Mar 10 2008
West Coast Bike Blog War = Copious LULZ.
I recently wrote a piece for CICLE entitled “bicycle advocacy, FAIL. Bike Activism, WANT.” I ticked off a bunch of people and started a roaring debate about strategies in bike activism. I’m glad, because we need to have that debate.
Blogger Vance Longwell was displeased with me for different reasons than most posters. To solve a literary issue, my article used feminine pronouns to describe the proactive Bike Activist, and masculine pronouns to describe the forlorn bicycle advocate. That ticked off Vance’s meta ultra pro anti politically correct sense of justice, and he made it known:
Um ya. I read this piece right up to the point the author started in with the, “herself”, “her”, “she”, crap like this was a N.O.W. meeting or something. I get it. For the entirety of human history women have suffered at the hands of men never referring to them in the press. Ya, ya, ya. You go girl.
Some of your readers are men. Some men might find your grade-school feminism off-putting. Is this story about cycling in L.A., or yet another men-suck piece from a leftist-extremist? Get politics out of my sport!
Vance figured I was a woman, because I cast the positive role as feminine. In return Vance was heckled with double dog dares to admit his mistake on his blog. Humiliated, the best he could muster was posted Saturday, here’s an excerpt:
I read your by-line. I know you are a guy, well anatomically speaking anyway. This would be, in part, the source of my ire. I now reassert my request that you leave your grade-school feminism out of cycling.
Liar, liar, your pants are soooo on fire. I declare a WEST COAST BLOG WAR. You are cordially invited to troll, read, or ignore Vance’s blog. Grade school feminism forever!
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turns out he’s not the only one. i didn’t like it either. and i’m a woman, well anatomically speaking.
i didn’t like it because i wish we were all grown up enough and advanced enough to just say “he” and not have to justify ourselves. there’s so much stuff to worry about, to fight against– do we really want to spend our time discussing pronouns?
“i”,
You’re not the same “i” which challenged “PC” to a race and then didn’t show are you?
I’m sorry that the use of gender bothered you. This is more or less what I said on CICLE:
My choice to make use of gender had very little to do with sexual politics. I chose to give the bicycle advocate and Bike Activist gender for a two reasons.
1) I think that it provides an easy way to refer to one model or the other, and nicely handles the problem in English that ungendered pronouns are awkward. You’ll see the same thing in the game Go where one player (white stones) will be referred to as “she” and the other (black stones) player as “he” in discussions of pro games. I stole it from the Go community.
2) I think it makes the idealized models more memorable.
I chose to assign the Bike Activist female gender because, if I had done it the other way, a lot more people would be pissed, and because my mom would have kicked my ass. Also, because I think many still push the misguided notion that confrontation is a male approach and cooperation is a female approach. So my choice of which genders to use for which models, had very much to do with sexual politics.
Anyhow - “i”, I wish that it were not the case that it were an issue what pronouns you used. You find it irksome that people don’t feel comfortable using “he” (why not the other way around). I find it irksome that I cannot use gendered pronouns to my literary advantage. My choice to do so had little to do with sexual politics. The choice of how to do it had everything to do with sexual politics.
vance longwell sounds like a bad porn name
I liked the he/she reference. It made it very clear what you were talking about. Thank you. The blog war is on!
no. i’m not. although that sounds like a fun way to ruffle some testosterony feathers.
i understand your position and i don’t disagree with it (notice the double negative).
i just don’t want to stop in my tracks when i’m reading your argument (which is a lot newer and more relevant than these half-assed sexual politics) and start thinking about gender equality. it’s distracting. it’s contra-productive. it’s old news. and really, you kept introducing your paragraphs with “the Bike Activist” so there was no need for clarification. “Bike activists think differently” would have done just as well.
but i’m engaging exactly in the type of discussion i would hope to avoid.
you said here that you hoped the c.i.c.l.e. article would start a healthy discussion. let’s have at it.
(by the way, i suggested we use “he” because it’s the closest thing to a neutral pronoun, since it has been use for ages to signify “he or she”. the french went crazy in ‘68 re-gendering everything. it will be 40 years in two months. com’on now.)
“i”,
That’s fair. I could see how it might distract. It was sort of an experiment.
Over at CICLE there are 41 comments on the piece, so you could comment on the article as an argument there. Or here. Or Ridazz, where the topic hasn’t really been talked about at all.
One of the longtime members of the LACBC board criticized my argument with a new article just posted yesterday:
Good Energy, Wrong Targets
I thought it sort of missed the mark . . . but check it out.
AT
The fact that this is even being discussed as somehow being negative is ridiculously fucking idiotic.
Yo, I just checked Vance Longhorn’s blog, and that dude has serious bitterness issues. He looks like the bad guy from Con Air, Cyrus the Virus. He tries to be a mean hardass, but I bet he gets home after his super-cool super-fast bike rides and listens to emo rock because he can’t make any friends.
I hope a Friends of the Friendless ride stumbles across his stank ass in Oregon.
wow I didnt even notice or care about the gender issue. to me it has always been about the issues related to cycling and I can totally see AT’s point about bike activism not doing much in terms of the political organizations. I look at the LACBC website and I’m thinking damn I wish this site had a “to do” list and a “got done list” well, I guess it does but I just dont think of bicycle advocacy as being a populist activity. I see it more as funding a political arm of something much bigger. the whole movement in LA has been based on fun. That’s what is the most appealing aspect of cycling. Then you get more serious about it from there. If the LACBC had the same funding as the auto industry well maybe it would do better. Or maybe it needs more resourceful leadership. I do know that a lot of times democracy doesnt work. that you need a strong leadership presence to make things work and remain free of corrupt influences who are not interested in public good. keep the fun in there and people will come. This country is about entertainment, especially this town. Keep the entertainment going. People wont notice that they are bicycle advocates.
To Do List - such a good idea for a real activist organization.
Here’s something on my to do list - destroy the notion that “activism and fun are mutually exclusive”. Those two activities should be sharing. Yeah, some activism is tough and boring, but volunteering at BRW, or BO, or BK? That’s fun . . . and somehow we’ve forgotten that volunteering for those orgs is fundamentally outreach, education, and facilitation = activism.
Same with Midnight Ridazz. Putting on a party for bikers. It’s like a reason to keep biking when you’ve been spat at and ostracized etc. I know people don’t think of it that way, and they feel like thinking of MR as activism cheapens it. Still, in the back of my mind, I know it’s activist in nature, it’s challenging all kinds of norms, and I love it.
Right on, Ride on, Road Block.
“Here’s something on my to do list - destroy the notion that “activism and fun are mutually exclusive”. Those two activities should be sharing. Yeah, some activism is tough and boring, but volunteering at BRW, or BO, or BK? That’s fun . . .”
I don’t think they are mutually exclusive, but I do think that activism is for the most part by definition not fun. Fun is an end to a means. Activism is a means to an end. I would say that MOST activism is work. The fact is not many people here are suffering to the point of activism, so the only way you can get them to be activist is by making the activism fun. Universal is blocking the LA river bike path. How phenomenally important of an issue yet hardly a peep from what should be thousands of outraged people… Means you gotta build more of a constituency that will evolve into a critical mass of activism whereby a huge mass each individually will expend little energy in terms of work. It would then come naturally. That’s what MR and party rides like it do. And that is why something may actually get done in this town as a result where by years of bike activism didnt seem to yield much.
It can’t be the same “i.” She writes too coherently. Her objection to the use of those pronouns is ludicrous, though, as such objections usually are.
It’s always slightly hilarious to see people get all up in arms because somebody used the pronoun “she” or “her” generically, because these are invariably the same people who tell anybody who objects to the generic “he” to lighten up.
That “anatomically speaking” line still really bugs. REALLY bugs me. :(
RB -
I pretty much agree with what you’ve written here. I’m crunched for time, or I’d write more.
PC -
I found out who “i” is. I didn’t cheat and use server logs or anything, it just turns out she is friend of mine. Knowing which friend, I suggest we all give her a bunch of crap, because she definitely dishes it out.
Edge -
My current attitude is “whatevs”. He’s trying to get a rise out of us, so I’m only going to respond in a way which is equally irksome! Like for like!