Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the non-voting House delegate representing Washington, D.C., may have endured some sleepless nights recently, worrying that folks on her side of the political divide are not yet woke enough. Then, in a flash of genius – or sheer buffoonery, depending on one’s point of view – it occurred to her that true diversity had not yet reached one particular segment of American society; crash-test dummies.
“Women have achieved equality on the road when it comes to driving,” The Washington Times reports Norton as saying, “but when it comes to safety testing to keep them safe on the road, they are nowhere near achieving equality.”
She Drives Me Crazy
Before getting into the weeds of this particularly egregious case of societal imbalance, it is perhaps worth pointing out that female motorists have not yet attained equality with their male counterparts. A level playing field will only be achieved when women drivers experience a near-constant running commentary on their driving habits from male passengers, regularly punctuated by demands that they stop and ask directions because they are obviously lost. Only then will female drivers truly be equal to men behind the wheel.
Aside from that obvious observation, though, is Norton really onto something? She claims that female victims of car accidents “are 73% more likely to experience serious injury or death than males.” In a June 1 tweet, the delegate goes on to reason that “anatomical differences between males and females affect how bodies react in a crash.”
The head-scratcher here, of course, is that the woke left has for some time been trying to convince everyone that there are no anatomical differences between males and females; that the two sexes, or genders, as they like to call them, are interchangeable – that males can identify as females and females as males. Nevertheless, the congresswoman is taking the issue very seriously and has pledged to introduce a bill that would require crash-test dummies to “be modeled on both male and female bodies.”
No Sex-Drive?
Is there a cause and effect relationship, here? Are females less safe on the road because the majority of crash-test dummies are currently designed only to anatomically represent males? If a larger percentage of those dummies were designed to resemble females, would women drivers and motor vehicle passengers be safer? Who knows? One would have thought that someone with expertise in the field would have by now determined the answers to these questions.
Perhaps Norton is just attempting to be super-woke. Then again, maybe it really is time to consider the lack of diversity among crash-test dummies. There are, indeed, dummies that resemble females, non-whites, and even children, but are they mere tokens? The matter likely warrants a multi-million dollar congressional inquiry.
Driving While Black
For one thing, these dummies are almost all suspiciously pale. Perhaps car manufacturers are only interested in the safety of white people? No reasonable person would expect that last question to be even worthy of serious consideration, but would black and brown people not be safer on the road if more crash-test dummies were a little less pink?
For that matter, should not some of these dummies resemble Asians or American Indians? What about transgender dummies? Is it to be simply assumed that every crash-test dummy identifies as male? Maybe, the place to begin is dropping the word “dummy” altogether; it is, after all, incredibly offensive. Car manufacturers should perhaps be required to adopt the term “crash-test synthetic persons,” or some similarly less controversial descriptor. Maybe even “non-binary crash-test synthetic persons.” Problem solved.
Whether or not Norton’s reasoning is scientifically sound, everybody can surely agree that it is time for the non-binary crash-test synthetic persons community to reflect the diverse nature of modern American society. The next logical step would be to grant them representation. U.S. voters should give serious consideration to electing a large number of dummies to Congress.
Oh, wait. Never mind.
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
