Cycling as a Feminist Act

Feminism has helped me learn a lot about myself and the world. Perhaps one of the most surprising things it has taught me is how to ride a bike. By this, I don’t mean how to balance, pedal, and look where I wanted to go. My brilliant dad had taught me that long before either of us would have used the word "feminism" to describe our actions. No, I mean how to actually use a bike in daily, adult life without unnecessary injury and panic attacks. And it turns out, doing so helps me grow as a feminist.

For some context, I was not a happy child-bicyclist. Though I was taught to use a bike, I was never particularly comfortable on the fast, complex contraption that seemed forever out of my control. I was never sure that I could stop, balance, steer, or prevent my gears from doing bizarre, unnerving, clackedy things. (The clacking gears are still an issue now, tbh.)

It was in my student days that something clicked. At my university, most people cycled. It was simply very practical and so I pulled my bike out of the garage again. By then, I no longer saw myself as unable to control things. I had learnt to manage things like panic attacks and sexist assumptions. And suddenly, I was cycling without feeling stupid. The bike was not a uncontrollable contraption, but a tool — an extension of my own power.

But the real feminist victory came months later. Thanks to a friend who is good at expressing her anger and even better at indulging her road rage, I spent a happy hour one night complaining about drivers. In the city, most people were very used to cyclists and moved about accordingly. But a mere ten minutes up the road, by our flats, you encountered drivers who seemed to actively want to run us off the road. It was no coincidence, I think, that my friend was an experienced driver. She was used to sitting in a car and knowing other people were the ones making mistakes. And so, while I was frustrated and frightened, she was simply pissed off. And she said something to me that night, which struck a chord in a permanent, mantra-forming kind of way. It was something along the lines of, “It makes me take up more of the road, just to spite them.”

Taking up space — this was a concept I recognised. I had experimented with taking up space in the street, forcing men to move for me, instead of weaving between them, stepping off pavements to avoid being in their way. But I had never considered that this might apply to the roads. Since my first unnerving experiences of being overtaken by cars, I had prided myself on how neatly I stayed close to the pavement, keeping out of the way of the "proper" traffic.

In the days after my rant with my friend, I began to realise that being a cyclist gave me no less right to the space of the road than being a woman did with the streets. The only reason motorists do not allow cyclists to take up space in the road is that they are unused to acknowledging them. This is, in part, because Britain is fairly terrible at cycling. We stick to our cars and even to public transport and we mock those silly champagne-socialist types who care about things like cycle lanes. But given that cycling is cheap, healthy, and very environmentally-friendly, we really, really shouldn’t.

Cycling is not a failure to drive. It is an alternative way of doing things. It gives me the freedom to move around independently. It is a means of looking after my body. And it improves my environmental impact upon our world.

It also has a long and fascinating history of helping unconventional women to find freedom from the trappings of patriarchy. Susan B. Anthony called it "the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood."

So now when I shout back at a car who unnecessarily beeps their horn at me, pulls up so close behind me that I’m forced into the exhaust fumes of the car in front or fails to simply fucking indicate (while I risk my life taking an arm off the handlebars before right turns), each time I express my anger, each time I push my feet to the pedals and keep going, each time I decide to cycle anywhere, I do it as a feminist act.

And I thank the stars for adulthood, feminism, and the advice of my friends.

Want to know more about cycling and feminism? How have bikes helped with women's liberation? Here's a few places to read further:

"First the Bicycle, Next the Vote," by Lynn Peril

The Bicycle’s Influence on Women’s Freedom and Femininity in the 1890s, by Sarah Tkach