Recent theories underscore the indefinite, conflicted, and discursive character of labor identity and resistance, highlighting local practices and meanings. This article examines an empirical and political dilemma provoked by such models: what to do when once-dominant voices resist a loss of control. Drawing on interviews conducted with commercial airline pilots, the author examines how privileged professional men engage gendered threats. The analysis demonstrates how organizational efforts to induce crew empowerment threaten pilot identity, as well as how pilots resist emasculation by embracing mandatory changes. The study illustrates ways to grapple more fully with the implications of discursive, dialectical models of resistance. In particular, the author urges attention to tales of declining control as discursive realities that engender emotional resistance to social change.
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