Heartless Doll - Chinese ladies get their own parking lot

Chinese ladies get their own parking lot

Posted at 7:30 AM Dec 29, 2009

By Andrea Grimes

MonthlyJoonGang.com

When women get the special pinkified treatment, it's usually for our own safety. Like when we get pink taxis so we don't get raped. (Although pink cabs can't keep you from drinking yourself into sexual assault, remember.) But China sees it differently. China knows women don't need special treatment because they're more likely to be victims of sexual assault and harassment, they need special pinkified treatment because they can't drive and others need to be protected from them.

Per USA Today via a Chinese paper called the Global Times, a ladies-only parking lot is being built under a shopping center:

The parking area, which will be free for several months, will also feature colored lights (pink and purple) and "cute cartoon pictures" for decoration, the paper promises. To improve visibility, it will feature three lights in every parking space, the newspaper says.

"The lot offers wider parking spaces especially designed for female drivers, who tend to cause twice as many collisions in parking lots than in other places, according to insurance company data," the Global Times says.

Really, women cause twice as many collisions? Sure, China. Suuuuuure. I'll buy what you're selling. Fine. But is the answer to this problem really putting cartoons on the walls? I mean, won't they distract the silly lady drivers who will already be unlikely to tear their eyes away from the shiny, pretty pink and purple lights? I think something must have gotten lost in translation here. I think they're building a pediatrician's office under that shopping center, not a parking lot.

And how kind--it's free "for several months." After that, you have to pay to be treated like a child.

But wait, there's more!

In the Global Times, this:

Such public facilities for women only are no longer an exceptional phenomenon worldwide. For example, Japanese women enjoy women only subway cars and Russian women take pink taxis specifically for them.

I'm not completely behind the idea of segregating women for their own safety--hey, how about we educate and raise men not to, say, rape women, instead?--but I am absolutely against the idea of segregating women because you think they are too stupid to park a damned car. At least ladies-only subway cars and taxis pretend to have some backwards, freaky modicum of respect for half the world's population.

Also, this, I love:

Female parking guides have been specially trained to direct the drivers when they park their vehicles.

If women can't drive, why have female parking guides? Oh, well. I can't be bothered to think that hard. I'm just going to go look at pictures of Hello Kitty and indiscriminately crash my car into walls. Being a lady is like living inside an adorable Grand Theft Auto.