Ladybiking Love Redux

In a continuing trend of shamelessly using Women's History Month as a chance to talk feminism on a biking blog - I found some pretty interesting stats to share with all my LRMB-ers. Even those who aren't such fans of this series of posts (at this point a series of two, but still).

So it turns out, biking, like everything else, used to be a huge boys' club and really isn't anymore. Overall, it's still a smallish boys' club, with about 51 percent of all cycling users possessing manbits. But among young 'uns like me (ages 18-27) it's actually 60-40 the other way.

All this according to a study by the Gluskin Townley Group that includes data up to 2012, by the way.

Jay Townley, owner of VendorLink Cycling and a founder of said group (notice the last name linkup) had the following to say in a February magazine article I'm too lazy to cite right now. Mostly because it's in a PDF format I can't really link to:

"From about 1995 to around 2007 [upper-middle class men] spent more and more money on their sport, and turned bicycling into a very exclusive upper-income, white mens club that made too many U.S. bike shops unfriendly, intimidating territory for non-bicyclists and latent bicyclists."

I've never put it in those terms exactly, but he's pretty much describing the Obnoxious Bike People trend I so snarked on during the summer. In Jackson, all this is compounded by the fact that biking (and in fact, most sports) are the domain of upper-income, white, really in shape men. So where you encounter it, the atmosphere is unfriendly, intimidating and suffused with a particularly bad brand of superiority complex.

Now, I realize that the fact that I can afford a bike, have the free time to take it to the trails and mostly have the health insurance to deal with the physical risks means I'm pretty darn lucky. In fact, if it didn't feel like biking and outdoor sports were the reflection of larger culture in this particular regard, I'd probably just avoid that crowd. You mostly can here; the wilderness is a big place, and a the overall biking community is reasonably friendly. 

But when biking is yet another place the needs, wants and role of women, people of color and lower income folks have just not been a part of forming the culture?

Well, just like everywhere else with a ways to go on this issue, you end up with one major norm. If you don't match it, you feel a little unwelcome, a little wrong when you get out there because to a vocal subset of the people doing the same thing, you don't belong. You're doing it wrong just by being you.
Sure I can deal with it and move on, but not everyone can. And that really sucks, because they shouldn't have to.

Biking is great, as I've said before. There should be as few barriers to doing it as possible, and for sure none related to something as stupid as a lack of diversity. If nothing else, I hope that as the industry adjusts to a new image of the typical cyclist, it shatters that unfriendly, intimidating atmosphere surrounding parts of the culture.