When will society learn that women can do the same things that men can?
I mean, really. I realize that a bumper sticker is not the ultimate medium for a serious, developed, mature viewpoint. However, the sole fact that such an artifact exists, and that someone might want to sport it on the back of their car reveals many things about society’s unspoken assumptions.
The most blatantly obvious ideology exposed by this sticker is that men are “handy” and women are not. Handiness and manliness are inherently intertwined: a man who cannot, say, name the parts of a car or fix things around the house is implicitly (or explicitly) considered lesser of a man by others. From a young age, boys have this ideal pushed onto them by getting toy cars and tools as gifts. It is just one piece of the large puzzle that is toxic masculinity. Though it may not seem it upon first glance, this bumper sticker is telling every man out there that if they do not know how to change the oil of a car (or do any other technical task), they are failing civilization.
This assumption carries over to women, who are placed within their own gender confines by society. Presumably, women do not know how to do technical or hands-on tasks. They are not supposed to. While my boy counterparts played with plastic hammers when we were children, I played with fake food in a toy kitchen. Girls are placed in the stereotypical role of pristine, nurturing housewife. Additionally, this role assumes that they are not as smart or as capable as boys and that they need their assistance to survive.
Frankly, the logical argument behind this sticker is not only fallacious but based on gender roles and assumptions that are changing by the day in our modern society. It seems whoever bought this bumper sticker is stuck in the days of the nuclear family and the good American housewife. It’s 2019 people, let’s open our eyes to the myriad of possibilities that are laid out before us, regardless of our prescribed genders.