masculinity, domination, and big cars

Content warning: this piece discusses rape culture.

A while ago I posted the following observation:

for a country so full of performative masculinity it's weird that men can say shit like "cycling isn't a solution–what if it rains?" with zero fear of immediately getting called a bitch

The number of reactions and shares shows it resonated with a lot of people. My favourite response was this reply from poster Pàra:

I don't think our performative masculinity is about toughness, though. It's about mastery and domination.
It's hard to project that when you're fighting your way through a storm looking like a drowned rat, but it's easy when you just flex your right ankle and your V8 roars like a Mesozoic monster.

This fits with my theory about car culture as a form of denial. As long as you move from climate-controlled box to climate-controlled box, you can pretend the forces of nature have no bearing on you–as soon as you have to put on a coat, you're admitting there are things beyond your control.

It also fits perfectly within the framework of car culture as an extension of rape culture.

Have you noticed that a lot of men don't like confident, self-assured women? The manosphere is a project by supposedly tough, masculine men to bring about a return to some era they believe existed, where women were meek and docile and submissive.

But why would tough, masculine men want women who so easily submit to them? Where's the challenge in that? Wouldn't it feel more earned if a confident, self-assured woman deemed him worthy of submitting to?

A friend of mine–a tall, muscular woman–once recounted to me about a time cop had bumped into her. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Fuck yourself,' she replied. She hunched over and mumbled 'ok' in an imitation of how the cop responded to her. It reminded me of the time at a protest I attended where a short-statured woman called a cop a dickhead and in response he roughed her up.

I wonder what it was about these two women that got such different responses to their aggression.

It makes me think of my experience on the road. Drivers, almost always men, using their vehicles to intimidate. Driving too close; revving their engines at me for having the gall not to run a red turning arrow and bowl over pedestrians; intentionally driving at me in order to run me off the road. I went to the police with that last incident. Questions they asked me included: did I do anything to provoke them, and what was I wearing?

In this video from TikTok, user @yngxrtan.mp3 discusses how, in his view, cars modified to be loud are part of rape culture:

If we are sharing a space, and you are going to a pull on my street next to my apartment at 3am, you are forcing yourself within not only my space, but you're forcing yourself within everybody else's space where your car is.

The comments are full of people talking about being catcalled out of car windows, about dangerous driving as a form of abuse, about engine revs being used to intimidate people walking on the street.

The continued bloat of personal vehicles not only enables people to intimidate other road users, but to dominate public space even when they're not running. Giant SUV with its tail sticking out over the footpath: what are you going to do about it? Shiniest ute you've ever seen parked entirely on the footpath: I guess you'll have to go on the road. I can do what I want and you have to be careful where you walk.

In the same way that men will rush to defend men they don't know against accusations of rape or sexual assault, so do drivers rush to defend other drivers who commit crimes using their vehicles. Sure he passed a cyclist dangerously close, but it's so frustrating being held up; okay she was texting while driving, but I can safely multitask while I drive; yeah they were drink driving, but how else were they supposed to get home?

The link between car culture and rape culture goes beyond the abstract when you consider its physical impact on our neighbourhoods. Eyes on the street is a core component of keeping communities safe, and those eyes disappear when places are made too hostile by the presence of cars for people to comfortably exist in; or when walls of vehicles block lines of sight to the street.

It's not an original observation to say that many people use their vehicles as an extension of themselves. It's important then to ask whether discussions about transport are being led by an objective evaluation of needs; or if in a country so obsessed with domination, they're being led by a need to dominate.