As regular readers of this blog know, I am a community bike researcher and gender is central to my current bicycle research project.
This post is a follow on from the last one post about 5 historical female non-riding ‘influencers’ who appreciate bicycles. I have been unsettled with how ‘vanilla’ that post was and wanted to explore that a little further while looking at what it took to make that post.
As often happens when looking in the past, while I was researching that post, it quickly became apparent that women have been overlooked, omitted or erased from such accounts, in particular those who are non-Western/American.
It was disturbing how much I had to shift my online search to try and find a personality that fit my criteria (see below) – to the point that I had to constantly reframe my search and my criteria to finally come up with very short (and still not fully satisfying) final list of five.
I thought this was going to be a quick, easy and enjoyable post to do.
The aim of this post was ‘bikespiration’, but the more time and effort it took to find what I was looking for online, the increasingly disillusioned I become.
I finally came up with 5 personalities that broadly fit the final criteria for the post.
Even so, while I was preparing, posting and still now, after it has been uploaded, I am not happy with it. This is by no means a reflection on the amazing five women included in the post – my irritation was twofold: 1) that the list is not longer (i.e. more women) and 2) that most (4 out of 5) were American (one Irish/Brit) = no ethnicity or race diversity.
I couldn’t even find any historical Australian or New Zealand woman to quote. I searched for a historical woman of colour, South American or any one that was not a white European woman – still nothing!
I realise this is because of the spectre of colonial history, but it is very frustrating that more women of diversity (i.e. not American or British) are not represented on this list.
So, to honour this frustration, below are some of the ‘moments of rupture’ I encountered when trying to move outside the deluge of dominant traditional dead, white, European, male voices.
Each rupture moment indicates a representational concern/shift required just to find 5 quotes that fit my (newly disrupted) criteria – and this list I am not happy with as they are still US/Western-centric.
Here are some of the lists online where you can see what I was up against:
- 50 cycling quotes – Bike Radar
- Inspirational Cycling Quotes – Velo Stock
- Thirty inspirational cycling quotes to get you riding – Road Cycling UK
- 13 Inspirational cycling quotes – Cycling Weekly
Rupture Moment 1
- Start point: look up positive quotes about bike riding for a mid-week boost.
- Outcome: too many memes, redesigns/repost of ‘general’ quotes about biking.
- Solution: go to ‘human’ source – has to be attributed to an actual person
Non(re)presentational layers: look up positive quotes about bike riding for a mid-week boost + has to be attributed to an actual person
Rupture Moment 2
- Start point: go to human source – has to be attributed to an actual person
- Outcome: to be ‘quoted’ and attributed, meant that it was said by a famous person – many of these are famous male cyclists
- Solution: find quotes by famous people who are women
Non(re)presentational layers: look up positive quotes about bike riding for a mid-week boost + has to be attributed to an actual person + famous women
Rupture Moment 3
- Start point: famous women
- Outcome: to be ‘quoted’ about bicycles and famous, but not male, left female cyclists or women known for being associated with cycling
- Solution: find quotes by famous women who are NOT cyclists (or not known for being directly associated within the biking industry)
Non(re)presentational layers: look up positive quotes about bike riding for a mid-week boost + has to be attributed to an actual person + famous people + not a cyclist + not a female cyclist
Rupture Moment 3
- Start point: famous women and who are NOT cyclists (or not known for bike riding)
- Outcome: the vast majority of quotes left by now were by men still alive
- Solution: look for quotes by women who had died (almost like restart)
Non(re)presentational layers: look up positive quotes about bike riding for a mid-week boost + has to be attributed to an actual person + quotes by famous people who are NOT cyclists (or not known for bike riding) + look for quotes by women who had died
Rupture Moment 4
- Start point: famous women and who are NOT cyclists and who have died.
- Outcome: this cut the list down significantly – the same quotes kept popping up and they were to do with the suffragette movement
- Solution: look for quotes by women who are not suffragettes
Non(re)presentational layers: look up positive quotes about bike riding for a mid-week boost + has to be attributed to an actual person + famous people who are NOT cyclists (or not known for bike riding) + quotes by women + not part of the suffragette movement
Rupture Moment 5
- Start point: famous women not part of the suffragette movement
- Outcome: Most of the women’s right’s information comes from the American suffragette movement
- Solution: look for quotes by non-American suffragettes
Non(re)presentational layers: look up positive quotes about bike riding for a mid-week boost + has to be attributed to an actual person + quotes by famous people who are NOT cyclists (or not known for bike riding) + look for quotes by women + not part of the suffragette movement + non-American
Rupture Moment 6
- Start point: non-American suffragette female
- Outcome: This left very few quotes- most of them British
- Solution: look for quotes other than non-white US, UK or white European/Western
Non(re)presentational layers: look up positive quotes about bike riding for a mid-week boost + has to be attributed to an actual person + quotes by famous people who are NOT cyclists (or not known for bike riding) + look for quotes by women + not part of the suffragette movement + non-American + non Western
Nothing.
By this stage I was very frustrated.
As a final ditch effort, I specifically looked for ANY Indigenous Australian, South American, African American, Asian, Indian or any other non-Western quote by a female – still nothing.
Not surprisingly, this whole exercised proved to me that not only women, but especially women of diversity, have been (and continue to be) unacknowledged and effectively written out of history.
Keeping in mind that written history is a product of the culture it grew from, meaning that in those times women were not recognised in society and that bicycling is a very specific sub-set of that context.
But even so, this small activity drove home for me just how elite, privilege and Western-centric our framing of history and the world is.
I would love to see history revised to better include diverse perspectives so there is a more balanced, accurate and fuller count of the past.
I hope that in moving forward, we pay more attention to documenting and sharing greater herstory representations so that next time someone tries to research a post like the one I did, there is a much wider and richer databank of voices, perspectives and lives to draw on.
