Spring has arrived and so have my giddy feelings of biking in weather other than snow. Mid-January I was telling myself that I will be the happiest kid in the world when I see green grass, daffodils, and roads that aren’t slippery. And so the time has come. Late night runs to dumpster non-frozen produce, group bike rides, riding without gloves (seriously not having to wear bulky mittens when the weather gets nice is an incredible feeling) – could it get any better than this?

Oh hell yes it could.

When I breathe in the Spring air and fly down Fulton on my way to work (usually with a Ghost Mice tune in my mind about getting enough fresh air) I feel just great. I feel great until some bike jock dude whizzes past me acting like he’s in NYC delivering a package (to my knowledge Grand Rapids does not have any bike courier services except for maybe Jimmy Johns just to throw that out there) and cuts me off while glancing at my “gear ratio”. Oh, ya gotta love ‘em. Skidding down Fulton on a thousand dollar bike with a dopey little hat on and no helmet really impresses a girl. I also feel really well accepted as a woman in the biking “community” in this town.

But for real now, the bottom line is that this macho-jockish shit’s just gotta go. It infects all things that are good. Patriarchy is so poisonous and truly imbeds itself so deeply in all of us. While it’s awful to fear for your life when motorists exhibit raging attitudes that could very well kill you, it’s also clearly not acceptable for other kids on bikes to act like jerks either. I know there is a big difference, but I’m just so sick of these attitudes. It’s not cool to constantly feel like your body and your bike are being appraised for their components. It’s tiring to be assumed you’re just an idiot that doesn’t know a damn thing when you go in to a bike shop unless you’re there with a male (and in most cases they’ll just talk to him anyway.) I also don’t appreciate these kids that can’t even say “hi” to you when their riding by but usually just weave in and out of traffic like they’re on some mission.

I know a lot of this is really strong stuff to say, but I’m not going to apologize for saying how I feel and calling this shit out. There is simply no point in working to create a “bike community” (as many would claim we’re doing) when women and other people who are oppressed are not included. This non-inclusiveness is found everywhere: at our jobs, our schools, our circles of friends, and most certainly can be found in our punk scene.

While a lot of people might argue women just need to be more assertive or that maybe women just naturally don’t enjoy biking (not true!) or that Grand Rapids just happens to have more men that bike than women, I’d argue that most of us (women) are taught that there is no place for us in the “biking world” to begin with. Same is true for the dominating presence of men when it comes to things like skate boarding, being in bands, hell… doing graffiti… and the list goes on and on.

What I’m getting at is that all of this is not one big coincidence. I’m attempting to write on complexity of emotions I feel everyday as a woman who does something she loves, biking, but feels threatened, unaccepted, and completely overshadowed. And I’m going to briefly explain why I think this happens.

I think that anyone who is not dominant in our society (i.e.women in this case) that express themselves in an assertive manner will face some pretty scary and threatening shit (think about women in the punk scene for example). Biking (which is legal on the shoulder of most roads in Grand Rapids — and not that I care about laws) in traffic exhibits assertiveness and people (motorists) largely do not like to see this. Cyclists typically get shit no matter who they are, but I’m arguing that it’s even worse for a woman. Patriarchy tells women that they should not be taking up space in general. It teaches us that we should be quiet, behaved, looked at only for our bodies (or in this case our bikes), fetishized or tokenized as the girls that ride bikes, and not confident in our rights (to the roads).

Beyond this, we can see clear examples of biking as solely a male activity or even genre. Look at who typically are the bike mechanics in town, who owns the bike shops and who works at them, who participates in races and even leads and largely attends group rides for that matter. Again, no real room for us and no attempt to make any either.

This is all pretty fucked up. I hate cars and hope to never own one again, so I view biking as not only a passion, but also a way of life for me. I’m simply not going to be quiet about this. While I believe patriarchy needs to be eradicated from every facet of our lives, I especially think it needs to be eradicated from our passions – but unfortunately just I can’t do this by myself.

So, anyone out there that identifies as a woman want to start women-only bike rides this summer? I really wanted to do it last year, but I didn’t. Seriously though, this could be really cool. Get a hold of me or leave a comment if this interests you. I think a very fruitful way of smashing patriarchy is to employ a tactic that gives us a safe space and produces something that is empowering at the same time. Bike rides are just one idea, I’m sure there are folks out there with even better ones.