Hopefully you will have realised from the photo above that in this instance Queer Space doesnt refer to club or an LGBTQ meeting spot but actually to a series of podcasts about the skies above us. And who better than the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to educate us where and how our community can relate to it all.
So the creators of AirSpace, have produced QUEERSPACE a four-part series featuring stories and people at the intersection of aviation, space, and LGBTQ+ history and culture. In this podcast series, they highlight the scope and diversity of queer experiences found across human flight and space science.
QueerSpace Podcasts will be released every two weeks on the AirSpace feed through April 7 but you can listen to them anytime via : Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | Stitcher | RSS
For example QUEER SPACE: BECOMING LIGHT is on how historically, queer-identifying people in the U.S. military have been forced out or forced to hide who they are. It wasn’t until 2011 that gay, lesbian, and bisexual servicemembers could serve openly, and only in the last few years that trans servicemembers could serve at all. And while there’s still a ways to go, last year the Air Force and Space Force formed a working group specifically for LGBTQ+ issues. On this episode of QueerSpace, they speak to the Director of the LGBTQ Initiative Team (LIT), Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, to hear how LIT is working to change policy, change minds, and create opportunities for LGBTQ+ members of the military.
On another podcast :“1,000,000 Silent Salesmen on the Road for Pan American,” the headline reads. It’s 1933 and these “silent salesmen” are lifesize cutouts of “Rodney the smiling salesman,” presenting a travel booklet touting a still very new mode of travel: passenger flight.
Rodney was the silent spokesperson for Pan Am, representing the stewards (today known as flight attendants) who would welcome passengers on board Pan Am flights.
“Rodney” was kitted out in a full steward’s uniform from the top of his military-style hat to his spit-shined shoes. He was a ✨ Style Icon ✨. In the book Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants, former National Air and Space Museum research fellow Phil Tiemeyer writes, “With his smile and slightly cocked head, Rodney combined both youthful attractiveness and an approachability that invited people to size him up, thereby placing him in the notionally feminized role of alluring sex object.”
QueerSpace: We’re All Stories In The End is about how in science fiction, the possibilities are seemingly endless. Sci-fi writers often create entirely new civilizations where our social constructions can be upended and examined, or just thrown out entirely. They can literally rewrite a world in terms of gender, sexuality, and culture, making something that is more inclusive and often more interesting. In this episode, they talk to bookseller Hannah Oliver Depp of Loyalty Books about the history of queer worldbuilding in sci-fi literature and get some book recommendations that are headed to the top of our to-read lists.
QueerSpace: An AirSpace Limited Series
Labels: 2022, podcasts, Queer Space, Smithsonian Museum
