Under the Bonnet: Notes on A Cultural Conundrum.

This post is the first of many to begin questioning our culture. This blog will certainly get to other cultures along the way, but let’s start with ours.

I was topping up the engine coolant in my car yesterday. This is a task, as any sensible driver will know, which must be undertaken fairly regularly along with the other maintenance. Most drivers have to have a look under the bonnet once a month at least. So why, in the middle of southern English suburbia, supposedly one of the best educated regions on the planet, did a man call out to me these two words- “I’m impressed.”?

It is worth noting here that I am a woman. The man in question was middle aged and white, and drove an estate car that looked a bit like a hearse. “I get that a lot.” I replied, because, sadly, I really do. In fact I am yet to complete the simple task of topping up my levels under the bonnet without a middle aged white man having this conversation with me (interestingly they do always fit that description). This man is always comfortably middle class, with a family and a semi in a classy suburban neighbourhood. He looks like he might have an office job, and he walks with an understated swagger that says- “If a fuse goes in my house, I will fix that while the women flutter helplessly.”

At this point this man surpassed all of my previous estimates of his intelligence levels and said, “It’s not often you see a woman with her head under the bonnet.” It was at this point that I realised we are living with a cultural conundrum, one that has been politely patted on the back and asked to sit back down one too many times. Theorist Cheris Kramarae once said “Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings”, and she made a very good point. If we live in a society in which an educated, well to do Family man believes it “impressive” for a woman to pour some engine coolant into her bonnet, then we do not yet live in an equal society.

It was at this point that I reminded this man, “We do have brains you know.” Interestingly, he looked mortified and walked away without another word. Perhaps he was expecting me to giggle and ask him if I was doing it properly, I’m not really sure. Either way this is where the true conundrum lies. We live in a culture which in part, finds it dissonant to see a woman undertake ‘men’s jobs’. But this culture also knows that it cannot be seen as sexist, and does not even view itself that way.

Shortly after my unfortunate conversation with my neighbour, he left the house accompanied by a wife and young daughter. He clearly doted on both, and as they walked down the street they became just another suburban family. I stayed with my car for a few more minutes and pondered what I had seen in my brief excursion behind the net curtains, into the true prejudices of this strangers mind. I wondered if his daughter, when she grows up, will be a mechanic. It didn’t take long. How could she be, with a father so subtly, so inoffensively biased that she may never question it, that she may not even see it, as I don’t believe he did. She may wonder why the idea of being an mechanic never appealed to her, and assume that she was just born disliking cars, while her husband checks her oil levels.

I called this an elephant in the room but it is more worrying that that. This is the problem that cannot be seen for it is behind closed doors. It hides in the back of peoples subconscious, an entity hard to control. It seeps through our culture and into our core. We are living inside this conundrum whilst remaining unmoved by it. Well I’m starting now. Speaking out. Why? Because I want to live in an equal society. Because I want future generations to be free from prejudice and discrimination based on genitalia.

And also, because I want to be able to check under my bonnet without talking to my neighbours.