The Relentless Push to Eliminate Gender at 40,000 ft

Jetstar ditch "Male" and "Female" uniforms

The relentless push to eliminate male and female as gender categories continues unabated with Jetstar becoming the latest company to officially embrace gender fluidity.

In an email sent to staff this month, pilots and flight attendants were advised that male and female uniforms have been replaced by “Set 1” and “Set 2”.

The email read …

“Changes we’re introducing are centred around giving our people greater choice in what they wear so it best represents who they are.

“A ‘set’ is a uniform collection that applies to operational team members in certain roles. Each set includes clothing, footwear and optional make-up and nail polish guidelines.

“What was previously referred to as Female and Male, will now be referred to as Set 1 and Set 2.

“If you believe your current set doesn’t represent who you are as an individual, please speak with your manager so that we can jointly explore options that work for all.”

So, when you join Jetstar, you no longer order a male or female uniform. The airline has evolved beyond such outdated, arbitrary concepts.

The oppressive gender binary of male and female has been replaced by the more enlightened, progressive Set 1 and Set 2 … which, ironically, are also kind of binary.

The internal staff email continues …

“The new guidelines give men the option of wearing natural-looking make-up if they choose to. Women are no longer required to wear make-up. All of our make-up guidelines require a natural, subtle look.”

What won’t be subtle is a male pilot with moustache dressed in skirt and stockings trying to instruct passengers during an emergency.

That’s not me being sarcastic. That’s how a senior Jetstar pilot recently expressed his concerns to me about the airline’s enthusiastic embrace of Woke.

“I wonder - in an emergency situation - if there may be safety implications,” he told me regarding the new gender fluid uniform policy.

“A primary reason for crew wearing a uniform is so that in an emergency passengers know who to take orders from.

“If passengers are meant to have high esteem and trust in their Captain for example, and see a man with a moustache emerge from the cockpit wearing a female uniform and lipstick, will they obey his instruction which could save lives?”

The pilot, who assures me he is not alone in his concerns, makes an interesting point. A tin cylinder containing a couple of hundred people 40,000 ft in the air is probably not the place a company should be focused on deconstructing human sexuality.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s latest report revealed that Jetstar cancelled 8 per cent of its flights in April. And of the flights that actually took off, only 59 per cent arrived on time.

Now that Jetstar have eliminated male and female, they might finally get back to their core business of passenger aviation.

The travelling public can only hope.

Maybe the pilot’s concerns are overblown. Maybe it really doesn’t matter if the bloke flying the plane is wearing pantyhose.

But the deliberate drive to eliminate gender norms is insidious, and must be resisted at every point.

Wherever cultural norms are violated, women and children invariably suffer. The violation of gender norms is a particularly case in point.