Rabbits, Blinkity

Pippa Mann just wrote a great article about the glass ceiling in race car driving, and her new role mentoring young women.

But according to this fine gentleman, Pippa Mann should just realize she's an obvious failure and go make him a sandwich. And yes, there are lots of comments telling him to be more civil, and that he's probably a sexist jerk, and other remarks defending her driving record, and the usual chorus of "me too" all around. It's mostly all noise, though.

The truth of the matter is that sexism is still alive and well, and definitely affecting Mann's ability to get rides and sponsorship, and she has a right to talk about this and help other women without people running their mouthes about it.

But just for fun, let's say the critic is right. Say she's personally gotten a bit of an unfair advantage because she's a woman. Hell, say his favorite driver (who we're all just sure is so much more talented) didn't get a chance because she got her grand total of three Indycar rides last year.

Big. Fucking. Deal.

Guess what? The glass ceiling is still unquestionably there in racing. So's the glass floor. Only 1% or so of race car drivers are women, and there's no reason it shouldn't be 50%. Racing is obscenely, ridiculously male-dominated. It's systemic sexism, through and through. Women in racing have every right to take any advantage they can get.

In other words: dive-bombing the turns is entirely defensible.

Now, I wasn't going to talk about Danica Patrick here, but it's unavoidable; that whole situation is at the root of quite a lot of this. Look, Patrick's not my personal favorite either. She's a bit of a sellout—something she owns up to, by the way—and millions of words have been written whether her alleged "sexualization" of racing is productive or not. But she's literally the only woman, ever, who can be called a really successful race car driver. And in the generally corrupt, money-laden, mess of a sport that racing has been for the past 70 years, she's no better or worse than anybody else.

And Ms. Mann hasn't had even a thousandth of Danica's attention and hype. You can argue about whether Pippa's been personally affected one way or the other if you really want to, but it makes a great deal more sense to trust what she has to say on the subject. She's not a sellout. She just loves the sport. She wants to be involved with it however she can, and wants other people, especially women, to be involved too.

There's no victim card here. Just an admirable passion for driving race cars.

We'd all do well to care about things as much as she does.