The Leak

Warning:  I am invoking the Howard Cosell rule.

Today I'm too upset to talk about much of anything.

By now, you've heard about the leaked draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito, of the Supreme Court's opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Of course, that doesn't mean the law has been struck down--at least, not yet.  But, according to the draft,  Justice Clarence Thomas as well as all of Donald Trump's appointees--Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch--had already voted to overturn the 1973 ruling that the US Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether or not she wants to give birth.

Alito based his argument, in part, on the fact that abortion isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.  Of course, any number of right-wing politicians and their supporters--who include those who are waiting, with bated breath, for Alito's opinion to become an actual ruling--have also tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act because the right to health care isn't guaranteed in the Constitution.  Now, I'm not a Constitutional scholar and my mind may not be suited for jurisprudence, but to me, such arguments sound a bit like saying that French pastry chefs shouldn't make a mille feuille with passion fruit, mango and coconut cream because such ingredients weren't available to Francois Pierre La Varenne when he wrote Le Parfait Confiturier during the reign of Louis XIV.  Or, perhaps, saying in essence that we shouldn't guarantee the right to something that isn't in the Constitution is like saying that money shouldn't be set aside for bike lanes and education because bicycles and cyclists aren't mentioned in a city's or state's traffic statutes.

I realize that some of you may feel differently about abortion rights than I do.  And, some of you may wonder why I, who never have been and will be pregnant, should care about abortion rights.  Well, for one thing, you might say that undergoing my gender affirmation made me into something of a feminist, if I wasn't already one.  But more important, if a government tells a woman or girl that she absolutely must, under penalty of law, carry a pregnancy to term, even if it resulted from rape, incest or other actions not of her choosing, what else can that same government tell us to do--or not do--with our bodies?  Would I have been able to get the therapy, take the hormones and undergo the surgical procedures that enabled my gender affirmation (and undid some of the damage from decades of living "in the closet?"  Will someone be forced to undergo treatments or procedures--think chemo for advanced cancer patients--against their wishes, even if refusing such procedures or treatments will harm no one else?  

Oh, and if a government can tell people what they can and can't do with their bodies, it will also more than likely have the power to rigidly enforce the traditional gender binary and to say what men and boys or women and girls can or can't do.  I can't help but to think that overturning Roe vs. Wade will also make it easier to overturn laws allowing same-sex marriage--and allow laws like the ones in Texas that criminally charge parents who seek gender-affirming treatment for their children.

Finally, I think of the time I worked with children, in camps, a hospital and in workshops I conducted as a writer-in-residence in New York City schools.  While I did whatever I could to nurture the kids in my charge for as long as they were with me, I couldn't help but to think that some of their parents simply shouldn't have been parents.  That is not to say, of course, that the children shouldn't have been born. I simply think that, whatever one believes about abortion, there are few worse tragedies than a child born unwanted, who will never be loved or cared for properly.  The worst part is that such kids know who they are and too many never recover from such knowledge.

I am scared shitless.  I am fucking scared shitless.  I don't know how else to say it.

R.B.G.: Hearing The Shofar As I Pedal

As you know by now, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away on Friday night.

I heard the "breaking news" on the radio that evening, as members of an observant Jewish family were returning from shul to their home just up the block from me.  Rosh Hoshannah had just begun.  In times past--and in some Orthodox communities--it's heralded by sounding a shofar:  a horn made from a hollowed-out ram's tusk.

The shofar was, and is, still used to call attention to significant events, and to warn of danger. RBG's passing seems like a shofar blast.

She didn't single-handedly keep women from living out the nightmare of The Handmaid's Tale. But very few people did more to bring the status of women and girls--and, by extension, others who have been disenfranchised--closer to equality with that of men and boys.

While I didn't know her personally, I have the sense that she did what she did because of something she understood, perhaps viscerally, and which I came to understand during my gender transition:  Anyone who doesn't have agency over his or her body and mind is a slave.  

When I understood that, I believe, I truly became a feminist.  Before that, I supported a woman's right to choose, in all areas of life (including reproduction), and equal opportunities.  But, until I started living as a woman, they were merely "issues."  Once I began my transition, I realized they were matters of my own life:  Even though I never have been, and never will be, pregnant--and, thankfully, do not have to worry about having a hysterectomy without my consent--  I realize now that I could choose to take medications and undergo medical procedures to align my body with my psyche without having to ask permission from any man--or worrying about being imprisoned for violating a law written and enforced by men.

I could also continue cycling for the same reasons.  Until recently, women weren't allowed to ride--or drive--in Saudi Arabia.  In other societies, women and girls are discouraged, or even intimidated, away from such things.

My life--which includes cycling--is possible, in part, because of Justice Bader Ginsberg's work.  Her passing is, among other things, a warning, or at least a signal, that I cannot take it for granted:  a shofar blast, if you will.

Freedom Riders

Today is International Women's Day.

In previous posts, I've talked about the role bicycles played in women's rights.  And, although I've posted it before, I'll repeat a remark of Susan B. Anthony:

  Let me tell you what I think of bicycling.  I think it has done more to emanicpate women than anything else in the world.  It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.

"Free, untrammeled womanhood." Funny she should say that.  When I started my transition from life as Nick to being Justine, I wondered whether I would continue cycling.  I lost some of my strength when I started taking hormones, though some of that loss may have been due to aging.  (I was in my mid-40's when I started.)  I also wondered whether cycling would fit into the image of femininity and womanhood I was trying to project at the time.

Happily, I didn't have to trade cycling for my identity because, well, cycling is as much a part of my identity as anything is.  Though I am not as strong or daring as I once was, I don't have to be when I'm on the bicycle.  Perhaps this knowledge is also what has allowed me to feel comfortable in riding what I like rather than following this week's trends.

And, here is something else I believe Ms. Anthony would approve:  I see cycling as much a part of my identity, not only as a woman named Justine, but as a feminist.  When you come right down to it, feminism is the freedom to do as we see fit, or as we please. Cycling fits that definition as much as anything--including reading and writing--for me.

So, I am hoping that some of the ice I encountered in the aftermath of yesterday's late-day storm clears out by the time I leave work.  That way, I can celebrate this day with--what else?--a bike ride!

Into, And Out Of, The Chaos

Now I'm going to tell you a secret:  You see, there's this place where we all meet and it's gonna change the world.

Someone told me I should write about a conspiracy or two--or at least hint at them.  According to that person who is an expert on what, I don't know, conspiracies and conspiracy theories draw viewers to websites the way free food draws, well, just about anybody to any place.

So...about that place and the meeting that will shake the earth--or modern society, anyway--to its foundations:  I'll tell you about it.  In fact, I'll even tell you who "we" are.

No, we're not the Illuminati or the Carbonari.  We're way more secret than that.  In fact, we're so secret that we don't even know who we are, let alone where we're meeting or why--let alone what the outcome will be.

But we exist, and we're holding such a meeting because, well, people who know better (or should) say that we are.  To wit:

The "they" in this snippet are female cyclists.  Specifically, it referred to the women on wheels who had emerged from whalebone corsets and hoopskirts some time around 1897, the peak of the first Bicycle Boom.  Now we were wearing shorter skirts or--shudder--bloomers with--gasp--socks!  Worse yet, we were setting new standards in fashion.

Now, all of you women who are reading this know that when we dress, we are doing it for each other.  I mean, when the Duchess of Cambridge wears one of those beautiful dresses for a gala or whatever, no man (well, OK, almost no man) pays as much attention to it as any of us.  I recall now a holiday spent with my brother and sister-in-law a year or two after they had their first child.   It was around the time Wheel of Fortune became one of the most popular game shows.  Watching Vanna White slink across the stage, my sister-in-law exclaimed, "I would love to wear that dress!"

The funny thing is that the bicycle, in a way, abetted this attitude.  When women started riding bikes, they weren't seeking approval from men.  If anything, they got scorn or derision from their husbands, fathers, pastors and other males in their lives--as well as some of their female elders.   We were riding and dressing for comfort and (relative) ease of movement--and to impress each other.  Since the men weren't going to approve (well, most of them, anyway), we sought encouragement from each other. 

Equally funny is that as we were mocked and scorned, we were also commodified.  At least a few businessmen saw that as we got on our bikes, we had more mobility--which meant more freedom to do all sorts of things. Like go to work and earn our own money.  And we could buy all of those outfits we would wear as we rode to our "grand rendezvous" where we got the "wobbly old world to wake up" and "adjust itself"--if, perhaps, not in the way the writer of that editorial intended. 

(At least they're not meetings of this organization.)

If you want to see a wonderful graphic story about how the bicycle changed women's history, check out Ariel Aberg-Riger's piece, posted yesterday on Citylab.

Speaking of late 19th-Century urban America, Aberg-Riger says, "Into this chaos came the bicycle."  And out came the modern woman.

Does that sound like a conspiracy, or what?

Why Else Would We Ride?

Today is International Women's Day.

I won't sully this post, or blog--or, for that matter, the digital world--by recounting what Trumplethinskin (a.k.a. TrumplerasPUTIN) tweeted.  I will only say that his missives are the very epitome of condescension or pure-and-simple insincerity, depending on your point of view.   

Instead, I'll repeat something I've included in previous posts.  It comes from the far-more-esteem-able personage of Susan B. Anthony:

Let me tell you what I think of cycling.  It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.  It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.

Surely she would have been happy to see these young women helping another learn how to ride:

Also, she would have been happy to see their outfits:  They were free of the whalebone corsets and voluminous dresses and skirts "proper" ladies were expected to wear.  Instead, they were attired in the far more practical "bloomers", patterned after the pants worn by fashionable ladies in Istanbul--and named for their designer, Anthony's fellow suffragist Amelia Bloomer.

Another fitting quote for this day, in my opinion, comes from Queens homegirl Cyndi Lauper:  

Girls Just Want To Have Fun:  Is there a better reason for us to ride bikes?

Girls Just Wanna Ride Bikes....In Iran

If you were going to start a movement, would you ban 51 percent of the people from participating in it?

Perhaps that seems like a rhetorical, or merely silly, question. 

It is, however, one that is begged by a turn of events in a country full of paradoxes.

I'm not talking about the US Presidential election campaign.  Rather, I am referring to a something that happened in a country where such things normally don't happen--and what resulted in one part of that country. 

The nation in question is performs more gender-reassignment surgeries than any country except Thailand.  Yet its leader once famously declared that there are no homosexuals in his country.

By now, you may have realized that I am talking about Iran. 

It's not a country noted for its advanced environmental policies.  So more than a few eyebrows were raised when, in November 2015, environmental activists in Aran, an industrial city in the western province of Markazi, introduced the idea of "Tuesdays Without Cars" or, more generally, "Clean Tuesdays", on which people are invited to leave their cars at home and, instead, commute by bicycle. 

The idea quickly spread and now all of the Iran's provinces have joined in.  Now it's on the verge of becoming a national event.

But national events aren't easy to coordinate in a country like Iran.  I have never been there, but I have been told that in at least one sense, it's like neighboring Turkey, where I have spent some time:  there are great cultural differences from one region to another.  So, in a city like Tehran or Istanbul, there are neighborhoods full of people who live lives not too dissimilar from those in Western capitals.  However, in both cities, there are also conservative religious enclaves.  So, it almost goes without saying that in the countryside, customs and interpretations of Islam are, shall we say, not exactly liberal.

In Marivan, a county of Kurdistan province about 500 kilometers from Markazi, some women were stopped on 29 July for the crime of...cycling.  At least, some police officers had the idea that women on bikes were haram.  For the time being, women can't ride bikes on the streets in the area.

While there is nothing in Iranian legal codes that prohibits women from cycling, in places like Marivan, the idea of a woman riding a bicycle goes against traditional religious values--or, at least, interpretations of them.

Now, I am certainly no expert on the Qu'ran or Sharia law, but I don't think anything in either would exclude women from riding bicycles, specifically.  But some would interpret those texts, which warn against shameful acts, to mean that women should not ride bicycles.

Or, at least, they would interpret them to mean that women should not be seen riding bicycles in public.  Upon hearing about the July incident, Mamousta Mostafa Shirzadi, the Friday prayer Imam for Marivan, said that officials of the Sport and Youth Organization "need to provide" the women an "appropriate indoor space" for cycling.

In response, organizers of Tuesdays Without Cars pointed out that women, as much as men, need to be able to use their bikes as transportation-- and not just for exercise or recreation, which is all that an indoor space would allow.

Here is a video from a protest against the ban:



Below is a still from a video of a mother and daughter defying the de facto ban on women cycling:

A mother and daughter defy the fatawa against women cycling.

Go Thou And Do Likewise

One of a child's first milestones is when he or she can walk without help.  For many (and, I assume, for everyone reading this blog), a subsequent milestone is riding a bicycle without anyone or anything to aid with balance.

For even the most agile of kids, learning to ride a bike involves a fall or two, and some bumps and bruises.  Kids recover from such things quickly; indeed, most forget the pain of those experiences.

When you get to a certain age, shall we say, wounds don't heal as quickly as they did when you were young.  (That is one reason why I gave up mountain biking in my mid-40s.)  The good news is that your sense of balance is almost certainly better than it was when you were a toddler, and your muscles and reflexes are conditioned in ways they weren't when you were a babe.

Still, it's hard for me to imagine what it's like to learn how to ride a bike at age 53.  It's especially difficult for me to envision a novitiate of that age learning to ride in the sorts of clothing "proper" ladies were expected to wear in public in 1892, not to mention on the kinds of bikes that were ridden at that time.

However, there is one woman who managed to do just what I've described.  She says that it took her three months of practicing fifteen minutes a day, and during that time, she took only one fall.

If you think that the woman I'm describing had a very determined will, you'd be right.  Those of you who've done a bit of reading in women's history--or about one of the most infamous periods of American history--know who she is:  Frances Willard.

To say she's one of the most interesting and enigmatic figures in history would be an understatement.  She's sometimes credited as a founder of feminism--at least in its earliest iteration--in this country. In a sense, that's true:  She believed that it was not only a woman's right, but also her destiny, to have equal citizenship with her husband.

Notice that I wrote "her husband" and not "a man."  You see, she believed that a woman's duty was still mainly domestic and that her work should be focused on the education of her children and the emotional and spiritual support of her husband. 

Because she believed that women had to "temper" their men, at the same time she was crusading for women's suffrage and other rights, she was a leader in a movement that would lead to the greatest failure in American law and social policy (aside, perhaps, from the War on Drugs).  That, of course, was the Eighteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment thirteen years later.  It's more commonly known as Prohibition, and it was the culminating achievement of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, of which Willard was a leader.

Her almost-schizophrenic ideas about women's rights seems to have been an all-too-logical result of her own experience.  Growing up in rural Wisconsin, she raised livestock, chopped wood, broke horses and did all of the work men did in that environment--until she turned sixteen. 

The notion of Sweet Sixteen in the 1850's was to give a girl who just turned that age her first corset, hoopskirt and high heels.  In other words, she got the privileges of restricted breathing and hobbled walking.  She described the sadness she felt over being forced into the prescribed role for a Proper Young Victorian Lady, but somehow she managed to break off an engagement and never be married. 



One might think that anyone who could choose to live a life independent of the expectations of her place and time, and to help found two of America's most significant social movements (as misguided as one of them was), would have felt at least some degree of confidence about herself and her place in the world.  However, as she says in "Wheel of Fortune", her mother's death exacerbated the strains she was already feeling about her exhausting schedule of researching, writing, traveling, teaching and speaking--not to mention the conflict between her struggle for her own, and women's, independence and her struggle to live, to the degree she could, according to the expectations of her place and time.

It was while facing such a predicament that she realized the  "conquest" of the bicycle by someone like her, "who had so many comrades in the white-ribbon army" would be "influential."


She exhorted those "comrades" and other women: "Go thou and do likewise."

 

Women, Bikes And Equality

Yesterday I wrote about a rather curious phenomenon:  the cities and countries with the strongest cycling cultures aren't necessarily the ones with weather and terrain most people believe are best for cycling.  As examples, I cited Boston, New York, San Francisco and Portland in the US and such European locales as Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Last week, I wrote about the relationship between the two major bike booms (1890s-early 1900s and 1970s) and the women's rights movements of those periods.

From Brain Pickings

Perhaps it's serendipitous that I came across a United Nations Development Programme Report which ranked countries, among other things, in gender equality. Tell me whether you are surprised to see these countries in the Top 10 (as of 2012): 

1. Netherlands 
2. Sweden 
3. (tie) Denmark 
3. (tie) Switzerland 
5. Norway 
6. Finland 
7. Germany 
8. Slovenia 
9. France 
10.Iceland.

After seeing that, I did a bit of research. (OK, I spent a few minutes on Google.) I found a number of reports that rank Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington DC and Madison, Wisconsin among the best US cities for gender equality.

Is it a coincidence that the countries and cities in which cycling and cyclists are most mainstream are also the ones where a woman has the best chance to get a good education, paid what she's worth and the health care she needs?

Just askin'.

Riding To End The World As They Knew It

In an earlier post, I wrote about a remark Susan B. Anthony made:

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.  It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."

Historians, professional and amateur, are taking notice of something that has been neglected, or simply overlooked, for a century:  the relationship between cycling and women's liberation.

It's more than interesting to note that the heydays first modern feminist movement and the first "bike boom" almost exactly coincided during the last decade of the 19th Century and the first decade of the 20th. As I and others have noted, the bicycle gave women, for the first time, an independent means of transportation and led to the design of clothing that was less restrictive than the hoopskirts and corsets "proper" ladies wore until that time.

Of course, those were the very reasons why some--almost all of them men--thought that in seeing their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters astride two wheels, they were witnessing the decline and fall of civilization.   To wit;

 “Cycling tends to destroy the sweet simplicity of her girlish nature; besides how dreadful it would be if, by some accident, she were to fall into the arms of a strange man.” 

As "Sam B.", the author of the blog Fit, Feminist and (Almost) Fifty wryly notes, "I can't imagine falling off a bike into someone's arms (that would take rather a lot of coordination)".  As for me, no one ever said that anything destroyed the sweet simplicity of my girlish nature.  For that matter, no one has ever imputed sweet simplicity to me. At least, I'm not aware of anyone who's done such a thing.

But I digress.  The irrational fear expressed in the minister's quote about how cycling makes good girls go bad was, unfortunately,  shared by some doctors.  Worse, those male medical professionals amplified such nonsense with "scientific studies" claiming that cycling also made women infertile. 

(Ironically, every fifteen years or so some doctor or another claims that cycling causes infertility in men.  Hmm...I guess all of those Tour de France winners who had children are the exception.)

Anyway, those fears were not expressed during the second bike boom and modern feminist movement--which, like their earlier counterparts, coincided.  The difference is, of course, that Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem and the other "Women's Libbers" of the 1970's did not see the bicycle as a vehicle for female independence.  In fact, they seemed not to think about bicycles at all:  I don't recall them mentioning pedaled two-wheeled vehicles in any way.  

Perhaps one could argue that the bicycle had already done its job in liberating women.  But there was another striking paralell between the two convergences of feminism and cycling:  At the beginning of each, racing and long-distance cycling were almost entirely male preserves. If anything, more than a few women, especially the young, were discouraged from becoming serious cyclists for that very reason.  Rather than predict the moral decay that would ensue from women mounting steel steeds, many male cyclists instead made--sometimes unwittingly--rides and clubs less than hospitable to women.

These days, I see a lot more women on bikes than I did in my youth or even just a few years ago. In yet another interesting reflection of an earlier time, many of the women I see on bikes are riding independently, or with other women.  In other words, they're not trying to become members of a "boy's club": Instead, we are making ourselves more independent, like the women of whom Ms. Anthony spoke more than a century ago.
 

  

Susan B. Anthony On Cycling

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."

Those words were uttered by none other than Susan B. Anthony.  What she said was not at all hyperbolic:  bicycling almost single-handedly brought women's clothing from the 19th to the 20th Centuries.  

In this illustration from an 1895 issue of Punch magazine, the young woman on the left is wearing the then-new "bicycle suit."  The woman on the right, in contrast, is wearing the ankle-length skirt and bodice that were more typical of women's attire until that time.  

I wonder whether the woman in the "bicycle suit" is wearing some sort of girdle or other torture device to cinch her waist. Looking at the woman on the right, and knowing about the fashions of the time, I would guess that she had a corset underneath her outfit.  By the end of the decade, that undergarment would become as outmoded as seamed stockings would later become.  As women were released from the bondage of whalebone, their skirts got shorter and, sometimes, morped into the then-shocking "bloomers", which resembled, more than anything, old-style Turkish trousers.

Even Susan B. Anthony herself probably didn't realize how true her comment was.  Even during the "dark ages" of cycling in the US, women wore clothing that allowed much greater freedom of movement than what their grandmothers donned.  So, by the time the "bike boom" of the 1970's came along, it was that much easier for us to ride--and to work 18-hour days.