Woman Driver, Angry Feminists and Irrationality
Alisa Nie (Ninggunta)
It was a summer afternoon, and my family was driving to my grandmother’s house. When we finally arrived at the parking place near her house, we had to wait for a couple of minutes because another car blocked the way. The driver, who had a “new driver” on her car, could not reverse the vehicle and leave the parking place swiftly. When the driver finally left after struggling for five minutes, my father signed and said: “Woman driver.”
He did not use bad words. My father hardly swears in front of my mother and me, but the first word blew in my ears no less loud than an F word.
“What do you mean by ‘woman driver?'” I asked.
My father and mother exchanged an oh-no-it-is-the-angry-feminist-again sight.
“Well, I was just talking about the truth. Besides, that is not a bad word.”
“Twenty minutes ago, on the cross-sea bridge, we were almost hit by a male driver about 40 years old who exceeded the speed limit. You did not call that dangerous man a man driver.”
“You are getting too heated again, Y— (my name).” My mother said.
“You cannot just deny the truth with your words, dear. You need to be rational.” My father added patiently, “The fact is, whenever you see a bad driver on the road, they are more likely to be female.”
“The fact is, that’s not true.” I tried to control my tone. I didn’t want to be mean to him, for I knew he was a good father, better than most other men I met, a gentle, sensitive and tender man who loved and respected my mother and me dearly. Yet, love and sensitivity did not naturally overcome prejudice. He was still a man who spent all of his life in a patriarchal society and patriarchal education, which meant he disrespected women as a sex unconsciously and called prejudices and stereotypes “facts.” He would listen to his only daughter giving “angry feminist” speech with a tolerant smile, yet he never took me seriously whenever I tried to point out his unconscious sexism for him.
“The fact is, men are worse drivers if you compare people’s accident rate according to their gender,” I added, “Would you please be so kind as to let me be rational and cite some research data? According to a document published by China Justice Big Data Service Platform, while males only take up about 70% percent of all drivers, they have accomplished 94.6% of criminal traffic accidents. This data means males are 8.8 times more likely to cause serious trouble as drivers than females. Is that rational enough?”
“Wha……wai……Where did you get those numbers?” My father was startled.
“I am reading from my phone.” I admitted, smiling: “Do you want the citation,dad? I have collected quite a lot of pictures of official data about gender differences on my phone, just in case someone would accuse me of being ‘irrational,’ which had happened many times. Now, my dear man driver dad who cannot drive as well as mom, where is your rational, concrete evidence?”
Alisa Nie (Ninggunta)
Alisa is a fourth-year Chinese student in the Honor English Program, University of Alberta.
