Driving change: boys, cars and sexism - Women's Agenda

Driving change: boys, cars and sexism

Sometimes, all you need to do to make a difference to long-held attitudes, like sexim, is explain the truth of things to kids. 

Late last week, I was instructing at an advanced driving course with a group of 16 year old boys in central NSW. They were rural teenagers, mostly from farm backgrounds. They love cars and rely on them for both employment and entertainment. They’re mostly baby hoons, and proud of it. My job – and it’s a big one – is to give them strategies so they’ll survive their first few risky years behind the wheel.

Once I’ve established some rapport, young drivers like this tell me things they might not say to other adults. That’s how we came to be talking about David Reynolds. He’s the V8 race car driver for the Bottle-O Ford team at Bathurst this past weekend, and last Thursday during a press conference – in front of team and sponsors and a myriad of journalists and officials – he saw fit to refer to the all-woman race team of Simona de Silvestro and Renee Gracie as a “pussy wagon”.

The boys I’m teaching claimed the comment was hilarious. They don’t think much of women drivers or women race drivers – everyone knows you can’t drive a car unless you’ve got balls.  So why would Simona and Renee even bother to try? One boy told me the women were only there to get attention for sponsors, not because of their talent as race car drivers.

They obviously hadn’t heard of 27 year old Swiss racer Simona’s 2010 Indianapolis Rookie of the Year award, or her five years in the gruelling world of Indy Car Racing, including 69 race starts and a number of top four finishes. They hadn’t heard that she’s kept her drive that whole time, when there are many men who don’t manage to keep an Indy Car drive for one year, let alone five.

Renee Gracie is only 20, so hasn’t had the opportunity to achieve much in motorsport yet. However, she’s a national karting champion. The boys I’m teaching didn’t know that, nor did they know she’s had two seasons in Porsche Carrera Cup Australia under her belt, the most recent having yielded five top 10 race results, and a 100 per cent race finishing record, matched only by five-time series champion Craig Baird. Or that in 2014, she finished on the podium at Phillip Island in third, and recorded five top 10 finishes.

Nah, it’s easier to believe she’s just there because of her pretty face.

They also hadn’t heard – and I was glad to enlighten them – about the time in 2011 when Simona came to the attention of US Customs because of her frequent trips around the world. When she tried to explain her travel as a by-product of being a professional race driver, she wasn’t believed and was almost deported.

Or that during the week leading up to Bathurst, champion foot-in-mouth ex-racer Dick Johnson had his own dig at the women’s team, claiming they wouldn’t be able to finish the race (they did). Why did he single this team out for derision, instead of the many similar second-tier men’s teams?

I told these boys that to stay where they are in their sport, both Simona and Renee face continual and exhausting sexism every day, and so need to be much tougher emotionally than their male counterparts. I also told them the women have been put under enormous pressure this weekend with the expectation they’re representing an entire gender – something no male driver is ever required to do.

They did stop to think about it all, and seemed honestly contrite.

I wondered whether I should go further. They were genuinely nice kids, so I took a deep breath and asked them if they were aware of proven links between the objectification of women, and violence against women. That when you refer to a woman on the basis of a part of her body, you turn her into a “thing” rather than a person. And if she’s a thing, she isn’t entitled to the same respect you’d give to a person. And that means you can abuse her, insult her, hit her – even kill her. I told them the “pussy wagon” comment and others like it could lead directly to women being belted, strangled, and murdered.

David Reynolds didn’t actually say it was okay to abuse or assault women, but he did say those women were nothing more to him than vaginas in race suits.

The boys I was teaching were silent. The teacher was pale, but he didn’t interfere – a decent bloke and good teacher. I got through to those boys, although I may have to field irate calls from their parents later. I may even lose work from that school over it.

It was worth it.

It was an amazing conversation, but upsetting, too. There were 25 boys in that room, 25 boys who had someone explain all this to them, but there are still hundreds of thousands who’ve never even heard that there is an alternative point of view. Many of those boys still think the comment was just funny, and only humourless feminists would complain.

Luckily, David didn’t get away scot free. He was fined a satisfactory $25,000 by the V8 Supercar governing body, and eventually trotted out the obligatory apology. Yet I’m left wondering – what about his team? His sponsors? The Confederation of Australian Motorsport? Why are those entities not making a bigger fuss about such a disgusting comment?

The boys I was teaching agreed – and two of them emailed me the next day, telling me they’d called Bottle-O and Ford to object to what David had said. I was so proud.

When good men ask what they can do about violence against women, my answer is – THIS. Object to the objectification of women. Call sponsors, teams and governing bodies. Ask those in charge to grow some – ahem – balls, and stop protecting jerks like David Reynolds from bigger consequences.

Let them know that in 2015, there’s a new line in the sand for entitled, sexist male sports stars. Get them off our televisions, and take away their microphones.

Australian men and boys need the leadership.

And Australian women and girls deserve it.

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