Interesting post from Sacred Rides. (Disclosure: I’m a Sacred Rides customer.)
It pains me to see people excluding others from activities just because of their gender, their race, their religion, or who they love. Live and let live. (Unless you’re an intolerant Nazi, in which case you’re probably gonna get messed up. 
)
I see that meme used all over the place. It doesn’t seem offensive to me, to be honest. The reaction that she got when she expressed that she did not like it is the big problem to me.
Fortunately, this community is pretty respectful.
Except when it comes to wheel dimensions then its all out war.
I know tons of females who share that meme. I’ve seen it on academic Facebook pages. I’m all for inclusion, but it seems like people are thin skinned.
I’d like to think that we make our rides as welcoming as possible. I’d also like to think we would get feedback if we did not so that we can correct our actions.
We’re bordering on the dangerous territory of “dudes patting our selves on the back about how inclusive we are”.
The question has always been for me from both a professional point of view and for the weekly rides is how do we motivate more females to mountain bike?
Comfort on a bike has always been an issue but with so many brands making legitimate female specific bikes now that should be moreless addressed.
What can we do to encourage more females to join our rides on a weekly basis?
Feedback and suggestions are encouraged!
I don’t have any solid ideas my self but maybe it’s worth talking to the people at Bike Monkey and HubCycle in Truro about ideas. They have female rides that are as big ot bigger then the male rides weekly.
Having women leading/organizing some rides (that are NOT women-specific) would be a really good start.
I’m assuming Daisy is running the Hub rides?
My opinion is that addressing some of these toxic viewpoints and ensuring we’re seen as allies is a good starting point. However, it’s probably best to ask women who DO bike what they think. Their perspective is going to have more weight and provide a different and much needed perspective.
Daisy does the Hub womens rides, Rod and Dan runs the Thursday Rides, but Daisy does come.
This could be just my experience but i have never witnessed any intentional exclusion to women from mtb locally. I never came across any girls in high school or after that found it interesting or saw it as anything other than a form of transportation. There was just a general lack of interest in it. Even now i have a hard time getting my wife and other friends into it.
I think like a lot of things it’s just that it’s mostly male dominated and women just don’t always feel that comfortable being surrounded by just men.
I read the article, while I do think the meme is rather tame, I find the social media environment to be quite toxic. People do not think twice about piling on and making people feel excluded. Classic keyboard warrior syndrome. On facebook, the larger the group membership, the worse it seems to get.
This is part of why I’ve been pushing my daughters (and son) to ride. One of my girls loves it, and I think if she wanted to, she could be a great rider. I’m careful not to push too hard, I want them to enjoy it, but I also want them to see cycling as something much bigger than transportation. Other than my wife and my business partner, all of my closest friends have come via mountain biking. It’s an insanely great community, but there’s no question that it’s an unintentionally exclusionary community. It’s an expensive sport which is a huge barrier to entry to marginalized groups.
I mean, other than Eliot Jackson, can you name another POC at the top or even amateur levels of our sport?
Thankfully, the gender disparity in prizing at the top levels is something of a thing of the past, but I think more needs to be done to encourage women to get into riding or racing.
I don’t know what can be done to get more gender and ethnic diversity in the sport.
I’m a wee bit late to the convo, but when was the last time any of you intentionally invited a woman on a ride who you’re not trying to sleep with?
When purchasing a mountain bike for my brother last year he was told to his face by one shop to try a tricycle because he’d likely not learn to ride a “real” bike (Shout out to Barry & Giant who hooked him up with an awesome mountain bike and gave him an awesome deal). All the shop saw was Matt’s down syndrome.
I asked a mountain biker this week if they’d take me out & teach me how to tackle something on a trail I find challenging lately and was told I needed to “learn how to ride” before I go out with them. Pat yourselves on the back, get excited that Daisy feels confident enough to show up to things her shop puts on, but check yourselves guys. We don’t have an inclusive riding community here.
Fack. This kind of shit drives me nuts.
Sarah, text me a few times that work for you this week/next, I’d be happy to take you out and work with you on some challenging sections.
Tuesday is a great time to come out @Sarah!
We’ll be at Nine mile river and it is a blast if you haven’t ridden there before. Not sure if it has the technical features you are looking for though.
Re:
We don’t have an inclusive riding community here.
We’ll always be working on it, I’m sure. As far as the group rides go, we try and are interested in feedback.
One aspect I’ve found, is sometimes women don’t want to show up at a group ride and be the only girl. Which is understandable but not something we can guarantee to anyone.
(Thanks for sharing your experience. More is needed here.)
An ECMTB women’s ride has been discussed amoung the ride leads here but we thought it was best not to distract from the Women’s specific rides that are out there now and to give them support as best we can by liking and sharing and posting the events.
If the Specialized Womens or Liv rides went away it would be something worth looking into.
When purchasing a mountain bike for my brother last year he was told to his face by one shop to try a tricycle because he’d likely not learn to ride a “real” bike (Shout out to Barry & Giant who hooked him up with an awesome mountain bike and gave him an awesome deal). All the shop saw was Matt’s down syndrome.
Hi Sarah, could you please private message me the name of that shop? I want to make sure I never spend a dime there.
I asked a mountain biker this week if they’d take me out & teach me how to tackle something on a trail I find challenging lately and was told I needed to “learn how to ride” before I go out with them.
I’m shocked that someone would say that to another rider of any gender. What an asshole.
PS- sorry for all the frantic edits folks, I was trying to figure out how to break up a quote and have it be legible.