I snuggle down in my cockpit, patting the chest pocket of my flight suit to ensure that my airman certificate is on my body — as required by the regs — and then make a last-minute check of the Notices to Airmen on my flight pad. There’s a light out on a manmade object near my airport and there’s some unmanned aircraft activity nearby. Roger that.
I confirm that my repairman has replaced my lost compass correction card, then I flip on my master switch, and turn on my radio to hear a rare female pilot announce that she’s entering the downwind above my hangar.
To be honest, I never paid attention to the manliness of the language I fly in.
Not, that is, until I attended the Nov. 10, 2021, FAA-sponsored Inclusive Language Summit, the purpose of which, according to the notice published in the Federal Register, was to “present and discuss recommendations the agency has received that promote the institution of inclusive language throughout the FAA.”
It was billed as a platform for public comment and to provide additional recommendations to the FAA and we were told that the agency understands that “language matters.”
Well, language does matter. I know this because language is my business. I spend a lot of time choosing my words. Deciding how to order them. Language is both a spear and a shield, and how we wield them matters.
But language is also sacred, a word which among its many definitions includes “entitled to reverence and respect” and “highly valued and important.” I don’t personally believe that something sacred should be changed on a whim or because of which way the political winds are blowing.
Still, a summit mixing two of my favorite things (aviation and language) seemed a good investment of my time, so I popped over to the FAA’s Facebook page to get the 4-1-1 on how to attend and was greeted with a storm of negative comments. Hundreds of them.
And this was a day before the conference was even slated to begin. What were people upset about without even attending?
Just skimming the comments they seemed to fall into several categories:
- Questioning the necessity of inclusive language;
- Irritation about “wasting” time and money when there are bigger issues the FAA should be dealing with; and
- That it has nothing to do with aviation safety.
Oh. Yeah. And then there was a fourth category: The “normal” flood of partisan political crap that involved more screaming than thinking (from both sides of the political spectrum).
I’m putting everyone on notice: My personal minimums don’t allow for political talk in this column. I’m not going there. Still, there are issues worth discussing here, but to do it we need to keep the cylinder head temps in the green.
On the day of the summit, Brad Mins, the FAA’s deputy administrator, set the stage for what was to come, saying that the current flavor of language — when it comes to gender — is not accurate and the “old language has got to stop.” What followed were three separate panel discussions with time for questions submitted by the audience via a Google Doc.
That said, I found that the panelists were pretty much all members of the same choir singing the same song. Rather than a forum for feedback, I had the sense that I was being presented with justifications for a predetermined course of action.
The gist of that song was that inclusive language builds an inclusive industry, allowing us to include the best and brightest our society has to offer and that this, in turn, will lead to improved safety in the long term.
Now, this isn’t something the FAA just dreamed up. The inclusive language movement has been quietly building up steam for years. In the private sector more and more large companies and organizations are embracing it, and various government agencies have been overhauling their use of language for some time.
And it’s not just us.
The United Nations has what it calls a “system-wide strategy on gender parity,” offering guidance for staff on how to communicate in a gender-inclusive way in the six official languages of the organization.
In global aviation, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has been moving toward gender-neutral language at least since 2001.
But actually doing it is not as simple as saying that it’s the right thing to do.
Our language is ill-equipped to deal with gender neutrality. While compared to some other languages, we have fewer words that specifically denote gender, we have a huge structural problem when it comes to what are called pronouns.
Pronouns are those little baby words that stand in for generic people. Words like “he” and “she.” We also have “it,” but that word is used for inanimate objects.
English simply doesn’t contain a gender-neutral pronoun for a person, so over the centuries we settled into using the masculine form as a default to designate either sex.
The problem with that is there are non-hes who are turned off by using “he” as the default. Worse, there are people who feel that within our industry, this sends a signal that says: No need to apply unless you are one of “us.”
For a time, there was a trend to start using both genders and write “he/she,” but that’s not problem free either. First off, it’s tedious to read or speak and, perhaps more importantly to inclusivity, there are people who don’t identify as being either male or female, so “he/she” fails in its goal to be inclusive. Likewise, changing from “he” to “she” for the default leaves the problem intact.
A related issue we have with the structure of the English language is that nouns are built to signal volume. One airplane. Five airplanes. Therefore, so do pronouns, which are just substitutes for nouns. And it doesn’t end there. Verbs do the same thing, and for proper grammar both the noun (or pronoun) and the verb have to have the same structure — either singular or plural. This is called agreement.
One proposed solution to the pronoun mess is to simply use “they” instead of “he.” But they is a plural pronoun. It always has been — even though some folks will want to convince you this has changed. Some things can’t be so just because we say so folks.
Now, call me a prude, but I don’t think we should sacrifice good grammar for the sake of inclusiveness — although this is exactly what an FAA working group is proposing, along with a range of other changes, some of which are more likely to trigger objections than others.
Now, pronouns aside, “man” or “men,” as I showed you in my intro, still permeate the very fabric of aviation, and the workgroup has a hit list of words they’d like to change. They want to change “manmade” to manufactured or fabricated. Change “manmade obstacle” of sectional chart fame to structural obstacle. “Manned aviation” to traditional aviation. “Chairman” to Chair. “Repairman” to technician. “Unmanned” to uncrewed. “Small unmanned aerial system (sUAS)” to Small Drone System. And “Notices to Airmen” to Notices to Air Mission.
Personally, I think Notices to Air Mission is not only more accurate, but really cool-sounding. “I’m not going on a $100 hamburger run, honey, I have an air mission to complete.” Dare I say for those of us with the Y chromosome, that’s even more masculine? Heck, male pilots might actually start checking them. It’s also handy that it would allow us to update the sensitivity of the language without dumping the acronym NOTAM that we are all used to.
Oh yes, they want to change “airman” to aviator. Now that I have a problem with.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the word aviator. But switching from airman to aviator is simply changing from a masculine term in one language to a masculine term in another language, so I can’t get behind that in the name of inclusion.
You see, in Latin, the -tor suffix denotes masculine, while the -trix suffix denotes feminine. In the pure meaning of the word, an aviator is a male flier. A female flyer is an aviatrix. So switching from airman to aviator isn’t gender neutral.
The solution? Well, we can alway fall back on “pilot.”
Now, of interest, the FAA actually isn’t free to change all of the language it wants to. For instance, the word “airmen” is in the federal regulations. It’s written into the law. Congress would have to change the terminology of the regulations. But the FAA could change language in all its non-regulatory publications: Training materials, Advisory Circulars, its website, and so on.
I’m sure this will be an unpopular statement, but really, where’s the harm in de-masculating our aviation language? How does it hurt any of us to have a pilot certificate, rather than an airman certificate? How does it hurt any of us to dodge those pesky structural objects instead of avoiding manmade obstacles? Would my A&P’s ego be crushed if the regs classified him as a “technician” rather than a repairman?
And with most documents either online, or frequently re-printed, such as charts every couple of months and the AIM every year, there really isn’t a cost issue. So I really can’t see that there’s any harm to any of us.
But, on the flip side, if there is even the possibility that our man-centric language makes even one person feel unwelcome in our industry, well… that’s not good. For anyone.
But there’s a much larger issue here. And it’s not about the changes. It’s about how the changes are coming about.
Speaking for myself, this event on inclusion left me feeling…well…excluded. There was a lot of talk about how male-dominated our industry has been in the past and how much it still is today. There were statistics brandished around about the number of males vs. the number of females in aviation. The lack of racial and ethnic minorities in the biz was also strongly highlighted. The difficulties of recruiting young people to the field was talked about.
Reading between the lines the message was clear: The problem is that a bunch of old white guys dominate the scene.
But as an old white guy myself, I noticed my shade, my gender, and my age were noticeably lacking at this summit. There were three panel discussions made up of a total of 10 women and three men. The moderator was female as well. Of the three men, only one was white, and he was there representing another minority in the gender wars.
If I and my kind are the majority, how does the FAA expect to get us on board with these changes when we aren’t even part of the conversation?
A&P’s are mechanics, not technicians. We fix broken things with the various skills we had to develop in order to earn our A&P licenses. AMT’s replace parts that they’ve looked up the part numbers for on their cell phones.
Many state library associations are also debating pronouns and inclusiveness. One of the presenters admonished us to use “they” to refer to (dare I type it?) her. I asked her if she had multiple personality disorder. She didn’t. I informed her that if she did, I would refer to her as “they,” but since she is singular and wants to be gender neutral, I would have no problem referring to her as “it.” The English language shouldn’t have its singular and plural pronouns mashed up just because their are tens of thousands of people with gender dysphoria. Get used to being an “it” or move somewhere that speaks a language that has pronouns you’re comfortable with. I would have suggested the same to the FAA panel, if I had known about earlier.
Seems a total waste of FAA time and money! We are all. HuMAN , how do they propose to fix that?
I’ve long felt that “aviatrix” sounds awkward. In fact, I never hear women use it. In my many years of editing and reading the 99s’ magazine, I don’t recall any articles using the term. In French, we use aviateur and aviatrice. In modern English, a pilot is a pilot, just as a teacher is a teacher, etc. It’s identifying the person’s skill, not their gender.
Your tax dollars hard at work, by people who could probably not fly their way out of a wet paper bag…..
An incredibly tone-deaf and arrogant editorial. Yet another old white guy claiming nothing needs to change because the old white guys think everything is just fine the way it is……
Pitiful decadence…
Social Justice is another name for socialism. You change the name and you change the outcome. These SJW folks just want to tear down the fabric of our nation. Can we say Bolshevik revolution??!!
Where is the solution? It is in search of the problem!
PS: I did find the Article’s Title to be inaccurate. The FAA isn’t trying to emasculate, it is trying to come up with terms that are inclusive of the other half of the population. A noble intent.
The FAA is lead turning this too much. When the Powers That Be determine and put into common use non-sexist replacements for woman and human, then the FAA should tackle this issue.
I can only wonder if the Coast Guard is planning a similar event and plans to retool such words such as Coxswain?
WoMAN. WoMEN. HuMAN. Honestly… I’m an old white guy who understands and am sympathetic to the angst. I am also known to call a group of women ‘guys’ – as some women do.
Let’s focus on getting a greater percentage of women into aviation. 7% is simply not enough. More women in aviation means more people in aviation and that will help to sustain the entire recreational field and the facilities that serve us.
I think there are now 66 sexes, not two … how are THEY gonna deal with THAT ?
At Airventure 2021, the Administrator — you know, the head ‘chicken choker’ — had the gaul to tell a Theatre-in-the-Woods filled with Airmen that LODA would take four years, at least, to fix. You broke it overnight but it’ll now have to run the administrative gauntlet … for what purpose? You guys here (sic) have no idea of how hard I worked to throttle myself from jumping up and reminding him that HE could fix it with one Executive Order.
As others have aptly pointed out, air machines do not discriminate … good pilots were, are and will always be good pilots no matter what. Let’s move on to something PRODUCTIVE, Mr. Dickson … OMG … you’d better change YOUR last name while we’re at it, dude!
I don’t believe this discussion in nonsense, but brings aviation into the present awareness. To say there has not been gender discrimination is simply not true and documented several ways. The discussion is needed to keep aviation a respected field. I would use the word updating instead of emasculating. In the same way a chef, nurse, doctor, president is used.
But it’s perfectly acceptable to say “hey guys”
There are a number of words in our English language that end in “man” or “men” that are not gender specific. “Freshman” is the first that comes to mind. Another is “ombudsman”. If fact, if you check Merriam-Webster for the meaning of “airman”, you get “a civilian or military pilot, aviator, or aviation technician” — nothing in that definition indicates that only a male can rise to the level of airman. Sorry — I believe this is a moot point. There are more important things we should be focused on.
It would be really nice if the FAA would focus on adding value to the aviation world rather than focusing on being woke and PC.
I really don’t care if the FAA amends its language to be ‘inclusive’ over time if and when new forms, circulars, notams etc. etc. have to be created and distributed anyway. But the very real problems with the FAA go far, far beyond its ‘lack of inclusiveness” and no woke/PC initiative from the FAA will fix those problems.
Unfortunately, the FAA’s list of failures is long and growing, and it would be really nice if correcting these failures would be the focus instead of this garbage. The miserable situation surrounding the Boeing 737 Max is an excellent example of such a failure. Systemic failures on Boeing’s part should have been detected and stopped by the FAA, but that would have required FAA staff to actually make an effort – and that obviously did not happen.
So in the aftermath, what does the FAA bureaucracy do? Does it restructure its effort to focus where it really matters? Nope!
The FAA accepts no blame for its failures whatsoever and instead showers aviation and specifically Boeing with even more blizzards of paper and regulations. The FAA’s failures already cost hundreds of people their lives and now these paper blizzards will cost thousands of American jobs as well as American designers and builders of airplanes will have to jump through many more useless hoops. And why? So that the FAA bureaucracy can deflect blame for its failures and prove to its masters in DC ‘that it is proactive in the name of safety’.
And to score a few additional, political points the FAA also wholeheartedly embraces this silly drive for ‘inclusiveness’.
In the meantime, American aviation continues to suffer under the FAA’s stifling bureaucracy and over-regulation. Can you imagine a world (other than Cuba) where the typical new, private car is home-made? Of course not! But thanks to the FAA’s regulatory ‘efforts’, the typical new, private airplane is indeed home-made – and typically (but not exclusively) built by ageing, white men.
Accordingly, thanks to the FAA’s regulatory ‘efforts’, grassroots aviation is dying as young folks find other (and more affordable) things to do with their time. And who can blame them? The antique, outdated (but FAA-certified) relics available at unaffordable prices simply do not attract the attention of young folks, who are growing up in, and adapting to a sophisticated, (non-FAA-regulated) digital world where virtual reality is increasingly accessible.
That is the real problem and no amount of politically correct ‘inclusiveness’ will fix that.
How many of these people on the panel hold airmen’s certificates?
There are several dynamics going on here.
First, the FAA has decided to clean up old phraseology, and that’s not a bad thing. Language does matter. Some of these regs were written a long time ago and while the INTENT (probably) wasn’t meant to exclude anyone, some of it does come across as a bit insensitive. This isn’t illegal, it is just bad manners.
Having been involved in government, I have seen that a tremendous amount of time – and hence taxpayer dollars – are spent on non-productive meetings, many of which are called mostly because they can call a meeting and avoid any personal blame for whatever comes (or doesn’t) out of it.
In addition to the “avoid blame” part, meetings also let reports to supervisors show that they went to seven meetings in four cities last week, so they are WORKING HARD!!! If you are a bureaucrat, “busy work” is your friend.
(But look at the bright side – everyone working on this won’t be out in the unheated, un-airconditioned field doing ramp checks . . . )
Fixing the FAA’s language won’t save or end the world, but it can make the (aviation) world a slightly more pleasant and inclusive place to be.
Best regards to all . . .
Feels like a rational perspective.
Looking back over the past 50+ years of my life in the skies, I can only remember a single person who expected special treatment because they weren’t “like the rest of us”. They received that special treatment and ended up running a Cessna 150 out of gas about 10 miles south of KRVS while they were instructing a Private Pilot candidate on their dual cross-country. (Something about forgetting to account for the ever-present Oklahoma winds during flight planning.) Yet I flown, and have provided instruction to students of all shapes, sizes, genders, nationalities, and personal preferences. I’ve never heard a question about “inclusive language” raised and never heard it brought up during any safety briefing, yet everyone did their jobs to the best of their abilities.
I think most people begin thinking about aviation before they are 20ish; talking with folks in this sample-set doesn’t seem to raise the specter of exclusion because of language. Cost, availability, critical thinking, personal responsibility, commitment, education, and similar topics are more likely to be discussed. I’ve also noticed that within the non-male gender group, people that start pursuing an aviation career are marginalized by others in the group. Peer pressure is much greater than simple language.
As an industry and occupation, we’re making good progress in targeting under-represented segments of our population and making meaningful progress toward equal opportunities for all. I don’t see this new progress being retarded or halted simply because the new pilot holds a certificate labeling them an Airman.
With the flood of unmanned aerial vehicles and need to safely integrate them into the shared airspace, isn’t there a better way to spend our limited safety dollars than to rewrite our documents in neutral language?
“ if there is even the possibility that our man-centric language makes even one person feel unwelcome in our industry, well… that’s not good. For anyone.”
BS, if a person is so emotionally damaged and cognitively weak as to feel “unwelcome” by a word we really don’t need them in aviation.
See how I did that? Gender neutral words all, but it’s still a stupid statement. Whenever I hear someone start a discussion on any subject with the phrase “ If it saves one …..” I stop listening because that person is illogical, has no concept of relative worth and therefore can’t be reasoned with.
In the midst of awaiting certification of safety enhancing devices (an autopilot for me) being measured in years now, and from what I’ve experienced in the most recent years the FAA has practically stopped doing anything productive. But the FAA somehow has the resources, funding, and personnel to address inclusive language. Aviation safety is no longer top priority in this organization.
Emasculating? Really?
I am a female pilot. I have flown with many other pilots, male and female. Though I have observed closely, I have never seen a male pilot use any part of his anatomy that I do not also possess. As noted in your post and in most of the comments, women have no more problem flying an airplane than do men. Since obtaining a pilot certificate requires acquiring certain skills that are measured to a particular standard, most (but not all) male pilots recognize that a female pilot is as qualified as they are. As others have stated, I have never been questioned as a pilot because of my sex. That does not eliminate the problem of the perception of the general public.
Exclusive language becomes a problem when we claim to be recruiting young people to fill the professional pilot deficit. If the language is conspicuously masculine, we may be discouraging over half the population of talented youth from even thinking about becoming pilots because the image and language of “pilot” is conspicuously male. Certainly that is changing as the public sees more female flight crew in the cockpit of commercial airliners. AOPA, EAA and other organizations are actively promoting inclusive gender-neutral programs, with great success. So sure, we could just wait around for change to occur naturally, and let more enlightened areas of endeavor scarf up the most talented young women.
So why such a reactionary attitude toward adapting our language to modern usage, where women can be in the cockpit or the control tower or the shop? Or the board room, the surgery or the construction site? A dynamic language like English (which I, too, love) changes over time. So, like, what’s a firkin? No fair switching to another language (a dead one, yet) to redefine “aviator.” It’s a gender-neutral English word. There are many others, and that seems to be the least awkward approach. The pronoun problem goes way beyond aviation, and I agree that using “their” as a singular sets one’s teeth on edge. Probably we need some new pronouns. A linguist like yourself should be able to devise better than the awful he/she. You will notice that “she” includes “he.” How inclusive can you get?
How is any of these comments political??
“Oh. Yeah. And then there was a fourth category: The “normal” flood of partisan political crap that involved more screaming than thinking (from both sides of the political spectrum).”
There is nothing about any of those comments you sited that are politically based.
Now THIS: ” System Wide Strategy ON Gender Parity” Crap on the other hand DOES appear political
since I am certain they will try to use legislative moves to ram this nonsense down the public’s throat.
I agree with both of you, William and Jim.
I have trained a good number of female pilots and not one of them felt left out because of the language. What left them out was attitude of many male pilots that didn’t want them out there in the skies. The aircraft knows not the gender, ethnicity, sexual persuasion, or any other identifier people want to place on a pilot. The aircraft is safely flown by a competent pilot. Changing words will not cause the skies to magically fill with a rainbow of pilots. Finding ways to include those neglected areas of society that want to fly and get them in an airplane. There are a great number of old white guys that don’t like to fly. So let them strut around on the ground and send me people with a passion for wanting to learn to fly safely. Those are the people I want in the sky with me, an old white guy who learned to fly from a pilot of a defeated air force and became a pilot in the US Air Force.
An incredible and right article. Please receive my best congratulations for that, William
Awesome article, William! You’ve done your homework, and presented a very insightful and entertaining look into this divisive topic. Thank you for omitting the obvious political slant that would be so easy to slide into, so allow me to go there. First, I’d like to compliment the FAA for stacking the summit with so many sociology and gender studies majors. OK….cheap shot, not even a challenge.
Second, I would like to observe that when a program such as “Inclusive Language” is the darling of the party in office, it WILL gain traction amongst the minions that carry out such party’s mandates, regardless of how much said policy contributes to a particular agency’s core mission. The folks at the top of these agencies are POLITICAL APPOINTEES, so politics IS an issue, as much as we would have it otherwise.
Direct quote from the FAA website: “Our continuing mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.” Obviously, based on the Facebook posts, I am not alone in spotting the disconnect between that mission and this initiative. But the FAA is not alone. Our military is hopelessly lost down the same political rabbit hole, while our adversaries continue to surpass us in all metrics that win wars. But I digress.
So it’s only a matter of time until a newly-issued “pilot’s certificate” no longer shows a photo of the Wright Brothers in the background. Maybe they can squeeze in a photo of the brothers and their sister Katharine. Or just leave it blank, like the minds of so many in government.
Your closing observation rings sadly true for this reader: “But as an old white guy myself, I noticed my shade, my gender, and my age were noticeably lacking at this summit.” We’re not just lacking, William, we’re invisible. But I guess we will just keep contributing to society, until they carry us away.
PS…I’m not a misogynist, xenophobic white male. OK, one third of that statement is true…you pick.
I trained and flew with very capable women pilots in the Air Force and the airlines, and like to think I was a good mentor and friend. Shared a cockpit and worked well with people of color and various sexual preferences. And for me what mattered was not gender, race, or ethnicity, but skill, attitude, and ability. And when the rubber hits the runway, that is still what matters, regardless of how the politicos would have it.
Well writ.
Well written! Sadly the woke woke minions have now infested the FAA