chrisamaphone | bikes and feminism

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bikes,
feminism

bikes and feminism

on the bicycle as a vehicle to understand marginalizaton

if you're able-bodied enough to ride a bike and otherwise have trouble understanding, from a visceral perspective, the terminology of feminist and antioppression discourse, i have a concrete recommendation: ride a bicycle as your primary means of transportation in a city where this is not the norm.

i don't claim this is a way to automatically transport the experiences of others into your head, and obviously like all analogies it's imperfect, possibly even treading on "oppression tourism" territory, but as a set of concrete experiences to discuss, i think it can help establish some common ground for the sake of getting basic terminology. by way of example, i give the following glossary.

marginalization: when riding a bike you are literally pushed to the margins of the road. if you assert yourself and drive in the middle of the lane, you are constantly put on the defensive and have to ward off motorists challenging your audacity to be there -- even when in fact it's completely legal and the place where you are safest.

victim blaming: people will constantly question your decision to go out, saying "it's too dangerous" and concluding that therefore you just shouldn't do it; anyone who does is taking an unnecessary risk, and if they get hurt, they "should have known better." what you wear (helmet? light/reflective clothing?) will get you further blamed in the case of a traumatizing accident.

[white/male]-as-default, [hetero/cis]normativity: by analogy, car-as-default. if feminism is "the radical idea that women are people," bike advocacy is "the radical idea that bicycles are means of transport." underlying assumptions in personal conversation, marketing, business planning, and urban planning, frequently make the assumption that "transportation = car", and you'll find yourself repeatedly having to think (or say) "hey, what about me?" furthermore, the fact that personal motorized vehicles are the default thing-for-going-on-roads in cities is more historical accident than the "natural" order of things.

microagression: one or two little things that happen (someone honking or yelling at you, someone passing too close or cutting you off) might be shakeable, but if you keep this activity up and endure it constantly, day after day, i guarantee it will wear on you. the person you wind up snapping at might not have even been the most egregious instance, and they may come away with the impression that cyclists are irrationally aggressive people -- because they don't have the context of every other tiny aggression you encountered across the history of your riding, making you constantly defensive and volatile.

intersectionality: it's entirely too easy to think that the issues you have a window onto as a cyclist only pertain to cyclists. and then you start catching yourself doing the same shit to pedestrians (turning in front of them, not stopping at stop signs) that you're upset when drivers do to you, and you start hearing about cyclists being dicks to other cyclists and pedestrians, or you hear a cyclist wonder why everyone doesn't just ride a bike (including the poor, elderly, and disabled?) and you (hopefully!) start to realize that getting around the city sucks for a lot of people and is a way bigger problem than just your subjective view. this is related to the idea that a workable feminism necessarily incorporates all axes of systematic oppression, not just those that incongruently affect women.

on the bicycle as a tool of autonomy

on the flip side of all this, for me personally, the bicycle has been a hugely, astoundingly critical component of my own sense of autonomy and independence. i mean, okay, in some ways it still represents a dependence, but it's a dependence on something i own and control, rather than a dependence on male friends to wait with me at bus stops at night or on someone to give me a ride home -- in other words, having my location be subject to the whims of unreliable external factors. i don't have a sense for how this would compare to just owning a car, but honestly i think it would still win, because of the increased flexibility (ability to stop on a whim, don't have to hunt as hard for parking, can go on trails, gives access to open air/adrenaline from exercise, etc).

in that sense, i think it's an incredible instrument of feminism, and certainly of my own happiness.

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Devils advocate, for the sake of discussion (because discussion is fun!)

There is another side to this that, perhaps, you are not considering.

In the event of a slight bump between two cars, then there might be some minor fender damage, and some yelling, but no real harm. If, on the other hand, a car slightly bumps a person on a bicycle, the potential damage is catastrophic. Take that fact, and now combine it with the fact that bicyles are unquestionably of lower visibility than another car.

Most drivers have years or decades of experience in watching cars with unconscious acuity, and being able to track them without even realizing it via their peripheral vision. All of those skills go out the window when they are confronted with a bicycle on the road, and the need to constantly make conscious checks on the bicyclist generates stressors and tension that otherwise wouldn’t be there.

On top of those factors, there’s the simple reality that being behind a bicyclist is inconventient and makes every trip more time consuming. Both uphill and downhill, a person on a bicycle can’t move with the same surety, confidence, saftey, and speed of an automobile.

All of this means that the person on the bicylce, if we’re taking the same kind of reasoning and analogy that you’re applying, is being the true oppressor… they’re adopting a lifestyle choice that is actively forcing changes in behavior on everyone around them, forcing everyone else to adjust their pattern to accommodate the bike rider.

Now, I don’t ACTUALLY resent the people on the bikes, and I enjoy my bike and like to ride it… but I can’t help but feel that this analogy of yours reflects how I see most arguments of “oppression from the hetero normative white privaledged blah blah blah”. They start with the assumption that non normative behaviors are completely costless to other people, and that any efforts which aren’t made by society at large to accommodate them are a sign of diabolical oppression. Consider, instead, the possibility that the normative might be the actual, real, honest to goodness “best way to do things” for most people, and that while good faith efforts to accommodate people who choose otherwise are right and good and fair, it’s still appropriate for the society as a whole to optimize for the most normative case.

It’s unfortunate that people are fundamentally fallible, and reality forces everyone, now and then, to accept that any time the deviate from normative expectations, some people are going to get irked when pushed out of their comfort zone. Where that deviation is an elective choice, I gotta say, it’s hard to find any virtue in any attitude OTHER than accepting accepting it as just an added cost of doing it your way (or, in the terminalogy of Europe, a Value Added Tax).

ON THE OTHER HAND, when deviation isn’t a matter of choice, (‘I can’t afford a car’ doesn’t count, since that’s the end result of previous choices; ‘I was born this way’ does count, since no choices were made), a just and generous society should try to find ways to accommodate as many of its citizens as reasonably possible.

Retort! Go.

So, I'm going to break this into a couple of points to maybe try and make threading work for us.

there’s the simple reality that being behind a bicyclist is inconventient and makes every trip more time consuming

ORIGINAL PARAGRAPH BASED ON MISREADING: This is one of a couple of places where you make a lot of assumptions - about the geography of a city, about infrastructure, about where people live and work. I'm getting a bike soon because of the simple observed reality that it's faster and simper for Chris to get between campus, home, and the places where we both live and eat and shop and play because she consistently bikes and I walk or drive. Also it's easier and cheaper for her to park when she gets there. That's because we both live in a geographically dense area and tend to stay within about a two-square mile radius.

ADDED PARAGRAPH THAT MAKES SENSE: While I misread your sentence (I just totally dropped the "behind" from the sentence), the point about assumptions actually still works. While I could make your inconvenience complaint about buses, it's actually the case (I've watched) that within even the hilly parts of the city, just staying behind a biker usually has the same effect, time wise, as trying to maximise fuel efficiency by avoiding acceleration. Which is to say you that, in an area like Oakland/Shadyside/Friendship in Pittsburgh where there are lots of stop signs, it doesn't actually slow you down appreciably.

That geographical density has other consequences as well - such as the fact that it would completely overwhelm our infrastructure if everyone that had the means to drive drove everywhere. You just could never create a city like Pittsburgh (forget new york) that operated on the basis of that being "normative." So what you're describing as normative can't possibly be so...

Edited 2013-05-24 23:49 (UTC)

such as the fact that it would completely overwhelm our infrastructure if everyone that had the means to drive drove everywhere.

Yes. The biggest inconvenience to drivers is other cars. Sure, I slow down traffic when I bike on Trippstadter Straße under the viaduct (there's no room to pass me)—but I just slow it down by a few seconds, I don't turn the road into a parking lot, the way cars do. And even a single car parallel-parking can back up traffic (e.g. Murray Avenue in Pittsburgh, or Park Avenue in Montreal), which is a genuine inconvenience. But I suppose that's okay since it's being perpetrated by people who are ~normal~ (since they drive cars) and are thus entitled to impose the costs of their choices on everyone else.

Some points that are both about your statement about bikes and the way it relates to Chris's analogy: you're begging the question to say that bike riders "start with the assumption that non normative behaviors are completely costless to other people." With that, you're instantly focusing narrowly on the costs that a marginal biker - right now - imposes on all drivers. Why is that the right group to focus on? Well, because you declared driving normative. Which, I said before, doesn't ring true for my experience for what it's worth.

That's a natural first reaction, but it absolves you of having to think about how an even slightly different world would work by focusing on the individual's behavior and their consequences exclusively. (If there are lots of bikers, the marginal inconvenience of a biker goes down, if there have been bikers for a long time, the marginal inconvenience of a biker goes down, and there's no reason to believe that historical path dependence leaves society at a global or even local maximum). It also takes focus away from any other costs that car drivers are imposing - on people's abilities to sleep, to breathe (During the 1996 Summer Olympics Games in Atlanta, when peak morning traffic decreased 23% and peak ozone levels decreased 28%, emergency visits for asthma events in children decreased 42%.). Normative behaviors can be highly costly to other people, and they're protected by the very perception that they're normative.

to bolster this with an example about biking/driving: on my bike, i'm inconvenienced by cars plenty. them passing me just to get stopped in front of me at a red light, then wait to make a left turn. them parking by pulling across the bike lane. them "parking" by putting their hazard lights on while sitting *in* the bike lane.

i've had cars pass me *when i'm going the speed limit.*

the point being... when there's resource contention, the automatic default assumption seems to be that the convenience of drivers matters more than the convenience of cyclists. there's resource contention between everyone on the road, but there's a marked asymmetry in the expectations about how that contention ought to be resolved.

Edited 2013-05-24 23:50 (UTC)

To be certain, I don't want to come off as ever defending someone who's being a dick. If someone else responds to the unexpected / unwelcome presence of a bike or a woman or whatever in a way that endangers that cyclists / woman / whatever, and your examples strike me as dangerous situations, then that's bad, full stop. If there are laws against it, demand they be enforced. If there aren't, let's get them passed.

So, let's turn it around: what argument do you have that the strict minority has a right to demand non-proportional parity of resources? And when we're talking about a "resource" that isn't centrally managed, but is as impossible to quantify as the moment to moment decisions of every individual motorist and cyclist, what does that even mean?

I think the argument would be that the motorist puts the cyclist in harm's way much more than the cyclist puts the motorist in harm's way.

For a motorist, as you point out upthread, trying to drive when cyclists are around can be stressful and inconvenient. But for a cyclist, trying to bike when motorists are around can get you killed. Statistically speaking, several cyclists will die today in car accidents.

Another way of saying this is: we will have to inconvenience someone, so who is it more fair to inconvenience: people who are currently in harm's way, or people who aren't as much?

‘I can’t afford a car’ doesn’t count, since that’s the end result of previous choices

Okay this is maybe off topic because I just can't let it slide. I'm glad that the person who went into medical bankruptcy because of all those ER visits for severe asthma attacks can't afford a car as an end result of previous choices.

Ummmm.... the severe asthma WOULD count. So... yeah. Maybe you should have let it slide, or something, before leaping to being offended?

Let me clarify: I am deeply bothered by presumptions that being poor is the result of choices rather than luck and built-in advantages.

Okay, the asthma patient makes it past your personal audit. How about someone whose cozy middle-class existence was disrupted by a Walmart destroying their family business? Or someone whose possessions were all destroyed in a hurricane? Or someone who was -- wait for it -- simply born into a very poor family? (What about people who aren't too poor for a car, but are biking on a doctor's orders, to appease another audit our society loves? Or people who aren't personally too poor but worry that our planet is too resource-poor?) How do you propose to formalize this audit, so that only the people who pass are afforded common courtesy? How will we signal these differences to drivers, so they know who to avoid hitting?

In case that came across as overly offended, let me summarize: trying to divide people into categories of who we should care about vs who we should throw to the wolves is not just ethically shaky, it's logistically difficult.

so, the fact that i can't afford a car right now would presumably fall under my "previous choice" to attend graduate school (despite the fact that there are graduate students in my program who can afford a car on the basis of family wealth), but then there's the part where even if i could afford a car, i'd need a license first, which i never got because my mom couldn't afford to send me to driver's ed, and was working full time and didn't have time to teach me herself. and, yes, i've since had opportunities to learn which i have made a conscious choice not to prioritize, but until i had financial independence, i'd argue that's a handicap that was in no way "my choice" and pretty much exactly amounted to being "unable to afford" the privilege to drive. agree/disagree?

Most drivers have years or decades of experience in watching cars with unconscious acuity, and being able to track them without even realizing it via their peripheral vision. All of those skills go out the window when they are confronted with a bicycle on the road, and the need to constantly make conscious checks on the bicyclist generates stressors and tension that otherwise wouldn’t be there.

i believe the Critical Mass event was organized precisely for the purpose of challenging this idea -- suggesting that with a critical mass of cyclists on the road, drivers can't help but learn to notice and watch for them. this seems to work on a day-to-day basis in places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen. if the roads aren't safe because cyclists are rare, but cyclists are rare because the roads aren't safe... maybe let's work on making the roads safer?

I'm afraid I don't see the conflict here. Because bikes aren't common in some places, people aren't comfortable riding around them. At places or events where bikes are common, they are.

I'm not sure what you mean by "making the roads safer". It's already illegal to do bad stuff to cyclists, and a legal requirement to grant them appropriate rights of way, etc. Are you suggesting more stringent enforcement of those laws? Or campaigns to increase awareness of them? Those are all well and good. Bikes are super common here in Seattle, and people seem to deal with them just fine. Carrying your examples forward, non heterosexuals are treated way better and more comfortably in San Francisco than in, say, Detroit.

But, your statement was specifically about not already bike friendly cities. Short of mandating people ride bikes (or whatever the gender equivalent would be), what are you suggesting?

At issue here is that there are always bunches of things that people do that are illegal (jaywalking, driving 10 miles above the speed limit) but that are nevertheless considered reasonable and acceptable behavior. (Conversely there are things that people usually don't do - and that are considered unreasonable - that are technically legal, like marking off one's lawn with spray-painted "do not trespass" signs, but I'm not sure that's relevant to the point at hand.)

Whose job is it to decide which if these "grey area" things are reasonable or not? The driver who passed Chris going the speed limit probably felt like they were justified in their feelings of being inconvenienced even though they were legally completely in the wrong.

Put differently: placing the onus of education on the minority bikers to explain to everyone that, no, they're legally allowed in the road and not allowed on the sidewalk etc etc etc. sets the stage for exactly the micro-aggression scenario Chris described, and certainly I think that's a place where the feminism analogy holds.

Seattleite here. I still pass a white-bike memorial on the way into campus--a driver hit and killed a Jimmy John's delivery driver several months ago. Sure, better than LA or San Diego, sure. But deal with them just fine? Not entirely.

ETA: my partner bikes downtown, tells me stories about the left-side bike lane on his route, and then I try not to think too hard about the risks he takes. That is an example where busy and thoughtless drivers, rush hour and over-congested streets, and street design that puts cyclists in an unexpected location put any cyclist in danger.

There's a difference between knowing that there are laws against crowding cyclists and internalizing skills that let you do that. I would say training campaigns or mandate that everyone rides a bike on the street so they get the experience from the other side, but that's impractical (and we already don't have effectively distributed transportation funding).

Edited 2013-05-25 09:31 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "making the roads safer".

Some of this is surely infrastructure, right? Protected bike lanes are much safer than unprotected ones, for example. I've been to Amsterdam, though not Copenhagen, and the intersections are engineered with bicyclists in mind, not just cars and pedestrians.

the person on the bicylce, if we’re taking the same kind of reasoning and analogy that you’re applying, is being the true oppressor… they’re adopting a lifestyle choice that is actively forcing changes in behavior on everyone around them, forcing everyone else to adjust their pattern to accommodate the bike rider.

Reduction in privilege is not the same as oppression.

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