This Season on Flight Attendants Fight Back...
New names to watch out for as we enter year three. Inspirational stories. Harassment updates.
My proton email address is no longer in use. If you’ve been trying to harass me there in recent days, you’re screaming into the void.
For the second time, I’m telling the anonymous angry American Airlines pilots (and the ones who say “I’m NOT an American Airlines pilot, but”) to stop contacting and harassing me.
I’m telling you again to stop writing and sharing pornographic content with my name on it that I did not write.
Hi everyone,
Before we get into the important stuff—how women in the airline industry are fighting back and helping each other—just a couple notes.
First, I’ve had days where I’ve apologized to The Landing readers who might have signed up expecting more aviation news and less behind-the-scenes ugliness. I’ve squelched that instinct.
This, my friends, is part of it. The abuse directed at those who speak out about sexual assault in the airline industry is the entire reason we’re here.
I’m being shown in real time what victims and survivors have been telling us for years: That when they report abuse at their airline, they’re retaliated against, threatened, bullied and re-victimized. The key difference is that these bullying dinosaurs can’t destroy my career, get me fired, or physically intimidate me in a cramped galley when no one’s looking.
Just ask Mandalena Lewis of WestJet; Karlene Petitt, Andrea Ratfield, Sara Caruso, Jane Doe, Jane Doe 2, and Jane Doe 3 of Delta; Kimberly Goesling, Greta Anderson, multiple Jane Does, Janette Beckman, and Leeanne Hansen of American Airlines; Erica of an unnamed major commercial carrier; Jane Doe and Christine Janning of Southwest; Cassaundra van den Heuvel of Republic Airways; Ashley Geffre of Alaska Airlines; Mary Morgan of SkyWest; Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 of JetBlue, to name a few off the top of my head.
Women report they were harmed by American Airlines First Officer Sten Molin. Many of them are traumatized. I believe them. If you can read the searing, brutal accounts of the trauma they endured and your only concern is about a dead man’s “reputation,” I can’t help you. There is more than enough evidence to show he was a predator. Some of his victims settled with American Airlines. Take it up with them, not me. They don’t pay people off for nothing, and you know it.
I wrote in a post that I would talk to “reasonable” friends who were questioning what they knew about him on the record.
Anonymous, unwanted harassment and sexually graphic, misogynistic messages do not fall into that category.
You’ve flooded my every internet inbox against my will, without my consent.
A man is known by the company he keeps.
(This quote is usually attributed to Aesop, but there’s a whole etymology of similar sayings you might find interesting).
By attacking anonymously from behind your keyboards, you’re telling the world that Sten Molin was friends with cowards, sexual assault apologists, and lowlifes who spend their time harassing women, mocking their appearance, and hunting down abuse survivors to victimize them all over again.
On a related note, in recent conversations with attorneys, I’ve learned that sharing sexual content or impersonating someone in this way is libel per se—meaning “that they would be considered libelous on their face and not requiring proof of damages.”
If you don’t know what a John/Jane Doe lawsuit does to stamp out online harassment and award damages, you might want to Google it. I’ve locked my online presence down so I don’t see your obsessive messages anymore. But someone is gathering them for me and my case.
This should be the last time I have to write about this and give you oxygen. Truly. Fingers crossed the next communication is a legal letter.
Before I get into the rest of the post for paid subscribers only, I’ll end with the words of one of my new heroes of this movement (I have several. You know who you are).
As WestJet whistleblower Mandalena Lewis—who has more courage and class in the tip of her little finger than y’all hiding behind weird email addresses combined—wrote in 2018,
“Just like in the entertainment industry, I have since learned, the cover-up of rape and sexual assault by powerful airline corporations has a long, dark history. It’s rooted in the fact that the industry has historically profited from the sexualization and dehumanization of female flight attendants, for whom, up until the ’70s, the courts deemed “female sex appeal” to be a “bona fide occupational qualification.” Airlines are not oblivious to the harassment of flight attendants…
“If you are a survivor of sexual violence in the airline industry, you can know one thing for certain: You are not alone. So please, tell someone, anyone. Tell me. Stand up to your airline for failing to provide a safe workplace for all women. Be insubordinate…Come forward. Join our fight, even quietly — like the female WestJet pilot who came up and hugged me during a Vancouver International Airport protest. She whispered in my ear, “You know you have a secret army, right?” before briskly walking away.
Because our moment is now. And #TimesUp for the airline industry.”
Paid subscribers, scroll down for more information about what’s coming up, names to look out for, plus images of the ringleaders doing this.