melinda hagenson

It’s raised its ugly head again.  The one thing, aside from winter, that I really detest about living in Northwestern Wisconsin.

Sexism.

I’m a capable woman.  I was raised to be, by a dad who had no fear of teaching me how to use power tools and a mom who instilled in me, from a very early age, her firm belief that a woman could do absolutely anything she wanted to do.

I spent more than forty years living in Southern California, where absolutely nobody ever questioned my ability to do whatever needed doing.  I could do minor household repairs, care for the yard, and service my own car.  I checked my own tires, my own oil, my own tranny fluid.  I could (and did) change my oil, replace an alternator, and change a radiator hose, all by myself, all the time humming “I am woman, hear me roar” under my breath.  Once or twice I even belted it right out loud.  I know how to pull a dent and mix, apply, smooth, and sand body filler.  Anything  you could do, I could do too.  Maybe not better, but I could do it.

Sexism was not on my radar.  Ever.

Ah, but then I moved to Wisconsin.  One of my favorite things about Wisconsin, ironically, was the fact that it really felt as if I had travelled back thirty years through time to a much less complicated world.  Life was slower here.  It wasn’t quite Mayberry, but in many ways it was close.

But of course there is a downside to all things, and I found very quickly that there was a big (and unanticipated) downside to moving back thirty years in time.  When the furnace needed repair, I called the repair people— and they asked to speak to my husband.   Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, well diggers, ditto.  Car dealers, boat dealers, home improvement and sporting goods store employees, ditto.  “You want a barbecue?”  The eyes scan nearby customers.  “Isn’t your husband here?”

To say this took some getting used to would be an understatement.  I was freshly amazed every time.  I asked my husband, “Is it just my imagination?” and he assured me, “Nope, it’s for real.”

It didn’t just happen on the home front, either.  Even in a place where one would think sexism would have no home at all—a university—it was alive and well.  When I had a bit of a problem with a student in one of my first years teaching out here and approached the then-chair of my then-department to discuss it, he told me the student clearly had no respect for me because I was female.  “Female professors often have trouble maintaining control in their classrooms,” he said.  “It’s not your fault,” he added, more than a little condescendingly, like a pat on the head.

What?  How does one even respond to that?  I smiled and thanked him for his help.  Oh yes I did.  I was too stunned to even be able to think of any other response.

In recent years, I haven’t had to deal with repairmen of any kind, and I’ve also since changed jobs (and there are no such issues where I work now, I’m happy to say).  On the home front, as long as I stay in my proper realm, which includes grocery stores and not much else, the problem is more or less nonexistent.

Well, in the winter, anyway.

But in the summer, I do not stay in my proper realm, because summer means car shows.  And every year, without fail, I am re-exposed to the problem that I’ve once again somehow managed, over the long winter, to forget.

Cars are a guy thing.  And guys do not want women cluttering up their car thing.

Tom and I both have classic cars.  That’s our hobby.  Mine’s a 1974 GTO.  This is my car:

People who like my car often have questions about it. They want to know whether we did a frame-off, ground-up, rotisserie restoration (yes), what size engine it has (350), whether it’s “built” (only a little), if it has air shocks (yes), what kind of transmission it has (started with an M20 manual, now it’s an automatic with a shift kit), what kind of carburetor (4bbl; I had a Holley, but we just replaced it with a Rochester), how many horses (about 400), and how the ram air works (I won’t bore you).

My point:  I know all those things.

But nobody, and I mean NOBODY, wants ME to tell them any of it.  One of two things will happen every time I try:  1) Their eyes will glaze over and they’ll just walk away, or 2) Their eyes will glaze over and they’ll shift the conversation over to Tom.

I love my car.  I would really like to be able to talk about it with people who also love it.  But I can’t.  It seems there is no man anywhere on the planet—OK, anywhere in Wisconsin—who wants it to be known that a woman might know more about a car than he does, even if it’s HER CAR.

To give him his due, Tom is sympathetic—but he really doesn’t understand the degree of my frustration.  He can’t.

And it’s not just my car.  If I try to talk to anyone else about their cars, I meet varying degrees of politeness and amusement—and sometimes downright boorishness and hostility.

For example:  Tom and I were at a small local show this afternoon, and we admired a car we’d never seen before—a black, chopped ‘30s coupe with a gleaming, flawless paint job (black is hard to do well).  We’d seen it arrive and had commented to each other about the way the man’s wife stood silently by for a good twenty minutes while her husband talked about his car to a couple of other men who had strolled over to look at it.

I mean, she stood like a statue a few steps back from the conversation, dead silent, with her hands politely folded in mute support of her husband’s achievement.  Nobody asked her anything.  Nobody invited her into the conversation.  She just stood there.

Tom asked me what I’d do if he did that to me.  I said, “I’d pull a Kitty.”  He didn’t know what that meant until I reminded him of the That 70’s Show episode in which Red takes Kitty to a car show.  “I’d buy a funnel cake,” I said, “and shake the powdered sugar all over your interior.”

He laughed.  Tom totally gets me.

A little later, we wandered over to the black car to get a closer look.  It really was absolutely beautiful, and it was with more than a little reverence, and with a complete failure to remember the way the owner had treated his wife earlier, that I admired the paint and asked him who’d done it.  He answered fairly curtly—a local body shop we know and have done business with ourselves—and I started to say something complimentary about them when without any warning at all, he literally turned his back on me and addressed himself to Tom, even though Tom was all the way over on the other side of the car and I was in mid-sentence.

I always forget how rude people can be, and it never ceases to amaze me.  You’d think by now I’d be used to it, but honestly, this afternoon, I was so furious that I was just about ready to quit the whole shebang.

But then I thought of all of the thousands of women who have been fighting this fight for well over a century.  This car show thing is not news.

If you ever think the women’s movement is over, that the fight has been won, go to a car show.

I will be there. You can’t stop me.

I am woman.  HEAR ME ROAR.

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “She doesn’t have what it takes.” They will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.”

~Clare Boothe Luce