The end of masculinity

I've noticed for a while that the feminine side has been taking over the modern world. Boys are having trouble being boys because they need to jump around and find frogs and all kinds of non PC behaviors. It also means that they need to discover skills that are not in any book. Like finding your way around. I learned it with a bicycle in a small town and the freedom to roam. These days moms don't let boys roam, they take them to school, practice, camp, gym, ballet, errands. Boys just veg in the back seat with an electronic game until they are deposited at their destination. Then they do whatever behavior is expected and wait until getting picked up.

This last bastion of maleness has now been totally destroyed. The male pride of comprehension in navigation has been wiped out. That business about asking for directions was just a small step, now every last prideful thing has been wiped out by GPS navigation particularly in cars.

As a male I take pride in knowing where I am, and knowing how to get somewhere. In fact where I live it's pretty simple, the ocean is on the west (where the sun goes down) and the mountains are on the east (where the sun comes up). To go north, simply keep the ocean on your left, to go south, keep it on your right. The main freeways go north and south in the bay area except when you need to get to the mountains and then you just head off to the east. It's as hard as picking highway 80 or 50 depending on which end of Lake Tahoe you want to get to. 80 for North, 50 for South.

Our new car has a navigation system. Very fancy with lots of buttons and screens and a thick manual. No longer can the wife just say "why don't you ask?". Now it's "why didn't you enter the destination", "are you in the right mode?" "Where's the way point?" "The screen says SR242, are we on that?" "You missed the last turn!". "Why don't you listen?". But this time, it's not why didn't I listen to her, but why didn't I listen to the stupid machine.

I'll tell you why I don't listen, because I know my way around and that stupid machine won't accept my home address as a valid address and I don't want to be bossed around by a computer and I hate it so much but I can't even figure out how to turn it off.

The last straw? It has a female voice.