The Gendered “Affects” of Missing Your Bus

Original Post By: Mar Hicks

Author: A.S

TW: Mentions of Sexual Assault and Murder

I missed my bus today. I woke up an hour too late because my iPhone alarm malfunctioned and didn't go off, and as I write this post about technology, I will try to keep my current disdain for iPhones out of it. While being angry at my iPhone for making me come up with an alternate route home, I thought about how much gender would affect the next few decisions I was going to make. Although missing the bus is a somewhat regular thing for a burnt-out university student to experience, my choices throughout the day were affected by something scholars describe as the "pink tax" and something Mar Hicks describes as a feature of society. The pink tax is "a price discrepancy that calls out products and services marketed to women that cost more than identical or nearly identical versions marketed to men." This tax came to the foreground when I was looking for a last-minute rideshare to get home since since although it was the cheapest option, most of the drivers were strangers and men I did not know. For my own safety, I felt like my only option was to purchase an overpriced economy plus via rail ticket home instead of a rideshare, until I found a woman driver.

TikTok by @Verivanessa

After waking up to this unfortunate occurrence, I opened TikTok to lighten the mood. While scrolling, I read a video that said, "The feminine urge to dress like up like a guy whenever u leave the house so you can exist in peace." After eliciting a slight breath of laughter over the comment, I felt a wave of sadness come over. It made me think about how much gender discrimination and pink tax are brushed off in our society because they seem like obvious problems. And how so much of the world does not have to face the gendered consequences of missing their bus, they can simply laugh at this TikTok and keep scrolling.

There is constant discussion about what women face every day because of their gender, yet there are some people that believe that dangerous acts committed by men in Ubers or rideshares, for example, are one-offs. That it's

Tweets from the #DelhiShamedAgain movement on Twitter

#NotAllMen. That these are bugs in the system. In Mar Hick's article "A Feature Not a Bug," the author emphasizes that "Rather, gender discrimination is baked into the structures of high tech economies themselves, … Gender discrimination is not a bug—it's a feature." Hicks summarizes women's role within the technology sector, a role that has often remained unacknowledged and is riddled with a history of gender discrimination. This article shows how gender discrimination is deeply seeped into features of our society, and the "affects" of this are undeniable yet understudied. These affects can be further analyzed using Dr. Matthew Arthur's definitions of "Affect Studies."

Dr. Matthew Arthur explains that

"Affect calls into question the taken-for-granted status of the human and the body in science, theory, literature, and media. It is an analytic of power that takes capacities of affecting and being affected—and how such capacities are written into variously configured theoretical frameworks—as relentlessly political and informing constructions of race, sex, gender, ability, and debt."

This emotive field of study reinforces the lack of understanding that society has for the deeply historical affects of systematic discrimination against women, and how they are affected by gendered decisions everyday. How these experiences elicit emotions such as sadness at a humorous TikTok or anger at missing your bus and having to find another safe way home. Or anger because a reporter did not report a gender-based crime at a subway as a gender-based crime, and having to subsequently falling prey to the pink tax of now paying for a verified Uber driver rather than going to that subway station. Furthermore, frustration at the lack of female Uber drivers because of systematic discrimination against women involved in this "shared economy." "Affect studies resist canonicity," and the lack of study in the field of gender-based discrimination showcases the lack of understanding that society can have for the gender-based problems, which are features of society, and always have been.

Hick reminds readers to be cognizant and analytical of the tumultuous history of the current systems we take part in every day, and that remaining ignorant to these structures will only perpetuate negative results. And while I'm upset that my 4:50 am alarm decided not to go off, it led me down this insightful rabbit hole of the gendered "affects" of missing your bus.