THE TRANS TALK
By Katrina McGie
The Trans Talk
VFC Dispatch and Commercial Pilot-in-Training
L
et’s talk Trans. Trans World Airlines? No. Transavia? Nah. Transair? Still no!
We’re here to talk about the fantastic support that the Victoria Flying Club has shown me in my journey from being a non-binary person named Michael to the girl I was always meant to be. Let's be honest: aviation hasn’t always been the most inclusive industry in the world, and even now the percentage difference between self-identifying male pilots and self-identifying female pilots is extreme. When I started at the VFC, I was already openly nonbinary, which meant that I didn’t consider myself to fit in either category of the man/woman gender binary. I was undoubtedly a little nervous coming into aviation as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. When I asked my co-workers and the Club's members to please not refer to me as “Sir” or “Mr.”, I was honestly expecting it to result in some questions, comments,
Well folks,
or even uncomfortable moments. What I wasn't expecting was to be overwhelmingly met with simple and enthusiastic “All right!”s or “Will do!”s. Of course, being pilots, I even had a couple “Wilco”s. It was fantastic. But I was always Mike. One of the FOUR Mike’s at the VFC. Well folks, we have one less Mike now.
JAN & FEB 2022
If you ask the majority, if not all, pilots from a minority or female pilots if they’ve ever faced any discrimination and the answer will be yes.
With that, I’d like to formally introduce myself as the VFC's newest Dispatch member: I’m Katrina, but you can call me Kat, and I use She/Her pronouns! It’s been great to meet all of you. Some of you may have already guessed this was going to come out sooner or later, but the reaction from everyone here, both staff and members alike, has been fantastic. Of course I have had multiple people bring up to me “You know this life will make aviation that much harder for
we have one less Mike now
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you, right? The sad truth of it is, it will ABSOLUTELY make everything in aviation harder.
Pilots in the LGBTQ+ community face similar issues and consistently have to prove to their colleagues that they deserve to be here. But things are changing, and in 2016, the FAA changed their wording for Trans people from suffering from a Gender Identity Disorder to the much more accepted term Gender Dysphoria. This makes for a
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