Current mood:

cynical

What's sex got to do with it?
50 die as plane crashes into Buffalo, N.Y.-area home (CBC News)

My feminist senses are tingling.

There are two pilots mentioned here, that of the crashed plane and that of another flight who the control tower asked if they had a visual on the troubled plane. The pilot of the downed plane is noted as female while the other pilot is identified as male. This begs the following question: Of what relevance is the gender of either pilot to this story?

The pilots mentioned are both clearly identified as having been on different planes -- the Continental Airlines flight that crashed and a Delta Airlines flight that happened to be in the area. It's not as if they're trying to differentiate between two pilots on the same flight and gender just happens to be a convenient way of distinguishing between them. So, what is gained by identifying the pilot of CA Flight 3407 as "a female pilot" and the pilot of the DA flight as "a male pilot"? Could it be that someone would like to implicate the pilot's gender as a factor even before we have any evidence to indicate that pilot error contributed to the accident?

EDIT: I posted this same news story to Facebook and a friend took umbrage with the severity of my tone. The criticism served to raise an even more interesting point to mind.

Criticism: You could be possibly be reading too much into what they meant Lindsay. Just a possibility.

Response: Well of course -- that's always possible. However, even assuming that I'm reading way too much into the intent of the reporter, it's still an irrelevant detail to have written into a story like this. The gender of a pilot has no bearing on a plane crash. Besides, assuming that I'm completely out to lunch, there's still an interesting question waiting to be asked: If the situation had been reversed, if the pilot of the crashed plane had been male and the other pilot a woman, would their gender have appeared in the story? Think about it. That's all I'm saying.