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10 to 15 years ago, if I got cut off on the road, tailgated, or done with any other poor or dangerous driver behavior, I could reliably predict that the driver would be a young man.
Today, I can reliably predict that it will be a woman. And not just young women. Middle-aged women too.
We all know that young men are more physically aggressive; they take more risks. They think they're invincible. Just look at insurance rates for motorists by age and sex.
But something has changed in the past decade. I submit to you that the change is a culture-wide shift to female narcissism. Excusing bad behavior by women because "she was traumatized." Or because "misogyny." Or because, "she's overwhelmed." Or because "she's just doing what any man does and nobody says anything."
No, she isn't. Today she's significantly more selfish and poorly behaved—and recognizes no checks on her behavior—than the typical man.
This morning I got into my car with my lunch I'd just picked up from the deli. Two University of Vermont students walked by. Maybe 20 years old, white women. Both wearing skin-tight, clinging clothes. The ones they call "body conscious," to avoid admitting that they're trying to attract sexual attention from men.
The legend on their shirts?
"The future is female."
You see a lot of this among young women in college towns.
And you see the results of this idea when it percolates for long enough and remains in middle-age. I see it in the way women are driving more aggressively than they used to.
But more---they're not only driving aggressively. They're aggressively objecting to any motorist who objects to their dangerous behavior.
An example occurred this morning just a few minutes after I saw the UVM students.
I was turning left onto a four-lane thoroughfare. There are two left-turn-only lanes, and one go-straight-and-don't-turn lane.
The driver to my right was in the go-straight-don't-turn lane. As I turned, the driver started turning as well. Headed straight to my car. Had we collided, it would have been a T-bone accident.
I laid on my horn to wake the driver up so that we didn't collide. The driver corrected course.
Then a manicured hand holding a half-eaten sandwich appeared out of the driver's window, with the middle finger extended.
I lost my temper and rolled my window down, "Don't you dare flip me off for how you're driving, bitch!"
Wait for a second. Are you asking yourself why I'm pointing out the sex of the driver? Are you convincing yourself that it's because I'm a sexist, that I'm cherry picking one rare incident and extending it to all women because that's what men do?
I'm not. This is one example of dozens I could cite to you that have occurred in recent years. I found it hard to believe, too. When something like this would happen, I'd think, "Betcha anything it's some cocky 19 year old prick."
And more often than not, it's not a cocky 19-year-old prick. It's a cocky woman. The change in behavior over 10 years is striking. Before this era, I have never experienced women driving this way to this extent.
And I've certainly never seen so many of them aggressively flip off or make trouble for the driver she wronged with a dangerous maneuver.
The choice to wear a "the future is female" shirt is part of the cultural attitude shift that has "empowered" women like my would-be T-boner to act this way. These are almost universally white, middle, and upper class women. Women with lives of material comfort, and psychological luxury.
They want for nothing in real world terms. Yet they are the most aggressive, demanding, unsatisfiable people.
Female Narcissism: Motorist Edition
No offense to the wonderful ladies who subscribe to your newsletter, because they don't fit this category, but examples of behavior like you describe is one of the reasons I really don't like women very much. Ha ha, even myself, sometimes. Frankly, I stay away from women as much as possible. And don't get me started on working with them - I prefer a man or men any day, and I'm far more relaxed in an all male environment. Women since the 60's have been taught, coached and trained to be nasty tempered narcissists and those who give birth turn their girl babies into clones of themselves and their male babies into whipping boys. I know that's harsh, and doesn't fit all women but far too many are man-hating Dunning-Kruger afflicted harridans. They are to be pitied; most of them can't or won't change.
Crossovers and what’s left of SUVs typically contain this type. This is starting to become a problem with Tesla owners too who insist their car can drive itself. While the system is indeed impressive, it’s far from that stage. Out here there’s the holier than thou “I’m super virtuous and saving the world” attitude. Bicycling has a lot of this arrogance too.
And it’s worth saying the traffic system, which also includes non-motorized users such as bicyclists and pedestrians is a social system that relies on each user cooperating with each other and taking turns.
Throwing this out of balance causes drama and often injury or death. The automobile masks the person inside making it difficult for other road users to identify them as human and instead simply identify them as “a car.” Motorists in return do this to motorcyclists, bicyclists, and pedestrians if they don’t make an effort to show their faces and “humanize” themselves. It’s similar in many ways to online interaction.
Also, seems the more bells and whistles and doodads the vehicle has , especially the blind spot detectors, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warnings, and large buttonless displays which do everything from telling the driver where the closest Starbucks is to climate control. So when something goes wrong often due to their own distractions or over-reliance on the vehicle’s “tech”, the drivers of these vehicles insist it’s not on them.
Automobiles are seen by some as an extension of one’s identity and all these extra features mask legitimate driving skill and both of these are massive disadvantages to regular society when a narcissist grabs hold of the wheel. The status seeking aspect of them encourages the financially illiterate, which includes lots of people with good cash flow, not just the poor, to seek out revolving loans on them which places them into the vicious drive-to-work work-to-drive cycle. Those placed into such financial strain, narcissistic or not, are bound to have issues cooperating with surrounding road users.
Peak Fiat lifestyle.