The Harvard controversy on whether women’s technical aptitudes are innate:
… [The Harvard president’s] young daughter, when given toy trucks, had treated them as dolls, naming them “Daddy truck” and “baby truck.” But critics dryly observed that men had a longstanding tradition of naming their vehicles, and babying them as though they were humans.
Lt. Neil Prakash:
You can’t beat ol’ Blinkey for armored protection.
I call my baby, Blinkey, ever since she got one of her headlights blown off in Baqubah by an RPG. The RPG had ripped open that little corner of the hull and exposed the depleted uranium armor. She’s taken so much battle-damage that we’re being told she will never return to duty after this deployment… Supposedly, she will be coded out, ripped apart and studied at a lab. If that’s true, that breaks my crew’s hearts. She has taken a pounding and kept her crew alive. She should be bronzed and placed on a concrete slab at Ft. Knox for everyone to see.
i name all my wehicles and despite erroneous guesses to the contrary, i am not male. 😉 it’s just a very human thing to do. also, i totally understand our hero’s pain wrt his beloved “Blinkey”.
though nowhere near as heroic as lt.prakash’s steed, my first car died honourably in a collision that (according to the California Highway Patrol who pulled me from the wreckage) should have taken me with it. weeks later, when i found out that they were ripping it apart for…parts, i was bereft. being fond of inanimate objects (which IMO is one reason why we name them) isn’t a gendered behaviour. silly harvard presidentses.
nice contrasting, mv. 🙂
Nice juxtaposition, Manish!
Also: think of all the songs from the muscle car era that talked about the voiture as a “she”:
She’s my little deuce coupe You don’t know what I got
Even boats are traditionally given female names.
So, let me make a sweeping generalization a la Harvard dude: men are genetically predisposed to being obsessed with women and vehicles.
-D
Cute Manish 🙂
(I was so upset when I read his (second hand – no transcript exists)comments that I had to take to my chaise-lounge and request a bottle of smelling salts. How dare someone suggest a theory at an academic conference that I might disagree with or find offensive? All academic enquiry should be carefully screened for suitability, lest a gentlewoman such as myself be disturbed!)