From the headline until nearly the last paragraph, this condescending, sexist piece of drek willl go down in my Feminist Hall of Shame. And it’s from AP. It figures.
What a ride: Woman, 82, inducted into Hall of Fame
Wow. A woman was inducted into the Hall of Fame. What, the first one ever? Is that why you don’t identify her in the headline, like you would any other inductee into the Hall of Fame? Does she not have a name? Well, let’s look at the lead.
Betty Skelton Erde is 82 and lives in a retirement community where many are content to putter about in golf carts. Not Erde: She drives a blazing red Corvette to match her red hair and really means it when she says, “I like fast cars.”
An auto racing pioneer, Erde (Uhr-Dee) once was the fastest woman on Earth, setting female speed records at Daytona Beach and Utah’s Bonneville salt flats half a century ago. On Wednesday, she reaches a new milestone as only the fifth woman inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in suburban Detroit.
Oh, she has a name. You even tell us how to pronounce it. And she’s not the first. She’s the fifth woman inducted. So the headline is just, gee, sexist. And those “female” speed records? Aren’t they supposed to be either “speed records” or “women’s speed records”?
Dozens of firsts are attached to her name: the auto industry’s first female test driver, in 1954; the first woman to set a world land speed record in 1956 (145 mph at Daytona Beach); and then the world land speed record for women in 1965, hitting 315.72 mph at Bonneville.
Funny, those aren’t all “female” speed records. I do believe the word “world” was in front of some of them. And here’s what the writer describes as Erde’s first drive in a fast car:
In February 1954, at France’s invitation, Erde went to Daytona. She climbed into a Dodge sedan, went 105.88 mph on the beach – that’s when folks still raced on sand – and set a stock car record.
That’s a record. Not a “female” record. What a bunch of condescending, sexist crap.
The AP also manages to quote one of the more sexist remarks from the time period when sexist remarks were, well, unremarkable. So when you read this, you nod your head and say, “How quaint. So glad men have learned not to be such morons today.”
“I would venture to say there is no other woman in the world with all the attributes of this woman,” France once remarked. “The most impressive of them all is her surprising and outstanding ever-present femininity, even when tackling a man’s job.”
But when you read the AP article, which includes this:
But if Erde was aware of how different she was for a woman at the time – unmarried, without children – she didn’t show it.
“I had to do what I wanted,” she said.
You have to wonder what century the writer is living in. And what is wrong with her. Because this drek was written by a woman. Perhaps she’s aiming for one of those “female” writing prizes.
We have reached the height of irony. Who needs sexist male writers when a woman will do the job for him?
Well done, Sister Suffragette.
yep, sometimes one’s own enemy is someone from within their own ranks… look at Robert Fisk and so much love he shows towards his own people…I think not.