Thank you, but no

I'm starting a campaign.  It's called 'Thank you, but no."  As in:

• Thank you, but no, I don't want to be your personal poster child for all cyclists.
• Thank you, but no, I'm afraid I can't speak for all women.

The other day, on a private women and bikes Facebook group, a woman posted an admonision (I'd say 'scold' except that's one of those lovely negative words that are reserved only for women, along with 'emotional,' and 'bossy') to us all, telling us that--and I'm paraphrasing here--because we are women, we should not break common road rules like riding through stop signs or red lights because in doing so, we're giving all cyclists a bad name and we should instead stop and commune with each other.  Smiling and dancing were suggested as alternative practices to the horror of rolling through intersections.

I couldn't figure out why this rubbed me all wrong.  Is it because I'm an occasional law breaker, or, as I prefer to think of it, pragmatist?  Is it because I look at certain cyclists and mentally shake my fist at them, seeing them as giving the rest of us a bad rep when they do something clearly unsafe, and I don't like to be similarly called out?  Or is it that in general I hate people telling me what to do. 

There's probably truth in all of the above, but I realised that the thing that really stuck in my craw was that I was being told how to behave as a woman.  I was being told that because I'm a woman, I should slow down, don't be in such a hurry, obey all rules to the letter, wait my turn, stand in line, don't rock the boat, don't draw attention to myself, be gentle, pleasant, sweet, non-threatening. 

There's a term in New Zealand - 'stroppy.'  It's short for 'obstreperous' and it's more often than not applied to women who don't behave or farm livestock who don't obey the sheepdog.  It's one of my favorite words and I'm proud to call myself stroppy.  I'm simply not interested in fulfilling a role that is in any way shape or form prescribed for me.  Either as a woman or as a cyclist.

Let me address the cyclist specific aspect of this first.  The Facebook poster--and I've heard this many times over the past several years--pointed out that individual cyclists, or the subgroup of cyclists that act in a certain way, give all cyclists a bad name. As I was thinking about this, I tried to list all the sub-genres of cyclists that I personally know or am myself:

1. There's the commuter.  She might be on her own bike or on a shared bike.  If she's on her own bike, she might be faster.  She might be in a hurry to get to work or home, or she might use the commute as a way to slow down and decompress.  I know that when I'm on Baby, I'm in a different frame of mind than when I'm on a Capital Bikeshare bike, even though my route and goal is identical. 
2. There's the road cyclist.  But wait.  What kind of road cyclist?  A casual putter-arounder on skinny tires and enjoying the sensation of speed and the wind in her hair?  Or someone who trains and tackles centuries on the weekends?  A roadie who travels in peletons chasing Strava KOMs?  To the uninitiated, the bikes all look identical, but they (and their riders) are vastly different beasts.
3. How about the mountain biker?  Chunky tires, shocks, mud caked drive trains, mad bike handling skills.  I've hit 55+ mph on my road bike but 10mph off road scares the crap out of me!  Very different skill set and mindset.  
4. Triathletes have different style bikes again.  Harder to handle in the wind and not as maneuverable as road bikes, but supremely comfortable and fast.  If someone's on a tribike, she's likely training or racing. 
5. Bike touring often has an even different style bike.  More comfortable for the long rides, heavier, less fragile.  Bike tourers often are loaded up with 2-4 paniers and while they have a destination, they also enjoy the journey and often will be found on less well travelled roads.
6. Some people use their bikes as all around cargo haulers.  They ride to the store, fill up their paniers, deliver kids to their schools and play dates.
7. Oh, yeah.  There are children on bikes.  Hopefully biking to school, but maybe just out for a ride with their folks or congregating in cul-de-sacs like swarms of bees. 
8. Bike messangers dodging traffic on sleek mechanically simple single speeds. They're definitely a sub-culture all to themselves, right?

Who am I missing?  But you see my point, right?  You've all seen members of every single one of these groups of cyclists.  Probably multiple every day.  You might yourself seamlessly move from one mode to another several times every day or week.  And each mode comes with it different speeds, different technical capabilities, different motives, different attitudes. 

And if you're a member of only one or maybe two of these subgroups, you might not even be able to recognize the differences between some of the styles of bikes and cyclists.  If you haven't had experience on a tribike, you might not appreciate that we have better bike handling skills than you think.  Or if you've never ridden Cabi, you might not understand how stable they actually are.  How can one cyclist from any one of these sub-groups be expected to represent ALL cyclists?

Look around you at drivers.  There's a a homogeneity to cars and drivers.  It really doesn't matter if the driver is dropping their kids off at school, commuting, or heading off on a road trip.  Except for the clearly different--like RVs or Priuses--there isn't really much we can make in the way of assumptions about the way drivers differ based on what they're driving.

And if a driver makes a bone headed move, we react to the individual - flip her the bird, or rant against HOV scofflaws, or people who sit in the fast lane going at the speed limit.  But we don't ever assign responsibility for ALL drivers to that one individual doofus.

So I'm afraid I have to decline your kind offer to represent all cyclists, or all women cyclists.   There are simply too many of us and we're too diverse to be lumped together either in the negative as Lance-Wannabes or in the positive as Crunchy-Exercise-Freaks-Who-Care-For-Mother-Earth.

Nah.  Just let me be me.  And that means a different me depending on what bike I'm riding, what my aim is for that ride, what the day's conditions are, and what my mood is.  And that means sometimes I'll stop at intersections and sometimes I won't.  Sometimes I'll take the lane and sometimes I'll ride on the sidewalk.  Sometimes I'll make my way to the front of the line of cars and sometimes I'll sit patiently behind.  Sometimes I'll chat with my fellow cyclists and sometimes "on your left" is all you'll get.

Here's my take on the other part of my "Thank you, but no" campaign.  Please don't look to me as a female role model.  I'm very clear about what and who I am (woman, athiest, feminist, endurance athlete, Kiwi - not in that order), but I don't think there are that many people with that particular combination, so my pool of potential role modelees is pretty small. 

A few days ago, the world welcomed Caitlyn Jenner to her new (very high profile) life.  Poor thing.  It took less than 24 hours for her to experience the burden that seems to be that of women and women alone.  Thou Shalt Be Expected to Look and Act in Very Particular Ways.  And if you're high profile, lord!  Your particular Role Model Cross is ten times heavier.  I lost count of how many times I read "as a feminist, I don't think that ..." fill in the blank about her choice of clothing, hair, makeup, pose, blach, blah, blah.  Holy cow - I can see why feminism is sometimes viewed as humorless, rigid, and unattractive to younger women.  Hmmm.  Sounds like Puritanism.

Here's my version.  I am a feminist, and I consider it my right as a woman to be my own person separate from my partner, my family, or my work. I'm delighted that Ms Jenner has the opportunity to avail herself of the almost limitless variety of glorious fabrics, colors, shapes and styles that we women have at our disposal (poor men who have such a limited range of expression).  And, like every other woman with a smidgen of imagination, she'll be developing her own style as reflection, expression or even concealment of her personality.  Good on her.

So why are we (women, no less!) judging her as we've been judged all our lives?

Maybe, instead, we need to imagine her standing up as saying "Thank you, but no, I cannnot serve as your role model/cypher/representative of everything transgender or feminine." 

One last thought.  I will try to be hyper aware of how many times I start sentences with "As a woman/Kiwi/immigrant/cyclist/feminist/etc ..."  I shouldn't be claiming to be a representative of any one broadly diverse group (however small the Kiwi pool is in the first place!).   Same goes for all of you who say "As a christian/mother/vet/etc."  It's fine to say "I am a feminist.  And my take on feminism is that ..."  But when I hear "As a ...," that's shorthand for trying to speak for a homogenous group that simply doesn't exist.

The truth of the matter is that we can only represent ourselves and our own peculiar combinations of personality, history and circumstances=.

So .. repeat after me ... "Thank you, but no."