(SUBSTACK) — These days, I dread, under certain circumstances, getting into New York City taxis. Cultures around the world vary of course. (That should not be a taboo sentence.) And there are some cultures in this world in which women have no voice at all, and are treated with complete disrespect. I don’t wish to name that culture, as generalizations can indeed be racist or xenophobic.
I’ve lived for two decades in New York City, and usually my interactions with cab drivers are lovely.
But the new reality is inescapable: more often than not, when the driver of the taxi to which I am now doomed, is from a part of the world where these particular misogynist cultures exist, and if the driver is a recently arrived immigrant and male, I know that I will have a miserable argument before I can arrive at my destination.
“Sir, you are heading North — we are going to Brooklyn, which is South.”
