Sex and Cycling (Comments: 1)

Not THAT kind of sex!

In a recent round-up of “Links of the Day,” Gordon Price at planetizen.com quotes columnist Thomas Friedman:

“Being green, focusing the nation on greater energy efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue. It is actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we can do….”

Friedman goes on to comment about our current leaders: “when it comes … to making ourselves energy efficient and independent, and environmentally green – they ridicule it as something only liberals, tree-huggers and sissies believe is possible or necessary.” In Price’s words, the underlying message is,” Real men don’t ride bikes.”

Does environmental sustainability have to be justified in terms of its supposed masculinity? Conservation is only okay as long as it’s “pro-growth,” “patriotic,” and “tough-minded”?

Of course, not all who ride bikes are doing it for environmental sustainability. For some, it’s simply an athletic exercise, a sport; it’s about competition, equipment, gear, speed, duration, and length (oops, my mind drifted to the other meaning of sex for a moment).

Anyway, I imagine for many RocBike readers, some level of commitment to reducing our contribution to environmental degradation is also a factor in our cycling.

This all reminds me of a conversation I had with media critic and anti-violence activist Jackson Katz (who will be speaking at the MCC Damon City Campus on April 30–email me for details) during the 2004 presidential election, who spoke of the role of gender in that campaign. He has a new lecture, in which he analyzes “images like George Bush in the flight suit, Kerry as a war hero, Michael Dukakis in the tank, Reagan on horseback and Clinton as a good ol’ boy … and shows how male voters are powerfully influenced by cultural constructs of presidential masculinity.” Listen to the language of the current campaign for how stereotypically “masculine” characteristics are spoken of, and, in a new twist, how the view of those characteristics changes based on the sex of the candidate.

And while you’re at it, pay attention to the culture of cycling. What characteristics are valued? What voices are heard? And, if we’re being honest, do we sometimes work to present ourselves in the “butchest” way possible, even when it might be a bit of a stretch?

I’ve been writing quite a bit lately at my blog about issues that affect women. Here’s one I hadn’t gotten to. The message I take from the kind of rhetoric by Friedman: Ladies, we may as well take our overly sensitive, on-the-rag, crybaby selves somewhere else, because we’re just in the way of the real men getting on with the geostrategic work of saving our planet. Nothing we need to worry our pretty little heads about.

Oh, and you girlie-men, tree-huggers, liberals, and sissies? Come on over to our little corner. You may not be women, but in the political rhetoric, you’re a little too much like us, and therefore just as easily dismissed.