sparkz-and-speed:

Hey motorsport fandom on Tumblr. Following from the photo of “girls who love racing are rare, wife ‘em up” shirt which was circulated in social media outlets recently, one of my Formula E fansite operators from USA voiced this out on her blog. An important read for all fandoms on the reality for a lot of female motorsport enthusiasts.

cc: @sparkle-eagle, @thepagemistress

I’ll be honest, I don’t recall ever being personally harassed or made to feel uncomfortable as a female motorsport fan. BUT I’m not young or attractive, which is the other side of the same coin – if you’re not those things, you’re not really a woman to the sort of dickheads who do go out of their way to victimise female racing fans: you’re at best invisible, and at worst a target for mockery (”who’d want to fuck you anyway?”). 

Even leaving that aside, there are still issues like grid girls that affect all of us, largely by exposing the unpleasantness of a lot of men who probably wouldn’t directly heckle or harass women in person, but think that grid girls and ~glamour~ are “tradition” that’s untouchable, and we’re prudes and anti-fun for suggesting that maybe racing doesn’t actually need to use human beings as decoration in order to be interesting. It’s amazing the vehemence with which people defend such a completely pointless concept, especially on Twitter and even when they’re meant to be respected veteran journalists ¬_¬

On Being a Woman Who Loves Racing