I’m known for being a “car guy”, as I have mentioned previously. I love them, I love working on them, I love driving them, I love writing about them, and I love talking about them. And I have more than a few friends who feel the same way.
So, this isn’t one of my “earliest” transgender memories. I can’t exactly date it, maybe 5-10 years ago? Maybe less? But it is one that I think back on most often. So here it is.
For whatever reason, the drivers of certain cars are often stereotyped. Douchebags, for example, drive BMWs. Slow old men in the throes of a midlife crisis drive Corvettes. And Hondas? I don’t have the time nor the eloquence to describe the typical Honda driver.
There are also “chick” cars. Why? Who can say. But they are often derided as being overly effeminate in some way, perhaps by being too “cute”, or “not enough V8”. Whatever it is, it is almost never a good thing to be a chick car.
Unless you are in the know. Then you know there are very good ones out there, and that it is absurd to gender a vehicle. Miatas, MR2s, Fiat Abarths, and many, many others are pure driving machines, despite being “for girls”.
My own Celica GT-S falls under this category. Raw, extremely fun, and requiring some level of skill to get the most out of, but “made for 16 year old cheerleaders”. Whatever.
You know what else is a chick car? The Ford Mustang.
In its early days, the Mustang was almost exclusively marketed to women, and to this day, I’d wager they are mostly driven by women, despite the number of roided-out dudebros with flat-billed Monster Energy hats who like to compensate their own insecurities by driving a murdered-out Mustang GT with Flowmaster exhaust. God, people are weird–I should know.
Anyway, while the Mustang is a chick car, the Camaro is a car for mustachioed mullets who like to drive with a case of Busch in the passenger’s seat. I don’t know why, but they are.
So one night, in a parking lot, I was sitting with two of my fellow car nerds in a first generation (1968) Mustang, having this very conversation. Thankfully, we are all comfortable enough with ourselves to realize that “girl cars” are generally awesome, and we all own at least one that we daily drive.
I don’t remember exactly how the conversation led to this point, but eventually, I blurted out “yeah, but I’d rather be a woman driving a Mustang than a mullet driving a Camaro.”
Oh man, did that silence lay thick and heavy in that car for a pregnant moment.
Finally, it was interrupted with “You’d rather be a woman?”.
Holy. Shit.
How did I get out of this? I don’t know, but I know that I panicked, and played it off as best I could. Who knows how or how well I did this. My heart was beating so loudly it drowned my thoughts and erased my memory.
This was another rambling post, but eh, it’s my journal, and this is a significant memory for me.
Because yes, yes I would.
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