Recently I went to the Nürburgring with a friend. A male friend. Normally I wouldn’t specify gender, but in this story it matters – trust me. Said friend and I had never visited a track together before, but on this occasion we’d come to a suitable arrangement. Due to circumstances I’m not able to drive the entire way to the Nürburgring on my own. I’m dependent on a co-driver to get there, but for that one day I hadn’t been able to find any. Then I learned my friend was going to the Ring as well. Moreover, he was going there in a car that had a seat empty AND he had selected a route that almost passed by my house. It would’ve been silly not to carpool, really.
The journey went without a glitch and once we got to the Ring, we had a good time. We studied the new cars, compared them to last year, gathered some racing intel: the works. But even so a small detail was amiss. Neither of us failed to notice that throughout the day one question kept popping up. It wasn’t a new question to me. I’d heard it many times before in the past decade, but never this frequently. Most of the time the question was asked in the following context. A person would walk up to us, look at my friend, look at me, look back at him, and ask: “Is that your girlfriend?” It’s a simple question. Many won’t see harm in it. In fact, the people who asked it only did so out of interest, not to give offense. Unfortunately, however, in a way they kind of did.
You see, the question has its roots in an old motorsport stereotype, one that I sometimes refer to as Hunt, are fearless, strong-willed, free-spirited, do whatever they please whenever they please, smoke, drink, and surround themselves with women. Who these women are isn’t really important. As long they have long hair and cleavage, nothing else matters much. They’re mainly ornaments anyway.
It’s because of this idea that every time someone assumes I’m dating a man simply because I’m standing next to him, I feel a bit uncomfortable. Comically-meant follow-ups like “why didn’t you bring her on a day with better weather?!” usually make that worse. It’s just not a nice feeling to know that you’re being simplified to fit an image born in the 1970s. This is 2016. We live in a world that’s much more complex than a stereotype. We have female drivers. We have female engineers. We have female team bosses. So why not assume that a girl on a race track, regardless of who she’s standing next to, is there to see the cars? Why conclude she’s attached to her boyfriend’s hip? And speaking of the supposed boyfriend, why assume that every man standing next to a girl is straight? I’ve no doubt there are gay men the world over who love motorsports.
We’re a long way away from abolishing the James Hunt-Principle. Motorsport is an archaic fortress that won’t be changed in a day, or even a week. But if we stop asking women on race tracks if they’re a man’s girlfriend; and if we stop asking girls if they’re there because their father made them, I think we’ll take a step in the right direction. I admit it’ll only be a tiny step. It’ll be like putting a grain of sand on a table. At first it’ll seem like nothing. But remember, if you keep stacking up grains then eventually the table will vanish.