# My car is angry with me

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-car-is-angry-with-me/781345>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [March 3, 2017, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-car-is-angry-with-me/781345 "2017-03-03T23:30:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Jennshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Jennshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennshark)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-car-is-angry-with-me/781345/21 "2017-03-11T13:41:28Z")

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> [@CerebrAl](#):
>
> “Her”?  
> Why did you assign your car a gender?  
> Your car is an “it”.

come to think of it, I think everyone I know/have known assigns cars gender.

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**Author:** ![Jennshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Jennshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennshark)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-car-is-angry-with-me/781345/22 "2017-03-11T13:45:30Z")

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> [@Senegoid](#):
>
> I can imagine a car would be very pissed at its (his? her?) owner if said owner assigned it the wrong gender. OP’s car might be suffering from gender dysphoria. Or perhaps OP’s car’s gender orientation is – how to say this politely? – incompatible with OP’s new car. Are they being kept indoors together in the same garage?

Old car is definitely a girl; I think new car is male, but not entirely certain yet . . . you may have an important point here.

And VW bugs are always girl cars, just as Chevy Novas are guys. 😃

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**Author:** ![CerebrAl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@CerebrAl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CerebrAl)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-car-is-angry-with-me/781345/23 "2017-03-11T19:18:02Z")

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> [@Jennshark](#):
>
> come to think of it, I think everyone I know/have known assigns cars gender.

And yet…you avoid answering the question.  
I have heard boats, cars, tractors…lots of things without the ability to think, referred to as “she”.  
It always surprises me, as It would never occur to me to do the same. I’m always curious as to how it is one assigns a gender to a machine. I can’t imagine trying to decide if my tractor is male or a female. It’s neither, it has no personality. It has a service life and requires maintenance. No mystery. If it is not maintained properly it may fail and it may fail anyway.  
To the contrary, I have compared myself to a machine…Have you ever looked at your hand and considered what it is capable of and for how long…that it requires no periodic adjustment or lubrication?  
As of yet, there is no machine that can do anything close, for as long, and with no maintenance…it actually fixes itself.

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