Please don’t give me grief or I will just ignore you forever... read this:-
Well I finally got around to making my own web page for a couple of reasons. One is my carrier thing explained above, the other is that this week I left a well known FSX site because after being a member for a few years I thought I would take part more so I downloaded their custom scenery, and teamspeak3 installed it all, then as a lot of them had their pics on their profiles I added my pic, the one < here.
Within a couple of hours the site owner sent me a terse public message:-
“You might want to think about posting a “Real” picture of yourself!”
(Yes I know he misused quote marks too).
what he meant to write was
“You might want to think about posting a 'real' picture of yourself!”
More insults followed all ending with a lot of exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
Well although past midnight I took him to task and got straight back to him asking him for a little chat about his problem. I even sorted through my pics, posting more of me in the same dress and or showing the same chair as in my pic. Followed up at 3am by taking more pics to prove I was indeed me. How stupid of me was that!!!!!! ?
One of the pics I took of my dress, this time with his rant in background on my screen – wow I must have been really really upset!!!!! I don’t think he could come to terms with the fact that some girls do fly, hey maybe I should have worn my pink flying suit.. ….? (Yes before you wonder, I do have one).
That dress of mine I am wearing in the picture above and part of his rant on screen I spray painted out his name and the site because I do not want my views about the incident to tarnish your view of him or his website.
Well........ I did get an apology from him in the end.
Too late though, I unistalled everything I had just put on then left the site for good.
His excuse was …we had had a lot of problems with a guys pretending to be a girls and posting girl pics. Haa sure, well ok, no doubt if someone ran a black ppl only site they may get white ppl pretending to be black or a Jews only site may get Christians pretending to be Jews. Also clowns only sites have major problems with people pretending to be clowns.
Just what a persons colour, political persuasion or gender has to do with AVIATION I am at a loss to work out. I personally feel it h as more to do with tolerance and attitudes than it does to meeting people with a need to fly whatever their personal situation is.
I come here because through circumstances I am unable to fly real airplanes as much as I need to, so this is like a break, a place to spend my valuable leisure time. Maybe other people with different problems do the same.
It had not been a good day as I had earlier spent about 2 hours teaching what sounded like a mature sensible guy to fly only to have him repeatedly turn his area of conversation to a subject very far removed from flying which wore my patience down. I was not nasty, although I did add him to my ignore list later.
Intolerance in whatever form ends up at the gates to a place like Belsen.
Seems that here in the UK we have our own FSX 'Muppets Cub' too :-
Personally I do not care if you like wearing a tutu or dressing up as coco the clown. I may not understand, but as long as you don't keep turning the conversation to custard pie recipes and how hard it is to suppress your clown 'urges', then we will get on fine. There is a roll of battle honours on the Ark Royal, a good reminder that a lot of people have died so we can use FSX and have everyday freedom of speech. So I will always defend your right to clown around, in private with other like minded clowns, in an appropriate place. FSX is not really an appropriate place for clowning around, but hey I can put up with teaching you to fly and some of your replies being interrupted with the odd short sharp hand trumpet <PAAARP> - It is called tolerance. What matters to me is that you share my passion for flying, plain and simple.
What I am trying to say is that flying demands a lot of patience. The very nature of it means that you will come into contact with a lot of very different people.
If you can't stay calm and accept everyone as a person, regardless of the fact that they may be a different colour or religion or be disabled or look, or act or sound or speak differently from what you are used to, then trust me flying is not for you.
Nicholette R.
