they say you can’t sit there, or you’ve got to sit down, people respond to what they say, so all of a sudden they have this power that their gender on the ground doesn’t afford them.
“What I love about researching gay people, they are quite active in attempting to queer and subvert all the time and I love the idea of a really camp queen trolley dolly, cleaning, serving toasties and then the emergency sign comes on and it’s ‘everybody sit down, you do exactly what I say’ and you’ve got all these men in first class on £300,000 a year in top companies, tough masculinity, golf and the missus and whisky, doing exactly what that cabin queen is saying.”
These are just a couple of the theories that are available, and in themselves rely somewhat on stereotypes. But as James concludes, this is no surprise as it follows a century and a half of post-Industrial Revolution, where men were expected to be the strong workforce, the breadwinners, not to get sick. Women were expected to raise children, be caring and patient. ”Now we are at the point where we are reflecting on the last 50 years – why are gay people still working on airlines and not building sites? [Because building sites] are hostile places.”
