Blame The Bicycle

For the half-century or so that I've been a dedicated cyclist, every few years, new life has been breathed into a long-discredited claim.  The only difference was that back in the day, the oxygen for the myth came from word of mouth, print media and, less often, radio and television.  These days, like almost every other false rumor, it's spread through the "air" of the online world, specifically social media.

What is that claim? Cycling causes male infertility.  Fortunately, every time it's echoed, someone who knows way more than whoever started or resurrected the story shoots it down.  To my knowledge, no study confirming a link between a man's cycling and his inability to produce progeny has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet or any other peer-reviewed journal.

Interestingly, such a connection is not the most ludicrous one ever made with cycling.  As I've mentioned in an early post, the pseudo-phenomenon of "bicycle face" was reported (in women, of course) during the "bike boom" of the 1890's.  Around that time, bicycling was also blamed for a decline in marriage because "the young men go off on their wheels and leave the young ladies to themselves."

In that vein, another columnist wondered "What does Juliet care for a sofa built for two when Romeo has his tandem?" in blaming bicycles for a decline in furniture sales.  If IKEA had known that, would they have sold bicycles, if only briefly?

(IKEA ceased selling the bikes because some of the belt drives--which substituted for chains--snapped, resulting in rider injuries.  The company said they couldn't find a way to remedy the problem and recalled all of the bikes sold in the US.)

A List of Things People Blamed on Bicycles

🧵

— Paul Fairie (@paulisci) August 22, 2022

It seems that cycling was linked to an increase in appendicitis. The doctor who made the connection noticed only a coincidental rise in the disease and cycling.  He didn't offer a cause-and-effect explanation, so I am guessing that he, with all of his training, missed something that I--who haven't taken a science class since Donna Summer did her version of MacArthur Park (as if we needed a cover of that song!)--understand:  Correlation does not equal causation.

Oh, and cycling has also been implicated in--are you ready for this?--women smoking.  Of course, that claim was made in England, decades before the US Surgeon General's warning on the dangers of smoking.  We've all seen that famous image of 1920s Tour de France riders taking a smoke break:  at the time, it was commonly believed that puffing on Gauloises or Gitanes (or Marlboros) "opened up the lungs."  Also, at the time of the "cycling causes women to smoke" claim was made, in much of "polite" society, "proper" and "Christian" ladies didn't drink, show their ankles, swear--or smoke or ride bikes.  

(The last dedicated cyclist whom I saw smoking was a guy I met when I was working at American Youth Hostels. Any time we were about to climb a hill, he stopped to smoke.  He claimed that it made the ride up easier.  And it seemed that when we stopped at a deli or cafe, he'd order its most unhealthy sandwich or dish and wash it down with the drink containing the most sugar.)

Of course, given what I've said about blaming women smoking on cycling, it's no surprise that cycling has been blamed for mental illnesses and moral decay--"the erosion of the Christian family," as an example.

Do you know of any other personal or societal maladies that have been blamed on bicycling?

The Monday After The Overturn

Last week, I wrote a post on the 50th anniversary of Title IX becoming enshrined in U.S. law.

The following day, the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade.

I am writing about that now because I fear that so much of what Title IX made possible can be reversed--or, at least, the law could be rendered all but meaningless.

One thing enslavers know is that keep people servile, all they have to do is restrict the movements of the people they want to keep in bondage and take their bodily sovereignty from them.  The Taliban understands that lesson quite well:  They didn't have to close schools or bar women from opening businesses or practicing professions.  All they had to do was make them wear clothing that inhibited their movements and make it all but impossible to leave their homes without a related male escort.  In a matter of months, they reversed all of the gains Afghan women and girls made during the previous two decades.  Until recently, a similar situation prevailed in Saudi Arabia (enforced by a royal family that, ahem, the United States props up) until women were allowed some elementary rights like riding bicycles and driving cars.

One result of the restrictions in Afghanistan and Saudi  Arabia is that women's health deteriorated.  Women's bodies were seen, as they are in all fundamentalist and orthodox religions, as incubators:  Their health care is seen as important only to the extent that it allows them to bear and rear children.  Because women could not go anywhere without a related male escort, they could be denied care because their husbands didn't want them to take off their clothes in the presence of a male doctor (never mind that a female doctor may not be available) or simply decided the women didn't really need care.

So how does this affect us, in a country where we don't have to wear burkas and can come and go as we please? (Well, OK, there are some areas where  we don't go alone.) As a transgender woman, I often think about bodily autonomy:  What if I'd been told I couldn't take hormones or have surgery?  Or what if there wasn't a therapist and social worker available who understood my situation and could guide me into my transition?  If abortion can be denied, what else can a government--whether national, state or local--tell us we need or don't need, or can or can't have?

For that matter, could politicians and judges tell us what we can and can't do in our free time--or as a profession?  Think about it.  In some states, women have been arrested for having miscarriages or stillbirths.  Why?  Those miscarriages and stillbirths were considered as manslaughter or even homicide on the grounds that some behavior--drug use, drinking, smoking or even diet or activities--induced them.  What if some accident or injury in cycling--or some other sport--were considered as "causes" or "contributing factors?"

You might say that I'm being hysterical or alarmist.  In the days before Roe v Wade, girls were discouraged from sports with this admonition: "It'll tip your uterus."  Or our other "tender parts" would be irrevocably damaged, or the effort of pedaling or running or jumping or whatever would contort our pretty little faces. (They obviously never saw mine!)

And I fear that women's health care--which is still nowhere near the level it should be--will revert to its pre-Roe state.  Of course, I'm not talking about the technology.  Rather, I mean that an attitude Roe engendered--that women, as sentient beings, are worthy of health care in their own right--could revert.  If it's harder to obtain care, and care for ourselves, it will be more difficult to not only particiapate in sports, even recreationally, but also to determine our careers and other areas of life.

Our journeys take many unexpected turns.  I know mine has.  I just hope ours don't go off a cliff with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.

 

When You're In Sierra Leone, Look For Stylish

Go to your local bike shop and ask for "Stylish".

Depending on the shop, you might be shown an elegant city bike or colorful jersey.  But it's not likely that someone in the shop will answer to it.

That is, unless your shop is in Sierra Leone.

Well, Stylish's (I never thought I'd use a possessive form of that word!) workplace isn't exactly a bike shop.  But it does connect people with bikes.  To be exact, he's the country manager for Village Bicycle Project, a US-based charity that focuses on sustainable transportation in Africa.  

Stylish.  Photo by Tom Owen

He has a workshop where he fixes bikes, and he does workshops in which he teaches people--particularly women and girls--how to ride bikes.  In his country, and others, women aren't taught how to ride because of notions that we can lose our virginity to a bicycle saddle. (Hmm...I guess it's a good thing I learned how to ride when I was still male!)  This not only robs them of the joy of cycling, it also limits their freedom and time they have to themselves, as they are often balancing family duties with outside work and/or school.  Having a bicycle increases their mobility, and options.

In addition to his bicycle-related work, Stylish has also, for the past six years, run a feeding program in the town of Lunsar.   In August, torrential rains make it impossible to harvest crops and a lot of people go hungry.  Last year, during that month, he provided meals for 80 neighborhood kids; in return, they had to attend English and Math lessons.  "I don't want to just create another thing where I am giving and they are taking," he explains.  This project, he says, is funded entirely by donations from people he has met personally, both in Sierra Leone and abroad.

With all he does, is it any wonder that 26-year-old Stylish has won his country's Young Philanthropist of the Year award?  

Although he was given the award as Abdul Karim Karama, the name he was given at birth, if you ever go to Sierra Leone, don't ask for him by that name. Remember, he's Stylish.  

Where Have We Gone In The Last 130 Years?

I have to admit, once or twice...well, okay, maybe three or four times...I've attended concerts, readings, plays, lectures or other events because I liked the advertisement for it.

Now tell me you wouldn't attend a lecture after seeing a photo like this.  Of course, it combines topics as close to my hearts as my Mercians:  cycling, history, women's history and gender identity.  Tessa Hull, who gave the lecture, didn't come to her topic--summed up in the lecture's title, "Women, Trans and Femme Riders in Early Cycling History"--through a women's or gender studies program.  Instead, she encountered it while on her own journey, literally:  She's cycled alone from Southern California to Maine and in Alaska, Cuba, Ghana and Mexico.  She said that, wherever she went, people were generous, but she heard the same warning:  "You know, a woman can't travel alone."

Well, I know that's not true!  And so did some women in the late 19th Century, during the first "Bike Boom."  Although there probably are more women cycling now than then, she believes that the culture around women and bikes has retrogressed in some ways. In the old bicycle ads, she explains, "you see packs of women riding bicycles, and women riding on the front of tandems," none of which is "really a norm now."  She feels we are "trying to get back to where we were in the 1890s " and warns, "[I]f you don't keep pushing for the advancement of culture, things can quietly digress."

I have to admit, even I--who, if I do say so myself, knows a thing or two about the history of women and cycling--was surprised to see women attired as they are in the photo. And they have rather athletic builds.  These days, it seems that most women in bike ads are there to entice men and look as if their limbs would break if they actually tried to pedal.

Will She Ride Home?

Today I read a news story that made me think of someone about whom I wrote two years ago.

Then I opened my page for this blog and found that someone had left a new comment on that post.

The subject of that post was Mary Jane "Miji" Reoch, arguably the first of a generation of American female cyclists that would dominate their field during the 1970s and 1980s--and put the US on the world's racing map for the first time since the era of the six-day races.

So what brought her to mind?  Well, it was something a political figure in New Zealand did four decades after "Miji."

Well, they've both won races. Except that the ones Julie Anne Genter weren't in the peloton, or on the track or singletrack.  Rather, the races she won were decided in voting booths and ballot boxes.

Now, when I say "won", I don't mean it in the way one wins a head-to-head election in the US.  Instead, as I understand, in New Zealand's system, members of parliament are elected from lists of candidates and the ones with the most votes gain parliamentary seats.  Some of them, anyway:  Some seats are awarded proportionally by parties (New Zealanders get two votes, one for a candidate and one for a party.) and a few seats are reserved for Maori residents.

So, you can say that she won the right to become a member of Parliament, a post she holds along with those of Minister for Women as well as Associate Minister for Health and Associate Minister for Transport. All of that, one imagines, wouldn't leave her much time to train. But, still, she cycles---which brings me to what she has in common with Miji.

Well, they both continued to ride during their pregnancies.  In Miji's time, doctors were still counseling pregnant women to forego all physical activity, so continuing her training regimen was still fairly radical in the 1970s.  Today, of course, doctors are more likely to encourage pregnant women to exercise as much as they can, even if they have to modify whatever regiments they followed before.

Which brings me to something that was considered really "far-out" (to use a '70's expression) in Miji's time, and is still seen as fairly unusual today: Both women rode their bikes to the hospital where they would deliver their newborns. Yesterday, Julie Anne, who is 42 weeks pregnant, arrived at the Auckland hospital where she will be induced.  Once her child arrives, she will become the second New Zealand government official to give birth this year, following Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in June.

Oh, I can offer one other cycling-related connection between Miji and Julie Anne:  They were both modest about cycling to their deliveries.  The New Zealander demurred that her route was "mostly downhill."  Donald Huschle, who left the comment on my post about Miji, recalled that, whenever anyone mentioned her ride to the delivery room, she would point out, "Well, I didn't ride home."

Now, if Julie Anne Genter--who was born and raised in the USA--can ride home, she'll've done something neither Miji nor Jacinda did.  As if she hasn't already done enough things that most people don't do!

Fitting Man--And Woman--To The Machine

Note:  This post contains a frank discussion of a female-specific cycling issue.

Perhaps I am the last person in the world who should criticize anybody for having a surgery.

Still, I couldn't help but to cringe when I heard about women who had their toes shortened to better fit into sky-high stiletto heels.  To me, it sounded like a version of foot-binding that has the imprimatur of the medical establishment.

I mean, it's one thing to go under the knife, or to be bound and stitched to look the way one wants to look.  Countless people, including many transgender women I know, have had surgeries to lift cheekbones or chins, raise eyebrows or lower hairlines, or to change the shape of their noses or ears.  Still others have had their breasts augmented and buttocks lifted and firmed or had that most common procedure of all:  liposuction.

It's sad when people are cut, broken, bound and stitched to fit some Barbie-like "ideal" that no real woman meets.  Most such people look perfectly good the way they are; the others are simply unique.  But I won't knock anyone who has surgeries or other procedures if it makes them happier and better able to function in the way they wish.  After all, some people would say--wrongly, I aver--that my gender reassignment surgery fits into that category.  Certainly, I could have lived without it:  after all, I did, for decades before I had it.  I just don't know how much longer I could have lived, at least as I was.

What disturbs me, though, about toe-shortening is that it's done in order to fit a device, i.e., high-heeled shoes.  (A device for what?  I'll let you answer that!) How many of us would have our hands surgically altered to better fit our keyboards or our bodies reshaped to the contours of a chair?

Now, you are probably asking what this has to do with cycling.  Well, I'll tell you:  There are women who are having parts of their inner labias removed because they rubbed against their saddles.  This sometimes causes chafing, bleeding and even infections, as it did for me when I first started cycling after my surgery. 

Sometimes I still feel pain, as many other women do.  But it has been less frequent for me, as I have found saddle positions that work for me, most of the time, on each of my bicycles. And I have been experimenting with ways I dress when I ride, especially when I wear skirts.

But I am not about to undergo what some are calling "saddle surgery".  For one thing, my labia was constructed by a surgeon.  She did a great job (and it cost me a bit of coin), so I don't want to undo it.  Also, I simply can't see myself altering my body again to fit a machine, even if it is a bicycle.  If anything, it should be the other way around:  the machine should fit the human.

And my identity--the reason I had the surgery--is not a machine.  

Also, the pain I experience these days is really not any worse than the pain and numbness I sometimes experienced after long rides before my surgery.  Besides the equipment I have now is a lot less noticeable under form-fitting shorts than my old equipment was!

Why Do--And Don't--Women Ride?

In late 2014, People for Bikes commissioned a study on women's participation in cycling.

Its findings confirmed some things I'd suspected but revealed other things that surprised me.

My own experiences and observations have shown me that more males than females cycle.  According to the study, 45 million women ride a bicycle at least once a year, compared to 59 million men.  In other words, about 43 percent of all adult cyclists are women.  Given what I've seen, I'm not surprised by those statistics. 

Nor am I surprised by another PfB finding, interesting as it is:  Boys and girls ride bikes at the same rate at ages three to nine.  At ten years of age, girls and women start to ride less than men and boys. The gap grows as they grow older, and is its widest at ages 55 and older.

That, in spite of something else the surveys revealed:  Almost the same numbers of women and men say they would like to bike more often.  One of the reasons women most commonly cite for not cycling is simply not having a working bicycle available at home.  This is a factor for somewhat higher of numbers of women than for men. 

Safety concerns are another deterrent to cycling for many women. While the numbers of women who worry about being struck by a car is roughly equal to the numbers of men who express such concerns, women are much more likely than men to cite fears about their own personal safety as a reason for not cycling.

One of the study's revelations that surprised me somewhat is that 94 percent of female cyclists rode for recreation while  68 percent rode for transportation to and from social and leisure activities.  Actually, I'm only somewhat surprised by the second figure, but more so by the first, based on my own observations and impressions here in New York City.

The most surprising part of the study (at least to me) is this:  A much higher percentage (31) of women with children than without (19) rode at least once a year.  Then again, the study found the same held true for men (46 vs. 31 percent).  These contradict a UCLA study that suggested women don't ride because they need their cars to handle childcare responsibilities. 

Knowing about the People for Bikes study leads me to wonder whether women's actual and perceived barriers to cycling can be overcome--and whether doing so would change the ways in which women ride.  If more women started to ride to work, and if more of us started to ride our bikes to social and other activities, would more women take up long-distance touring, racing and other genres of cycling in which the gap between women's and men's participation is even greater?

Not For Women--Or Anybody

When I was writing for a newspaper, a police precinct commander sold me something I haven't forgotten:  "Lucky for us that most criminals are stupid."

For many perps, their folly begins in thinking that they'll actually get away with what their misdeeds.  But for others, their foolishness shows in the ways they execute--or don't execute their offenses. 

I got to thinking about all of that because I think there's a parallel principle in making works of "art".  We are lucky, I believe, that most of the truly offensive stuff--you know, things that are racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise show contempt for some group of people that did nothing to deserve it--is purely and simply bad.  And that is the reason why it is usually forgotten.


So why am I pontificating about virtue and virtu on a bike blog?, you ask. Great question.

Yesterday "The Retrogrouch" wrote about a bicycle displayed at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS).  Its builder, Allan Abbott, dubbed it "The Signorina."

With a name like that, you might expect a nicely-made women's city or commuter bike with some Italian pizzazz.  Instead, it's a not particularly well-made (for a handbuilt bike, anyway) machine that's supposedly built in the likeness of a naked woman.



So far it sounds like a silly novelty item, right?  But it doesn't seem like anything to get worked up about. Or does it?  

Now, I'm sure there are places where such a bike could not be ridden because it would offend the sensibilites of some people.  I'm not one of them:  I have no aversion to nudity, although I have to wonder whether anyone in his or her right mind would want to see me naked.

But I digress.  If you're going to use a human form, au naturel, in one of your creations, at least show it in all of its imperfect glory--the way, say, any number of painters, sculptors, photographers and writers have done.  Whatever its gender, size, colors, shape, age or state of alertness or weariness, make it a reflection of what we are, and aspire to.  Above all, make it living, human and organic.

The supposedly female form in Abbot's frame is none of those things.  If anything, it's plain creepy:  The "signorina" is on her "hands" and "knees"--and headless.  I'm sure there are people--a few of whom are cyclists or collectors--who are turned on by such degradation.  I guess I'm philistine and reactionary:  I'm not one of them.

But, to be fair, if "Retrogrouch" hadn't described it, I might have needed time and an extra look or two to discern the nude female form straddling the wheels.  Call me slow or un-hip if you must.  Even after reading about it on Adventure Journal  as well as Retrogrouch's blog, I'm still not convinced that the bike in any way--realist or abstract, linear or Cubist, Classical or Impressionist--evokes a female, or any other human, form.

In other words, it doesn't work as art.  Perhaps we should be thankful for that.  

Somehow I get the impression it's not such a great bike, either. 

The Man In A Case

March, as you probably know, is Women's History Month.  Does that mean that we don't have a history for the other 11 months of the year?  And what about Blacks?  Not only do they have only one month, but they got the shortest:  February.  So for 337 other days of the year (338 in a leap year), they don't have a story?

All right.  I'll stop ranting.  When I  think about WHM--or women's history or rights in general--I am reminded that in the early days of cycling, riding a bicycle was something a "proper" lady didn't do.  In some parts of the world, that's still the case:  One of my colleagues, who hails from Ethiopia and is in her sixties, has never learned how to ride.  And there are places, I understand, where a woman or girl on a bicycle is not only frowned upon, it's illegal.

From Women's History: About

But back to the early days of cycling:  During that time, Anton Chekhov wrote a short story,  The Man In A Case.  During the 1970's, Wendy Wasserstein turned it into a one-act play (with the same title) about a marriage between Varinka, a "pretty girl of thirty" and Byelinkov, a much older Latin and Greek professor at a university near Moscow.

You can see how cautious and traditional he is in this exchange:

 
　　VARINKA (takes his hands.) We will be very happy. I am very strong. (Pauses. ) It is time for tea.
　
　　BYELINKOV. It is too early for tea. Tea is at half past the hour.
　
　　VARINKA. Do you have heavy cream? It will be awfully nice with apricots.
　
　　BYELINKOV. Heavy cream is too rich for teatime.
　
　 　VARINKA. But today is special. Today you placed a lilac in my hair. Write in your note pad. Every year we will celebrate with apricots and heavy cream. I will go to my brother's house and get some.
　
　　BYELINKOV. But your brother's house is a mile from here.
　
　　VARINKA. Today it is much shorter. Today my brother gave me his bicycle to ride. I will be back very soon.
　
　　BYELINKOV. You rode to my house by bicycle! Did anyone see you!
　
　 　VARINKA. Of course. I had such fun. I told you I saw the grocery store lady with the son-in-law who is doing very well thank you in Moscow, and the headmaster's wife.
　
　　BYELINKOV. You saw the headmaster's wife!
　
　　VARINKA. She smiled at me.
　
　　BYELINKOV. Did she laugh or smile?
　
　 　VARINKA. She laughed a little. She said, "My dear, you are very progressive to ride a bicycle." She said you and your fiance Byelinkov must ride together sometime. I wonder if he'll take off his galoshes when he rides a bicycle.
　
　　BYELINKOV. She said that?
　
　　VARINKA. She adores you, We had a good giggle.
　
　 　BYELINKOV. A woman can be arrested for riding a bicycle. That is not progressive, it is a premeditated revolutionary act. Your brother must be awfully, awfully careful on behalf of your behavior. He has been careless-oh so care-less-in giving you the bicycle.
　
　　VARINKA. Dearest Byelinkov, you are wrapping yourself under curtains and quilts! I made friends on the bicycle.
　
　　BYELINKOV. You saw more than the headmaster's wife and the idiot grocery woman.
　
　　VARINKA. She is not an idiot.
　
　　BYELINKOV. She is a potato-Vending, sausage-armed fool!
　
　　VARINKA. Shhh! My school mouse. Shhh!
　
　　BYELINKOV. What other friends did you make on this bicycle?
　
　　VARINKA. I saw students from my brother' s classes. They waved and shouted, 0Anthropos in love! Anthropos in 'love!!"
　
　　BYELINKOV. Where is that bicycle?
　
　　VARINKA. I left it outside the gate. Where are you going?
　
　　BYELINKOV (muttering as he exits.) Anthropos in love, an thropos in love.
　
　　VARINKA. They were cheering me on. Careful, you'll trample the roses.
　
　 　BYELINKOV (returning with the bicycle.) Anthropos is the Greek singular for man. Anthropos in love translates as the Greek and Latin master in love. Of course they cheered you. Their instructor, who teaches them the discipline and contained beauty of the classics, is in love with a sprite on a bicycle. It is a good giggle, isn't it? A very good giggle! I am returning this bicycle to your brother.
　
　　VARINKA. But it is teatime.
　
　　BYELINKOV. Today we will not' have tea.
　
　　VARINKA. But you will have to walk back a mile.
　
　 　BYELINKOV. I have my galoshes on. (Gets on the bicycle.), Varinka, we deserve not to be different. (Begins to pedal. The bicycle doesn't move. )
　
　　VARINKA. Put the kickstand up.
　
　　BYELINKOV. I beg your pardon.
　
　　VARINKA (giggling.) Byelinkov, to make the bicycle move; you must put the kickstand up.
　　　
　　(Byelinkov puts it up and awkwardly falls off the bicycle as it.moves. )
　
　　　
　
　　(Laughing.) Ha ha ha. My little school mouse. You. look so funny! You are the sweetest dearest man in the world. Ha ha ha!,
　　　
　　(Pause.)

Myths About Women And Cycling

Given my life experiences, it would surprise few people to know that I think about some of the differences between female and male cyclists, and the experiences each of us has.

I have also become more aware of just how male-centered the cycling world--in everything from the social contexts of rides to equipment design to the attitudes of some bike shop employees.  Also, I am shocked at how much of that male-centeredness--as well as some out-and-out misogyny--I helped to perpetrate.

So I guess it's not surprising that some old myths about women and cycling still persist.  I was aware of some, and learned of a few others from this infographic that recently came my way:

From Biking Toronto