Ah, nuts!

"Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind."
~ Charles Lindbergh  

I read recently a post by a woman who said, "Men have natural advantages over women when it comes to piloting.... I should know, b/c I have 2 summa cum laude engineering degrees, in aerospace & mechanical. When I was an intern at Boeing, they took me out to fly the 6 DOF flight simulator. It was really frustrating to me, because I just could not get a feel for how to manipulate the controls to produce the result I wanted."

It seems to me that this woman was embarrassed by her inability to operate the simulator and blamed her inability not on herself but on the fact that she is female. So she could believe it wasn't her, personally, who was inept. (And having engineering degrees is irrelevant to whether or not you're a klutz.)

Louise Thaden in her Beech C17R

I'll juxtapose her comment with that of Louise Thaden, who, along with Blanche Noyes, won the the Bendix Trophy race the first time women were allowed to compete (Laura Ingalls came in second), outpacing all the male pilots, setting a new world record in the process.  She also won the Harmon Trophy. She later had an extensive career in aviation. Thaden said women were "innately better pilots than men."

Olive Ann Beech

Let me note that Thaden won the race flying a Beech C17R.  Beech Aircraft was co-founded by Olive Ann Beech, an accomplished pilot herself, who was also the company's president and chair. Jackie Cochran set world speed and altitude records in a Beech D17W. Noel Gourselle won the Reno Air Races T-6 class in a Beech G17S.  I could go on.

But is either the statement by the Boeing intern or by Louise Thaden objectively true? Or is it just that the Boeing intern is an uncoordinated nerd and Thaden was a highly capable pilot, and both extrapolated their personal situations to whole sexes?

Estrogen prevents women from using one of these--not!

I also read a post by a woman who claimed that women could not be good pilots, basing her assertion on something she read in Joseph Henrich's book The WEIRDest People in the World.  You know what struck me about these people who said that women couldn't be competent pilots?  That none of them were pilots themselves.  They seem to think that pilots fly by flapping their arms and since men have greater upper body strength than women, they can fly better.  Or something equally asinine.  Phooey.

Honestly, I get so tired of this crap.  I'm with Ralph Waldo Emerson when he said, "I try all things; I achieve what I can."  That's basically it.  Man or woman, you achieve what you can, if you are interested in trying to achieve it. Why make more of it than that?

Oh, here's a link to the 6 DOF Flight Simulator.  Kids love playing with it.

And here's a fun video to remind you that women have been flying planes for a long time. It's not a new thing.  The history of women in this country is not what it is often alleged to be. The history of race, too. Eight minutes of yarning. Take a look.