On a sit-up (upright) bicycle our senses are alive to the world. Women, accustomed to feeling watched and judged, can now be the ones to survey.

I would like to say that I ride my bicycle for environmental or health reasons. But it wouldn’t be true. I am an unrepentant hedonist, a voluptuary and lover of leisure. The fact that cycling is also good for the planet, the city, the body and soul is a very happy coincidence. But before anything else I ride my bike because it thrills every sense in my body.

…Around the 1890s middle-class women around the western world cycled their way out of domestic incarceration dressed in bloomers, fitted coats and jaunty hats. They did so amidst a shrieking chorus of patriarchal outrage. 

Firstly there was the problem of women having legs…

dailylife.au, 16.05.12.

audrey hepburn.

We cyclists are often relegated to second class citizenship on the road, where drivers feel entitled to intimidate, attack, and disregard us. We’ve been unfairly cuffed and searched, and in one instance, a patrol car attempted to run a group of us off the road, then fled down a freeway onramp. We’ve attended city hall meeting after meeting, and each time the heads nod and the mouths make promises of reform that are rarely ever kept. Judges favor drivers in the hit and run accident cases that usually leave cyclists brutally injured and maligned, or worse, dead. In the year and a half I’ve been riding in Los Angeles, I’ve seen the erection of three ghost bikes – bicycles painted white and placed at the location where a fellow cyclist has been slain. When confronted with our grievances, motorists like to point out the famous stop-sign-running cyclist, but never have the courage to report on the numbers of drivers who merely roll through intersections or speed through red lights. Is it any wonder that we sometimes take to the streets in swarming hives to ride in the safety of numbers? From the outside it may appear as hooliganism, but inside, we’re angry and we’re taking solace in each other’s company.

Feminism and Cycling, the “Untrammeled Woman”, 31.07.11.

YA’LL GOTTA GET OUT OF LA.

yeah, it’s not tooo much better in San Diego, but hey.

Today, especially in Los Angeles’ Car Kingdom, the bicycle is still a symbol and a tool of activism. It’s a bold statement against oil consumption, traffic, and pollution, and like all other forms of activism, it’s not easy. Cyclists are often denied their rights to the road by motorists and law enforcement. Riding a bicycle can be dangerous and discouraging. It’s not too unlike confronting men with their sexism, suffering the humiliation of gendered condescension, or constantly wondering if people are seeing you or your sex.

bikeladiesunite:

A great article by Liz over at Feminist Fatale. She found herself, like so many women before her, feeling empowered when she rode her bike in the harsh streets of LA. But when she helped start a women-only night at her local bike co-op, reactions became hostile in a terrifying and deeply anti-feminist way. Although neither I nor any of my female cyclist friends have experienced this sort of vitriol, it’s quite saddening that anyone still does. Definitely worth the read.