PLANE QUEER
Phil Tiemeyer•PLANE QUEER
Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the
History of Male Flight Attendants
University of California Press
BerkeleyLos AngelesLondon
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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2013 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tiemeyer, Philip James, 1970–.
Plane queer : labor, sexuality, and AIDS in the history of male flight attendants / Phil Tiemeyer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-27476-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-520-27477-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-520-95530-1 (ebook)
1. Flight attendants—United States—History. 2. Flight attendants—Labor unions—United States. Gays—Employment—United States. 4. Sexual orientation—United States. 5. Civil rights—United States—History. I. Title.
HD6073.A432T54 2013
331.761387742—dc232012041959
Manufactured in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100% postconsumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified.
CONTENTS
| List of Illustrations | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Introduction | |
| 1. | The Pre–World War II “Gay” Flight Attendant |
| 2. | The Cold War Gender Order |
| 3. | “Homosexual Panic” and the Steward’s Demise |
| 4. | Flight Attendants and Queer Civil Rights |
| 5. | Flight Attendants, Women’s Liberation, and Gay Liberation |
| 6. | Flight Attendants and the Origins of an Epidemic |
| 7. | The Traynor Legacy versus the “Patient Zero” Myth |
| 8. | Queer Equality in the Age of Neoliberalism |
| Conclusion | |
| Notes | |
| Bibliography | |
| Index |
ILLUSTRATIONS
1.Artist John T. McCoy Jr.’s rendering of Pan American’s first passenger flight
2.“Rodney the Smiling Steward”
3.“Fashion Preview” for an Eastern steward uniform
4.A playful photo and blurb employing homosexual innuendo in Eastern’s company magazine
6.Abuse of a steward by his coworkers in Tale Wind
7.Eastern’s first pursers, 1946, in pilot-inspired military uniforms
8.A 1956 National Airlines advertisement
9.Eastern Air Lines advertisement from 1954
10.The “male stewardess”
11.United Airlines route network, 1985
12.The CDC cluster study graph
13.Gär Traynor’s patch on the AIDS quilt
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the absence of ample archival sources, this book could not have been written without the help of former flight attendants. These men and women sat down with me, sometimes for hours, and recounted their histories with riveting honesty. They detailed not only the highlights of their careers but the many slights they had endured as well. The gay men were particularly insightful, sharing otherwise unrecorded stories of coming out and falling in love on the job, at times fearing ridicule and at other times enjoying the connections of friendships that spanned the globe. When it came to stories of loss—especially during the AIDS crisis—they also shared their pain, and sometimes even guilt, for surviving when their loved ones didn’t. Whatever this book has accomplished in detailing this career owes more to these men and women than to my own work.
I am also indebted to a cadre of archivists across North America who helped me string together various loose threads into a solidly researched narrative. I especially thank Craig Likness at the University of Miami for helping me co-discover my topic in the first place, Bill Gulley at the Walter Reuther Labor Archives in Detroit for patiently explaining the intricacies of labor union structures, the staff at the ONE Archives in Los Angeles for chewing over my topic at lunches that were informative and full of laughter, Cilla Golas at the Association of Professional Flight Attendants Archives for bringing American Airlines’ flight attendant history alive with humor and depth, and James Folts and his colleagues at the New York State Archives for their persistence in tracking down obscure legal files. Thanks also to the following institutions for their generous support: the University of Texas for a Continuing Fellowship, the New York State Archives for a Hackman Research Fellowship, Philadelphia University for a Faculty Research Grant and various other forms of financial support, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for a Guggenheim Fellowship.
One of the joys of writing this book is that I now belong to intellectual institutions where the pursuit of knowledge has overlapped seamlessly with the forging of friendships. The Department of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin was a fantastic intellectual flight school. My dissertation chair, Janet Davis, is a living example of the flight attendants I so admire. She guided me safely through a PhD program with the charm, humor, and devotion that surely made her a great Northwest Airlines stewardess before becoming a historian and, later on, the devoted steward for my academic career. I also couldn’t ask for better colleagues than those I have at Philadelphia University, especially those of us in Ravenhill Mansion. Our assemblage of liberal arts and social science scholars makes for the right blend of synergy and independence that allows fine scholarship and stellar teaching to thrive. My colleagues at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum found the most gentle ways to invite this social historian of sexuality into their fascination of machinery, without ever making me an outsider. I especially thank curators Dom Pisano and Martin Collins, who made my year as a Guggenheim Fellow so collegial. I am also indebted to my friend Collette Williams at NASM, who always had a way of keeping