SCCA controversy

In reply to Toyman! :

I'm hearing differently from at least some women drivers.  I am not active in road racing circles, so I am definitely not personally experienced with it either way.

In reply to Duke :

My wife isn't a road racer but she was SCR-SCCA's Regional Executive for 10 years. She was also the race chairperson for the Buck Muse Memorial Race at CMP for 6-8 years running. She currently works for the SCCA Foundation as the Street Survival National Coordinator. She has dealt with road racers, autocrossers, and all things SCCA for almost 2 decades. Even before pronouns were cool. 

She's not seeing any lack of support for any person across the entire SCCA. If she was, she would be the first to stomp them into the dirt. 

I'll take my lead from my wife on this. She is less than happy about how this has been blown up. 

There is a lot the SCCA does wrong from my point of view. Being supportive of women and minorities is one place the SCCA and its membership manages to get it right just about every time. 

The issue is the 5 people on the rules committee, the 5 people on the wheel to wheel board, the 5 people employed by the scca who review rules, and the 10 scca board members saw this change before it was published and none of them spoke up.

I am still banned from my local region meetings because I once asked if there was a way to look at the flag worker schedule without pictures of naked women.  Otherwise, I would ask our local board of directors member directly.

I'd like to petition to just replace all the he/she/they with "berkeleywad" and get it over with. Then everyone can be upset for the same reason, call it a fairness compromise.

Scca frankly has bigger issues that need dealt with more than a couple letters in a rule book hardly anybody reads until they're trying to one up a competitor on a technicality. 

Like why lock regions down so people have to spend 4 hours plus on the road for maybe 10 minutes of seat time? Why stop trying to help regions expand their rally cross options? Why make such drastic, seemingly yearly, class changes for tiny regions to micromanage when they barely make a difference at nationals?

It's a racing organization, not an HOA. 

Empathy:  the ability to understand and share the feelings of another

Shocking that something (related to an organization that is largely volunteers) went sideways on Facebook. 

CrashDummy said:

Can you help somebody like me, who doesn't speak SCCA, understand a little bit better? What exactly is the GCR? When a change is published on the website and in Fasttrack, does that mean that the change has been made or is it just soliciting feedback on a potential change? Do they only publish changes that they intend to make or do they publish every dumb idea somebody writes in about? 

GCR is "General Competition Rules", it's the rule book for road racing.  It covers things like safety gear, cage construction, flags, on-track behaviour, class preparation rules, etc.  You can download it here:  https://www.scca.com/pages/cars-and-rules

I dunno exactly how the process works, but the general idea is that people write to a committee with ideas for rule changes, the committee discusses them and decides what to propose, that proposal is published for the broader membership to review, and then formal changes are made based upon that broader review input.

I know numerous people who are SCCA members (I was once but am no longer). My local peeps are all cool people. SCCA management, OTOH, has historically been...well, kind of in a world unto themselves, it seemed.

I quit autocrossing because it was too much standing around and sweating and too little time driving. And expensive, for what it is. I found other forms of motorsport, and a different club that is sometimes confused with space travel. I found it far less political, more welcoming and made lots of friends 'over there'.

The only thing SCCA seems to be consistent at is stepping in manure with predictable frequency.

RyanGreener (Forum Supporter) said:

Toyman! said:

I could not care less. 

Mostly because my wife could not care less. 

A mistake was made and corrected. E36 M3 happens. 

After 20 years in the SCCA, the amount of support for women at SCCA events has always been profound. Hell, our region has been run by women for 12 of the past 13 years. 

Watching the meltdown of the Book of Faces has certainly been entertaining. The amount of childishness from both sides of this is rather hilarious. 

 

Total agreement here. I barely even read the rulebook, much less notice small things like this. If they changed it to only she/her or whatever, I wouldn't care and I'm speaking as a minority who probably looks out of place at a lot of events. Is the change stupid/insensitive? Yes. Does it change the fact that I'm interested in motorsports? Nope. I don't expect to get along with every single person in SCCA so I don't really have these kinds of issues to begin with.

Please note that the following is absolutely NOT directed at you, I only chose it to make a point about many of the misogynistic comments I've seen on social media about this.  

I would think that nearly all of the people making misogynistic comments on social media about this would agree with the bolded text above.  From my life's experience, I would also bet a LOT of money that if the SCCA actually changed the rulebook pronouns to she/her that a majority of those same people would completely lose their E36 M3.  I'm not sure why but some people have a rather profound inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes, to see things from someone else's perspective.  You know, the empathy gap.  That probably explains why when some people say they don't care either way they have already imagined being on every side of it and they really don't care, and don't change their opinion when the situation is reversed.  It also explains why other people say they don't care either way, and they usually say that when it's something that changes in their favor or in ways that agree with their worldview, but when the situation is reversed they completely flip flop and rant with unbridled outrage, because they simply could not have imagined themselves being on the opposite side of that equation.  

RyanGreener (Forum Supporter) said:

Toyman! said:

I could not care less. 

Mostly because my wife could not care less. 

A mistake was made and corrected. E36 M3 happens. 

After 20 years in the SCCA, the amount of support for women at SCCA events has always been profound. Hell, our region has been run by women for 12 of the past 13 years. 

Watching the meltdown of the Book of Faces has certainly been entertaining. The amount of childishness from both sides of this is rather hilarious. 

 

Total agreement here. I barely even read the rulebook, much less notice small things like this. If they changed it to only she/her or whatever, I wouldn't care and I'm speaking as a minority who probably looks out of place at a lot of events. Is the change stupid/insensitive? Yes. Does it change the fact that I'm interested in motorsports? Nope. I don't expect to get along with every single person in SCCA so I don't really have these kinds of issues to begin with.

You know who does notice "small things like this"? The people being marginalized. Seriously, both of you! You're okay with the SCCA moving a rule edit through committee and publishing that replaced neutral terms throughout for male terms, *including the section on pregnancy*? You're totally okay with supporting misogynistic messaging to the women who want to race? These kinds of flippant blow offs are part of the harm.

In reply to Javelin :

Tell me you didn't read everything I wrote without telling me you didn't read it. 

Javelin said:

RyanGreener (Forum Supporter) said:

Toyman! said:

I could not care less. 

Mostly because my wife could not care less. 

A mistake was made and corrected. E36 M3 happens. 

After 20 years in the SCCA, the amount of support for women at SCCA events has always been profound. Hell, our region has been run by women for 12 of the past 13 years. 

Watching the meltdown of the Book of Faces has certainly been entertaining. The amount of childishness from both sides of this is rather hilarious. 

 

Total agreement here. I barely even read the rulebook, much less notice small things like this. If they changed it to only she/her or whatever, I wouldn't care and I'm speaking as a minority who probably looks out of place at a lot of events. Is the change stupid/insensitive? Yes. Does it change the fact that I'm interested in motorsports? Nope. I don't expect to get along with every single person in SCCA so I don't really have these kinds of issues to begin with.

You know who does notice "small things like this"? The people being marginalized. Seriously, both of you! You're okay with the SCCA moving a rule edit through committee and publishing that replaced neutral terms throughout for male terms, *including the section on pregnancy*? You're totally okay with supporting misogynistic messaging to the women who want to race? These kinds of flippant blow offs are part of the harm.

Negative. These types of responses are the actual harm. The game of "who can get more outraged" over something so flippant and trivial- that's already been both explained, apologized for and corrected. The constant flow of "how can we figure out new ways to be victimized" or project victimization onto whatever group is the current flavor of the week. It's a never-ending cycle and the goalposts are constantly moved based on the current political winds. 

I served as a US soldier for several years, serving two tours in Iraq, including at the beginning of the ground war in 2003. I've now served my local community for nearly 14 years in a capacity that most people likely don't envy. During the last couple of decades, I've been called every name in the book. I've been taunted and threatened in every way imaginable- to include plenty of threats to murder my wife and children- and not just on the Internet (it's scary!), but directly to my face. I've been shot at more times than I can count. I've ran towards gun fire repeatedly and thanked the Lord that I have always been able to come home to my family. I've been spit on and banged up quite a few times in a myriad of ways. And I'm happy about it. I wouldn't change a thing. I'm overjoyed at the fact that a word wouldn't cause me to get my panties in a bunch and cry at night. If it did, I would have lost my mind and had a mental breakdown years ago. 

We used to teach resilience in this country- something about sticks and stones. Now we just focus on seeing who can cry the loudest about any perceived "injustice" we can come up with. And it never ends. Rather than making peace and choosing to forgive such a minor offense (they've already apologized and were working to correct it last I heard) and move on, lets harp on it and continue the tirade of feelings to help us feel better about ourselves!  

I'm sure plenty of people will say not so nice things about me or this post. I could truly care less and no amount of grandstanding is going to change my opinion. I've examined both sides of the argument and continuing to go down this path of "getting offended by everything" does not lead to any type of peace or existence that I'm interested in. 

As someone that is a big fan of stoic philosophy, I'll quote Marcus Aurelius: "Choose not to be harmed- and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed- and you haven't been" - Meditations 4.7

After looking around and reading the room, it's not difficult to figure out that my words will be down-voted. Moderators: if you need to ban my account, no worries, I understand and won't hold a grudge. 

Toyman! said:

In reply to Javelin :

Tell me you didn't read everything I wrote without telling me you didn't read it. 

Tell me you didn't bother to understand the controversy at all before commenting without telling me. 

Instead of he, she, they, it, can we just call them what they are: Drivers. Owners. Mechanics. No gender at all. Cars don't care. They just want to run

Javelin said:

Toyman! said:

In reply to Javelin :

Tell me you didn't read everything I wrote without telling me you didn't read it. 

Tell me you didn't bother to understand the controversy at all before commenting without telling me. 

He said he's not offended, because his wife was not offended. You know "the person being marginalized" as you put it. 
 

In reply to roninsoldier83 :

Thank you

This does seem to be a lot more about the outrage than the original issue.  I am not sure how much intent was in the original action, but the reaction made it FAR FAR worse (from both "sides" obviously).

As noted, and I actually had to develop something for the company I work for along these lines:  Far easier to simply refer to people by their name or description (e.g. driver) than to wade into (what has become) the absurdity (as in wildly cumbersome) of pronouns, which are really essentially ridiculous from a basic level anyway.  As in, what your sex or gender is does not really need to be the basis of how you refer to someone. It's really very "sexist" in general, if you think about it.  But it is the way the language was build up.

I just came inside to have a sandwich and catch up on the forum. I guess I'll go back outside to keep working on my Z.

Appleseed said:

Instead of he, she, they, it, can we just call them what they are: Drivers. Owners. Mechanics. No gender at all. Cars don't care. They just want to run

Speak for yourself. My cars don't wanna run for E36 M3. 

Time to close this one.

Thanks, everyone.