Is Sambo Antisense?

Many years ago, in my husband's car, I heard him say the word "three treasures" for the first time.

I still remember that a car was about to cut in front of us from the right lane, but the speed of changing lanes was too fast, and my husband braked suddenly, shaking me very uncomfortable.

He shouted angrily: "Three treasures", and then added: "It really is a woman".

Therefore, on the road afterwards, I often heard the word "three treasures", whether the distance between the vehicle in front is too large, the lane change does not turn on the turn signal, the slow vehicle occupies the overtaking lane, the parking distance is too far from the stop line, or a vehicle rushes out of the alley. Locomotive or motorcyclist drilling and so on. In short, "Three Treasures" has almost become the mantra of my husband when driving.

My husband used "three treasures" and "woman" together, which made me cry out, but it also aroused my curiosity about these two words.

The "three treasures of refuge" in Buddhism refer to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the monks; the "three treasures rice" in the roast meat shop is fried chicken, roast duck, and barbecued pork. But what exactly are the "three treasures" that my husband sneers at? !

It turns out that there are usually two versions of the "three treasures" used to describe the "three treasures" on the road that do not follow the rules or drive illegally. One is "baby, woman, old man", and the other is "old man, woman, old woman"; both the former and the latter have women, and the latter is more often used as a metaphor.

The alleys in Taiwan are narrow, the roads and lights are poorly designed, locomotives are running around, and cars are illegally parked, which makes me afraid of the road. Even walking is frightening, let alone driving. In addition, I have been accustomed to public transportation since I was a child. After I got my driver's license, I always put it deep in the drawer and rarely saw the light. So, are most of these road samurai women? I'm curious.

Many female friends around use automobiles and motorcycles instead of vehicles. They may not be good at mechanical maintenance, but their driving and cycling skills are not necessarily inferior to men. Regardless of their age, most of them drive smoothly, abide by traffic rules, seldom make big moves, and seldom hear them criticize other passers-by.

Therefore, I went online to collect statistical data related to transportation and gender, to verify whether the three treasures are "old people, women, and old women".

In 2017, the New Taipei City government’s three-year violation statistics showed that the “three treasures” most frequently reported by the public were disregarding lights, disregarding wires, and disregarding people; there was no significant difference in age or gender of violators[ 1 ]. However, the data in 2020 shows that the accident rate decreases with age, that is, the older the perpetrator, the lower the accident rate[ 2 ].

In 2022, statistics from the Ministry of Communications show that the total number of violations of expressway speeding (violation of Article 33 of the Road Traffic Management Punishment Regulations) will be 48,435, of which 41,876 (86.5%) are male and 6,559 (13.4%) are female [ 3 ]; In 2020, the Ministry of Communications analyzed the results of violations in the three years from 2017 to 2019, as shown in the following table [ 4 ], and the majority of violators were male.

Although the absolute ratio of male to female violations is 2 to 1 (9 to 1 on expressways), relative data (number of violations/number of violations, that is, the ratio of male or female surnamed violations to male and female drivers) is not available. Since there are more male drivers in Taiwan and more men violate the rules, it is unfair to criticize men for more frequent violations.

Due to the living and working environment in the United States and Britain, it is believed that the ratio of male to female drivers should be closer to that of Taiwan. Searching for statistics on traffic violations and gender in the United States and Britain through ChatGPT, the violation rate is still dominated by men, see the [Remarks] at the end of the article for details.

Antisense is a combination of the prefixes anti and sense. Sense refers to the feeling of the environment through the five sense organs, and more importantly, the overall feeling. You can use "no sense" to call someone stupid, "nonsense" to call someone nonsense, and "senseless" to call someone meaningless. Although we know that anti means opposition or the opposite, but what is antisense?

The Cambridge dictionary does not have this word. Google search and ChatGPT say that antisense is a term for genetic engineering. If you think about it with the above prefixes, suffixes or idiomatic sentences, antisense can be literally translated as anti-perception, that is, a state where a person's perception is contrary to the facts, but it does not reach the point of opposing ideology.

The attribution theory (Attribution Theory), which judges that other people's behavior is caused by external or internal factors, and discrimination, prejudice or error against others, may better explain what antisense is.

Common discriminatory terms for gender, age, body, etc., such as: an old dog can't do new tricks, a brat, a big brainless, a gossip, etc. Subjective perceptions, without rigorous verification, that describe the behavior of the same or similar groups in ironic or derogatory terms.

Therefore, equating "women" with the "three treasures" of the road and belittling women's driving skills is discrimination against women's driving, which is clearly a kind of Antisense!

[Remark]

ChatGPT queries the statistics of traffic violations and gender in the United States and the United Kingdom as follows:

In the United States, the rates of speeding, drunk driving or not wearing seat belts among men are 52%, 76% and 53% respectively. The above data have not been verified by NHTSA .

In the UK, the rates of speeding, drunk driving and men not wearing seat belts are 68%, 87% and 42% respectively. Interestingly, the rate of British women not wearing seat belts is higher than that of men. The above information has not been checked on relevant websites.

The above statistics are published for 2019 or 2020, and the data may be for 2019 or 2018.