A female academic was offended when airline crew wouldn’t call her Dr, then another feminist called cabin crew ‘trolley dollies’

A BUNFIGHT has erupted after a female lecturer was called ‘Miss’ rather than ‘Doctor’ on a recent Qantas flight — but her supporters have drawn fire for their own condescending use of language.

A BUNFIGHT has broken out on social media over whether university academics should always be addressed by their titles when travelling on Australian airlines.

A female lecturer miffed at not being addressed as Dr on a recent Qantas flight sparked a Twitter war after a fellow academic jumped to her defence, posting a gif of a woman in heels dragging an axe and labelling airline staff ‘trolley dollies’.

Screen captures: Twitter

Dr Siobhan O'Dwyer. Picture: @Siobhan_ODwyer/Twitter

Dr Siobhan O’Dwyer, an Australian academic currently working as a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter in the UK and who describes herself in her Twitter profile as a feminist with a “dodgy thyroid” fired off posts last Friday to complain about being called Miss rather than Dr by a Qantas crew.

“Hey Qantas, my name is Dr O’Dwyer. My ticket says Dr O’Dwyer. Do not look at my ticket, look at me, look back at my ticket, decide it’s a typo and call me Miss O’Dwyer. I did not spend 8 years at university to be called Miss,” she tweeted.

Dr Mel Thomson. Picture: @DrMel_T/Twitter

Among her Australian academic supporters was Dr Mel Thomson, who describes herself as a “recovering academic microbiologist adrift in Quangoland” and a “bad feminist” from Geelong and Melbourne.

Dr Thomson tweeted to her more than 13,000 followers that she sometimes received the same treatment from Virgin Australia.

“I’m bringing my axe for all the asshats telling you it’s your ego,” she tweeted. “You have all of the solidarity on this issue. I’m first gen to finish high school (let alone get several degrees) in my family … I’ll be damned is some trolley dolly gets to decide what honorific I get called, FFS.”

Screen captures: Twitter

Airline staff took exception to the use of the term trolley dolly, with one woman who described herself as “working class”, from a service industry, tweeting it was “an insulting term meant to denigrate an honest job … you may be educated but you are awful”.

An airline steward using the Twitter handle Belleo tweeted: “Please don’t refer to us as trolley dollies. We may not have completed a PhD however we are required by law 2 maintain quals that enable us to evacuate an aircraft in 90 secs, keep u alive in-flight, prevent hijacking, put out fires etc. I have always used the correct honorific. And I have always been especially careful to ensure I used it when I saw it on a woman’s boarding pass as I was proud to be able to support the woman and her achievements in a male-centric world. You’ve just gone and shat on that with your condescending comment about us. Bravo.”

UK man Tim Almond commented that people insisting on using the honorific Dr on a plane when they weren’t medical doctors were “asking for trouble”.

“A passenger gets stuck and they’ll ask you for help,” he tweeted.

Social media honorific bunfight. Screen captures: Twitter

Others commented that the academics had tickets on themselves, had no idea how ridiculous they sounded and that “an expectation to use professional titles in everyday life smacks of elitism … communicates superiority and privilege”.

Pam Harrison tweeted: “First world problem. Sitting on a bus in the sky demanding your academic credentials be acknowledged. Just wear a T-shirt saying ‘if you’re a doctor and you know it clap your hands …”.

Dr O’Dwyer tweeted this week that she had been “copping so much flak” for her original tweet, which was “not about my ego (but) it was about highlighting one of a thousand instances of sexism that women encounter everyday. It’s not about the title, it’s about the fact that this wouldn’t have happened if I was a man.”

“I wish it hadn’t gone viral,” she tweeted on Tuesday.

Former Deakin University researcher, Dr Thomson, has publicly bagged airline staff in the past.

In October 2015 she tweeted that a Jetstar employee had asked her if she was pregnant as she boarded a flight from Sydney to Avalon, Victoria.

Wearing a tight, woollen Collette Dinnigan dress, and “very much not pregnant” at the time, Dr Thomson tweeted:

“Dear @JetstarAirways who do I direct my complaint to, about being asked by your staff in Sydney how many weeks pregnant I am? Not happy,” and “A 67kg woman in a tight dress who had just had a couple of sushi rolls = 28 weeks pregnant apparently.”