10 LGBTQ+ People in Aerospace You Should Know

LGBTQ+ people have been part of aviation and space science for centuries. Today’s episode is a bit of a departure from our normal format. Special guest Joalda Morancy rejoins host Sean Mobley to spotlight 10 individuals in aerospace past and present who are part of the LGBTQ+ umbrella.

This list of 10 people is not meant to be comprehensive. If you were making your own list, who would you include? Let us know! Contact us via email at podcast at museumofflight dot org. We’d love to hear your opinions!

In Season 3 of The Flight Deck, we’re sharing stories of LGBTQ+ people in aerospace.

Background image: Joalda Morancy

Link to donate to The Museum of Flight

Link to Joalda Morancy’s episode of the podcast

Link to Joalda’s book Aliens

Link to Joalda’s website

Transcript

SEAN MOBLEY:       The Flight Deck is made possible by listeners like you. Thank you to the donors who sustain the Museum of Flight. To support this podcast and the museum’s other educational initiatives, visit museumofflight.org/podcast.

[Music]

SM:     Hello. And welcome to The Flight Deck, the podcast of the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. I am your host, Sean Mobley. Now, we’re getting to the end of Season 3 of The Flight Deck which has been focusing on LGBTQ+ stories in aerospace. But before we wrapped up, I wanted to take a moment to highlight some LGBTQ+ who did real interesting things in aerospace, but that for whatever reason didn’t get a whole episode. I mean, the reality is there are so many folks to talk about and only a handful of episodes. This felt like a good way to spotlight more people in the past, present, and maybe the future of aerospace. And speaking of the future of aerospace, joining me in this discussion is the wonderful Joalda Morancy. Hello there, Joalda.

JOALDA MORANCY:          Hello. Excited to be here.

00:01:15

SM:     Joalda, for listeners who’ve been listening to this season, actually participated in a full interview that you can check out a few weeks ago earlier on the feed if you want to learn a little bit more about their background. But do you still want to give the new listeners a very quick summary of who you are and what you’re about?

JM:      Yeah. So, my name Joalda Morancy. I currently am an aerospace engineer at Blue Origin working on our lunar lander program. Super exciting. And I’m also an author and I write children’s non-fiction books.

SM:     So, the format for this episode is going to be a little different. Joalda and I have each come up with a list of five people that we wanted to add a little spotlight to. And they can be engineers, they can be scientists, they can be fiction authors. They can be involved in the culture around aerospace, not even just people flying the planes themselves. And so, we’re going to take turns going back and forth sharing these folks and what we think is interesting about them.

00:02:20

And listeners, I will invite you to share your response. If there’s someone you think should be added to this list, go ahead and send an e-mail to podcast@museumofflight.org and let me know. With that, are you ready, Joalda?

JM:      Yes.

SM:     Well, I’ll go ahead and start then. And I’m going to do a deep dive here. We’re going to go way, way back before airplanes actually existed, all the way to the Italian Renaissance. And I’m going to talk about Leonardo da Vinci; I think one of the coolest dreamers in aerospace. Wouldn’t you agree?

JM:      Definitely agree. I would agree.

SM:     One of my favorite things here at the Museum of Flight is that when you walk into the main lobby, you look up and you see this – I mean, you can only call it a flying machine. Right? It’s a model of a da Vinci ornithopter. He’s a well-known doodler, inventor, painter. And a lot of his drawings were around flying contraptions. Like, I’ve seen one that’s, like, basically a corkscrew [chuckles] that’s a helicopter idea.

00:03:28

The one that we have here at the museum is a model that is basically, like, think of like, you’re doing abductors or something, or pull ups. And as you’re pulling up on the bar, it’s making the wings flap. It’s so fascinating. The scientists, I think, have done math to show that the amount of force a person would need to put out compared to their, like, mass of the person, it’s not a functional design. [Chuckles]

JM:      Yeah. [Chuckles]

SM:     But it’s still so fascinating. But a lot of people don’t realize that Leonardo da Vinci, in 1476, he was accused of a crime called sodomy. A complicated word. But he basically was put on trial for sodomy with a group of several other men. And they had the charges dropped against them because one of the men was connected to Medici Family. Who, if you don’t know, the Medici’s were just a very powerful family in the area at the time. So, it’s likely that saved his bacon. And who know if history could have been very different because he was only 24. I think I said that. I know at the beginning of his life. And we would have been deprived of just an amazing artist and thinker—

JM:      Yes.

SM:     …if things had gone differently.

JM:      This is, like, one of the first times I’ve heard about this. I’ve, like, heard someone else mention it, but that’s so crazy to me. But…

00:04:58

SM:     Well, and it gets even more interesting when you go to the art side of things, like the people that he posed, had pose for models for the female paintings were often men. And he just… He had them strike the pose, and then painted them presenting feminine.

JM:      Wow. That’s so interesting.

SM:     That’s my deep cut there. What you got?

JM:      Yeah. So, I guess the first person I’ll talk about is Doctor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. And so, she is a physics professor at the University of New Hampshire. And I think… I believe she’s the first black woman to hold, like, a 10-year track position in physics, ever, which is – she’s, like, pretty young which is, I think, incredible, and also insane at the same time, that this is, like, a more recent accomplishment.

But I, like, kind of, discovered her, like, back when I was, like, more active in social media. And she – something I love about her work is that she not only does, like, particle physics and cosmology research, and then, like, also, like, [unintelligible 00:06:12] strong and stuff like that, even though she’s mainly a theoretical researcher. She, like, does, like, a lot of, like, feminist philosophy and research and ties a lot of that back into the work that she does within physics. So, she’s black, and queer, and Jewish. And she likes to tie all that back into how that… Like, how her identity affects the science that she does.

00:06:40

And so, a couple of things that I really like from her: She published a book a couple of years ago called The Disordered Cosmos. And she, kind of, does a deep dive into her, like, science background and also her identity and what-not. And then recently, I think last year, she published this resource called Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy. And it’s, like, a bibliography that kind of like, takes a bunch of publications by a black woman in, like, physics and astronomy and puts all these publications… Or, I guess, what’s the word I’m looking for? She makes them super easily accessible since the amount of, like, black women in general in the field is, like, very, very low. And so, like, being able to uplift the research they were doing in the field is super important. And she is, like, a big part of that.

So, yeah, I think she’s, like, generally awesome. And I love, like, seeing all her perspectives on, like… I think a lot of the times in, like, science, we tend to see people say, like, ‘Oh, I’m going to only focus on the science.’ Like, I don’t want to think about politics. That doesn’t pertain to the work I do, when, before anything, like, our identity comes first before any of the work we do. So, it’s great to see a professor really, like, integrating those two subjects into the work they do.

SM:     When you say cite, you mean, that’s C-I-T-E, right?

JM:      Yes. Cite. Yeah.

SM:     Why is that so important in academia that these works get cited?

00:08:15

JM:      Yeah. Currently, like, the field is still… There’s so much work to be done in the field to, like, have it be super representative of, like, the people within our worl-, like, it’s – I guess science, or physics in general is just very, once again, pretty white and male. And so, having this resource that is easily accessible that you can go to to find these black women who are making strides in this field, but may not get the same visibility as, like, their white or male counterparts I think is, like, extremely important, and something that I personally care a lot about. Yeah.

SM:     All right. The next person I’m going to spotlight is a pilot named Karen Ulane. Now, Karen is a transgender woman. And she was a pilot for the Army in Vietnam. Very decorated. She earned the air medal with eight clusters. And she was even a pilot instructor.  The reason I bring that up is it just shows the level of skill that she had reached that she was being trusted to train the next group of pilots to go and fly. Now, this was all when she was presenting as male.

Now, a little later on, in 1968, she joined Eastern Airlines as a pilot and rose through the ranks there over the course of about a decade. And in 1980, she underwent what we would today call gender confirmation surgery and, kind of, began the process of presenting as female. She is, I think, one of the most important people that doesn’t get talked about because she was fired by her airline after the surgery. And she sued Eastern Airlines under the Civil Rights Act. And she actually won. She won that she had been discriminated against. Okay?

00:10:07

And that lawsuit, it’s really interesting stuff. Basically, the airline, for example, made the argument that she had changed into a different person when she underwent the surgery. And they also said that her presence would be… It would cause distress and, kind of, undue notoriety that they didn’t want associated with their brand. And the judge pointed out that an Eastern Airline pilot and his wife, a different pilot, a year or two earlier had posed in Playboy. And Eastern had no problem with that.

JM:      Oh, wow.

SM:     But they did have a problem with this. And so, the judge ruled in Karen’s favor which would have set the precedent that transgender identities were protected under the Civil Rights Act in 1980’s. Fortunately, it got overturned in appeal later on. And so, that set the opposite precedent; that transgender identities were not protected under the Civil Rights Act. And that didn’t get changed until quite a bit later. But really, an important legal battle that took place. And a fascinating just, kind of, insight. Because of the lawsuit, her life is better documented than a lot of people are. So, a great and interesting person.

JM:      Wow. It’s so interesting to me, like, when I hear about these cases that, like, these, like, companies are more worried about their own, like, future instead of, like, the harm or, like, the discrimination that these people who are undergoing, like, a major, like, identity shift are going under. So, it’s so wild to me that they’re, like, only looking out for themselves instead of the person who was much more under danger. And I guess I can go with my next person.

00:11:57

This is a science fiction author. Her name is Becky Chambers. And I think she’s very popular for a book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but also her second book, A Psalm for the Wild-Built. And I think it’s very interesting to, like, highlight just sci-fi authors in general only because I feel like it’s one of, like, the best places where you can create, like, your own representation and get, have it put out into, like, a wide audience if that makes sense. Becky does, like, a lot of representation of the different characters and different gender identities and sexualities within her books which is why I enjoyed them in the first place.

And then it also kind of reminds me of some other books I, like, have recently read including this one book by Martha Wells and the Murderbot series. And Martha Wells herself isn’t queer, but in her book there’s, like, a lot of, like, queer representation. I think a lot of people think about whether the main character could be, like, asexual representation. And then, also, you get to see, like, different gender identities within the book which is super cool to see in a sci-fi setting.

But as someone who, like, loves to read a lot, I think seeing the things that she’s doing, it inspires me to… Or, how do I word this? It not only, like, helps me, like, appreciate that the representation exists in the field. Because I feel like science fiction also has been, like, taken over by, like, a very specific group of people. But also, like, there is this future where queer people are able to, like, look proudly in the identities they exist. And they’re just, like, just one other part of society if that makes sense compared to, like… I feel like today’s climate where we’re constantly fighting for just the right to exist and be seen. But, yeah.

00:13:56

SM:     Now, we talked about that a lot in the last interview you and I did about, kind of, the inspiration and aspirational nature of a lot of sci-fi at least, as far as LGBTQ+ representation goes.

JM:      Exactly. It’s one of my favorite outlets, at least, for seeking representation. And I feel like – once again, like I said, since, like, you’re able, to, like, get those stories out to such a wide audience and, like, get your stories in bookstores and what-not, it’s, like, a great way to help other people who are not, like, really exposed to our community understand, like, who we are, where we come from, etcetera.

SM:     And if people want to dive into that, they should listen to the other interview I did with you, Joalda.

My next person is an astronomer, astrophysicists, more specifically, named Nergis Mavalvala. And Nergis is an astrophysicist, like I said, currently at MIT. She’s actually the dean of the MIT School of Science. Which my conception of MIT is that it’s all the school of science, but. [Chuckles]

JM:      I recently learned there’s, like… They have, like, a writing program over there now.

SM:     They do?

JM:      Yeah. It might be science writing. So…

00:15:15

SM:     Yeah. Hey, I think that’s great. I mean, the adage that we should have sent more poets to the moon I agree with. I think that’s – and science communication which is something we talked about a lot in your interview too.

JM:      Yes.

SM:     We need good writers who are able to effectively get info out. But as to Nergis Mavalvala, she was born in Pakistan and came to the U.S. to pursue her studies. And what’s really known for, she did a lot of work with LIGO which is Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. It’s a set of observatories. One of them is actually here in Washington State. The other is in Louisiana. And they basically… And these are huge, by the way. The observatories are several kilometers long just in terms of the tools that they use. And they use lasers to measure gravitational waves. And gravitational waves are ripples in space-time fabric.

You can’t see me, but I’m, like, grinning right now because this is just, like… Truly, it feels like sci-fi stuff. And they’re actually doing this work. But what it does is it gives us a look at the universe in a way that the visible spectrum can’t. And so, that’s really the purpose of this kind of observatory. And she was actually on the team that first observed these gravitational waves. [Coughs] Excuse me. And then went onto work for a number of years on refining LIGO’s tools and techniques. Like, one of the issues when you’re dealing with lasers is it gets very hot. So, how do you keep everything cool efficiently so that you can have more accurate readings and stuff like that?

00:16:54

JM:      I did a project on LIGO in high school.

SM:     You were so much smarter than me in high school. [Chuckles]

JM:      [Chuckles] I don’t know if we should give myself that much credit. The paper was okay. But it’s just cool how awesome those projects are. And then, like, that we get to see people from queer background being part of that.

My next person will be Jane Rigby, or Doctor Jane Rigby. And she is a project scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope. And she is queer. And I think she’s super interesting only – not only because of this, but one of the main reasons is because there’s, like, a lot of controversy over the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope because James Webb was part of the ‘lavender scare’ which was kind of, like, a push to remove anyone who, like, showed any signs of, like, homosexuality or who were queer in general away from their jobs and, like, leave them just, like… It was basically, like, a homophobic outing of a lot of people within their positions of, like, science and what-not.

And so, it’s to have someone who’s openly lesbian at, like, the head of this project, I think, is super empowering. And she actually has one quote that I really love. [Chuckles]

00:18:14

And I think, so basically, she was being asked about the future for queer scientists in this field of astronomy and what-not. And she said, “Do fabulous science, be fabulous, and be kind.” which I think is a great motto for all of us to follow. But, yeah.

I think – it’s stuff like that that, like… I have lots of thoughts on the whole renaming JWST, as what most people refer to it now instead of saying a whole name. But I think it’s incredibly important to know that, like, despite the pushback from, like, leadership who doesn’t seem to understand why it’s important to not, I guess, uplift. Like, homophobic science leaders. Like, you get to see people like Jane just, like, being her authentic self despite the, like, terrible, I guess, history revolving, like, the person this telescope was named after. She’s super awesome.

SM:     The ‘lavender scare’ is itself a fascinating moment in U.S. history. Basically, there was a conspiracy theory that laws were passed on that when the Russians captured Berlin, they found a list that Adolf Hitler was keeping of all homosexuals in the U.S. and was going to use it to blackmail these Americans into being turncoats for the Russians. And federal policy was passed based on this conspiracy theory that led to these lavender scares. The idea being that they could be leveraged essentially. So, we’ve got to get rid of them. Got to get them out of the government.

00:19:55

JM:      Yeah. Yeah.

SM:     My next person is Vernice Armour. Now, Vernice is the first black female combat pilot here in the United States. She had had a very interesting career even before that distinction. She became a Marine Corps officer. But before that, she was a police officer in Tennessee. She was the first or the only black woman on a motorcycle squad, at least in her precinct. So, that was in the nineties. And then she went on to earn her wings in 2001. And she flew helicopters. She flew the AH-1W SuperCobra. Because during a few tours during Operation Iraqi Freedom, I think she had two deployments in combat zones. So, this was really when women were not even allowed necessarily to be in combat. And we’ve talked about women like that before. We’ve interviewed one. And I’ll leave a link to that episode in the show notes about her story of being in a combat zone when she wasn’t supposed to be. But anyway.

So, she earned her wings in 2001, became a Marine Corps Officer, was this pilot, and now she’s a motivational speaker. She’s out there in the world sharing her story and encouraging other people to pursue what it is they want. And actually, she was in a program here. She gave… She would participate in a panel at the Museum of Flight talking about her life and career alongside other women in military aviation.

JM:      Ooh. I am not as into the military aviation history as I’d like to be. So that is super cool to hear about. I’m going to talk about Franklin Kameny. Hopefully I’m getting his last name right. And he was an astronomer, but later turned into one, like, one of the more popular, like, gay rights activists due to his background. So, basically, he was an astronomer. And I think he got his, like, PhD in, like, astronomy and physics from Harvard.

00:22:03

But basically, as he was doing his research, during the ‘lavender scare’, he was, like, questioned by, like, his, I guess, superiors about, like, his sexuality. And he didn’t respond. And they basically fired him because they thought he was gay. And he was. But he just didn’t, like, give into their harassment. And so, he brought a case to the Supreme Court. And I think it was, like, the first case regarding sexuality to be brought to the Supreme Court and, like, sued because obviously of the discrimination. And unfortunately, he lost. But this led into him, like, getting more into gay rights activism and what-not, which was super interesting to read about when I was doing some research on him.

And he also was, I think, the first White House protests for gay rights. And I think just, like, maybe, like, a decade before Stonewall happened. It’s reflecting to me that, like, on the basis of someone’s identity, that was enough to just get them fired. And that also, a case where they were obviously discriminated against lost. And, I don’t know. It’s just, like… I just don’t understand. And I’m sure many other people feel the same way of, like, why people are so scared to let people live their authentic lives and their authentic selves. And we have to, like, go through so much. He just wanted to do, like, astronomy research. He just wanted to, like, study the stars and do [unintelligible 00:23:31] astronomy. But just because of something that had nothing to do with other people, like, it didn’t affect their lives whatsoever, he was prevented that opportunity.

00:23:43

And even though I’m sure he enjoyed his time as, like, a gay rights activist, I don’t think – it shouldn’t have been his job to, like, fight for basic workers’ rights. And I think also, he, like, also was part of, like, the fight against the American Psychiatric Association to, like, not classify homosexuality in general as, like, a mental disorder which is still also crazy to me. Like, anytime I read this, I get so frustrated and upset. But it’s just such – I guess it’s just history.

SM:     A common thing that you will hear in the world if you are LGBT today is essentially, you know, it doesn’t matter. You should leave it at home and not talk about it at work. And it’s like, only a few years ago, you – here’s an example of somebody, and he was not alone, who was forced to talk about it at work.

JM:      Yeah.

SM:     That could be – that’s a whole other podcast.

JM:      Yeah

SM:     That really isn’t on topic for the Museum of Flight. But it’s so… I really think people need to understand their history when you say things like that.

JM:      Exactly. And I’ll quickly just add that there’s, like, such a double standard because, like, you see people who are not queer talking about, like, their homes lives and their wives and their kids and what-not.

00:25:10

And because it’s socially acceptable, it’s not seen as talking about inappropriate things in work. It’s just seen as normal. But as soon as someone deviates from that normality, it’s suddenly, like, the hugest problem. And people are now uncomfortable. And it’s not work appropriate. And it’s ridiculous. But, yeah. A little something I just thought to rant there. [chuckles]

SM:     Well, it’s the perfect tie-in to my last person and that is Margaret Witt. So, Margaret Witt was in the Air Force. She was actually serving here at Joint Base Lewis–McChord here just outside of Seattle. And in 2004, she was outed without her consent. Essentially, she was having an affair with a woman who was married. And the husband of the other woman who, found out, and called the base and said, this is what’s happening.

JM:      Wow.

SM:     And she was honorably discharged. So, in military terms, that means she was basically let go well. It could have gone much worse. But she sued. Notice, by the way, a common thread; there’s a lot of lawsuits in this.

JM:      Yeah.

SM:     But she sued basically claiming that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy which was in place at the time violated her Equal Protection Clause, the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law. And she won.

JM:      Awesome.

00:26:43

SM:     This was in 2011. She was basically reinstated so that she could retire. I mean, she was deprived of benefits ‘cause she was making a career out of the Air Force. And she was basically let go before she qualified for retirement. And, or in a way that would disqualify her from her retirement benefits. And she was reinstated.

And I say she kind of won because also behind the scenes, what was happening at this time, this was 2011 when Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was already on its way out and then the Obama Administration officially ended it just, like, a few months after her lawsuit kind of started wrapping up. So, her lawsuit was, kind of, wrapped up in the whole process of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell which when it was repealed, allowed LGBTQ+ Americans to serve in the military in the way that they could bring their whole selves to work.

There’s an asterisk on that which is that protections for transgender military folks have gone back and forth a lot over the last few years because they’re not codified under law right now. It’s up to, basically, the presidential edict. And different presidents have had different perspectives as to how that should play out. So, there’s an asterisk to that repeal. That happened right there in Washington State.

00:28:13

JM:      Wow. That’s so, so wild. That’s all I can think of to say in response. But, yeah. I have too many nots to voice them all at once.

For my last person, I’ll be talking about Doctor Katie Mack who is a cosmologist. And she is super cool. I’ve just been following her online for such a long time. And she doesn’t only post like, good, like, science outreach, like, science communication content about, like, the research she does. I think she just, like, generally posts, like, a lot of, like, thoughtful, like, I guess, like modern-day, or modern world viewpoints that just, like… It’s not focused on, like, astronomy or space or aerospace or anything. And I, like, think that’s especially important because, like, like I was saying earlier about, like, the people who say, like, focus on the science. Like, everything regarding the outside world isn’t of concern to me. I don’t care about politics, etcetera. But it’s very refreshing to see, like, these people on these scales also not forgetting to, like, tie in with, like, very, like, modern world that we all experience every single day. And which I think is, like, very hard to not think about as you’re doing your work day to day. But… So, yeah, I think that’s refreshing.

So, like I said, she’s a cosmologist and she published a book on The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking).

SM:     [Chuckles]

00:29:46

JM:      And it’s a very, like… Like, I just wanted to read a book about the end of the universe, you have to be in, like, a certain mental state. I guess that’s all I’ll say.

SM:     [Chuckles]

JM:      Yeah. I read it once when it first came out. And I’m going to try to re-read it again. But it’s very… It goes over, like, the different methods of how our universe could end and what goes into that. And I think she’s also now writing a book on, like, how the universe started which I thought was fun. Now she’s writing two books on the two extremes of our world. But, yeah, she’s super cool. I love all her viewpoints. She’s also a private pilot. And she will post a lot of pilot content. And I don’t know. I just think she’s awesome. I just aspire to have the perspective she has on a lot of things in the future.

SM:     I’m glad that you brought, you know, people like her to the table because a lot of mine were historical people who are long gone. Leo da Vinci is long gone.

JM:      [Chuckles]

SM:     But it’s important to remember that, as I said at the very beginning, this is not just about the past. It’s about the past and the present and the future.

JM:      Yeah.

SM:     People are out there right now doing this work.

00:31:04

JM:      Yeah. I think it’s important to, like, textualize, like, our day and age. Kind of, like, how you were using your references to more historical figures so we can more understand, like, the climate of that time.

SM:     Well, those are 10 LGBTQ+ people in aerospace that we think you should know about. And now you know about them. If there are people that you think we left off the list… I mean, honestly, this list could be so much longer. We only have time for 10. Just because someone wasn’t on this list does not mean that their story was not important.

And we would like to hear from you listeners if there’s somebody that you would add to this list, send an email to podcast@museumofflight.org. If we get enough submissions of reactions to this and additions, maybe we could do a follow-up episode, or read what you all say and continue to grow this list of people who are just doing awesome things out there, or who have done awesome or fascinating things in the industry.

00:32:03

Joalda Morancy is author of the book Aliens: Join the Scientists Searching Space for Extraterrestrial Life. Now, you’ve called it a children’s book every time we’ve talked. But it’s not like a picture book. It’s not like Goodnight Moon. It’s pretty substantial.

JM:      Yes. That is a really good point. I think if you were someone who doesn’t know that much about the field astrobiology, you will definitely learn from it. It’s presented in a format that’s understandable for, I guess, the average, like, nine or 10 people. But I think it’s a very successful book already. But, like I said, [unintelligible 00:32:35]. But, yeah.

SM:     Yeah. I gave it to my sister who is a fifth-grade teacher for her classroom. And it has gone over well, so.

JM:      Oh. I’m happy.

SM:     And people can get that at the Museum of Flight gift shop, you can buy it in person, or online. And I’ll leave links to all that in the show notes. Joalda, thank you again for joining me.

JM:      Yeah. Thank you for having me.

[Music]

END OF PODCAST