One day as a teenager I was walking through my neighborhood and a woman almost hit me with her car while making a left turn. I came home unharmed but a little shaken up. When I told my uncle the story, he said something akin to, “what do you expect from women drivers?”
This shook me up even further. I had not emphasized the gender of the driver but merely included it as a descriptive detail. I proceeded to argue with my uncle for turning my close call into an anti-women diatribe, but he refused to back away from his assertion that men are superior drivers. To this day, my mother says that “men are better at judging space and distance.” But is this true?
It turns out that men are responsible for 1.5 million more automotive accidents than women. This, of course, does not prove that women are better drivers in and of itself. With the absence of clear criteria, there is no empirical way to prove or disprove such a claim. I cite this statistic only to demonstrate that “men are better drivers” is more prejudicial than factual.
In fact, there are many prejudicial views related to driving: I have heard people insist that seniors, teenagers, and Asians disproportionately struggle behind the wheel. So it would be possible to conclude that the titular stereotype only applies to middle-age, non-Asian men. Very strange.
Hidden behind this stereotype is the reality that men are over-confident drivers, which leads to more risk-taking and fatal accidents. Men are not only more likely to drink and drive but are also more likely to drive too fast and too aggressively. I have been guilty of taking risks behind the wheel, even well into my adulthood, but, due to luck and an evolving sense of self-control, I avoided catastrophe.
After a series of speeding tickets by way of those dreadful speed cameras, I wrote “slow down” on a piece of masking tape and affixed it to my dashboard so that it was in my field of vision while driving. It took on a double meaning when I went on dates, especially if my date noticed it and asked whether it referred to driving or something less literal.
I came to realize that those two simple words are sound advice for men in both contexts.
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Male Stereotype Number One: Men Don’t Cry
Male Stereotype Number Two: Men Don’t Ask for Directions
Male Stereotype Number Three: Men are Competitive
Male Stereotype Number Four: Men Don’t Cook
Male Stereotype Number Five: Men are Warriors
Male Stereotype Number Six: Men Are Clumsy
Male Stereotype Number Seven: Men Are Aggressive
Male Stereotype Number Eight: Men are Either Good or Evil
Male Stereotype Number Nine: Men Can’t Be Friends with Women
Male Stereotype Number Ten: Men are Strong
Male Stereotype Number 11: Men are Breadwinners
Male Stereotype Number 12: Men Don’t Refuse Sex
Male Stereotype Number 13: Men ‘Manspread’
Male Stereotype Number 14: Men ‘Mansplain’
Male Stereotype Number 15: Men Don’t Listen
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