Naked Biking While Nonbinary
For 18 years, bikers all over the globe have participated in the Annual World Naked Bike Ride. The World Naked Bike Ride is exactly what its name implies — an international event where people bike naked. WNBR is a form of direct action with three goals: to protest unsafe biking conditions by making bikers a spectacle to be noticed by vehicles and pedestrians, to bring attention to biking as an alternative to using nonrenewable energy sources, and to create space for people to comfortably free their bodies and destigmatize and desexualize nudity. In 2018, the event took place in 70 cities in 20 countries.
I attended Boston’s 9th annual World Naked Bike Ride on July 21st of this year. I had heard of the event a few weeks prior, and — being someone who is generally unphased by nudity, an avid biker, and always down for direct action — I elected to participate. It was an incredible event with so many participants and some excellent stories. I knew it was going to be a unique experience for me, but I did not know just how transformative it would be for me as a trans person. I want to provide some context to this experience by giving a glimpse into my personal gender journey. I am nonbinary, meaning my gender identity falls outside the binary genders of “man” and “woman”. Specifically, I identify as genderqueer, which for me personally means that my gender identity does not fall into one spot; instead, I experience and identify with genders all over the spectrum. Personally, I am a trans person who almost never experiences gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is a feeling of distress at one’s gender not aligning with their sex assigned at birth and is something many (but not all) trans people experience to varying degrees. Many cis people understand trans people as people who were “born in the wrong body” and want to be the opposite of what they are*. While the “born in the wrong body” narrative is the reality for many trans folx, it is not my or many other trans folx’ experience. I don’t see my body as gendered and especially not as wrong. I really love my body. I love what it can do, I love how it looks, I love how it navigates me through the world. I don’t plan on doing anything to alter it medically. And I shouldn’t have to. It is a body, my body. And because I am trans, it is a trans body. I love my body, but I could do without all the negative, awkward, and scary ways other people interact with me because of what they believe my body implies.
I was assigned female at birth. This means that doctors looked at my newborn body and perceived me to be a girl. I have a vagina/uterus/ovaries, I developed breasts during puberty, and I have fat distribution mostly in my hips/thighs (although this is not a universal experience of female-assigned bodies). This combination leads people to assume that I am a woman, and as such I am at threat of harm. On the one hand, I experience transphobia. I am misgendered and hear microaggressions, I face threats of violence, and I can legally be denied access to public spaces. On the other hand, I face misogyny. As the possessor of a body read “female”, I am expected to defer to men and not be too headstrong or disobedient, I must be vigilant about protecting myself from sexual harassment and violence, I must navigate the social and legal “rules” on my body to not be read as a “whore” or “indecent”, and I must fear my healthcare being taken away or immensely restricted.
These overlapping oppressions make exposing my body a dangerous act. However, it is revolutionary to hold space for my exposed body where I am told it doesn’t belong. Currently, I perform burlesque as a safer yet powerful and taboo way to publicly present my body and perform gender. There is some level of control over exposure; I can guide the audience’s gaze toward or away from certain parts of my body. I can also show that my nonbinary body is erotic, despite the fact that we are conditioned to believe trans bodies are disgusting. Being a performer also allows me the ability to express my gender in a variety of ways (although I do sometimes fear that audience members will view gender expansive performances as my wearing a costume and not as a reflection of my reality).
WNBR was my first experience of both public and nonerotic nudity, and I was doing it without any supports. I had no friends with me to help affirm my gender. I had nowhere to wear a pronoun pin. I was going to be showing off my breasts and vagina, the gendered parts of my body, with no way to hide them. I technically did not have to be naked; the event is nude-optional, advertising itself as “bare as you dare”. But I felt I would do myself and others a disservice by not fully being nude.
In so many spaces, I am asked to conform to the comfort of others if I want to be respected and seen. If I want to be seen as trans, I must bind and/or pack or otherwise be “obviously” not cis. Not only do I have to experience this social policing of my trans body, but I also have actual police to worry about as someone with breasts. I can’t even bare my chest without threat of violence or criminalization, let alone be publicly nude. Genitals on all bodies are illegal to expose, but some bodies are inherently sexualized and others are not. This was an event about body love, and I did not want to hide my body that I love just because I feared consequences for exposing it. I felt it necessary for my body to be exposed for the sheer threat such an act brings to society. I wanted to be in solidarity with women that these laws are policing by having my “female” nipples exposed. Finally, I wanted to assert that while this body is viewed as a woman’s body, I am not a woman, this is not a woman’s body, and I should not have to alter it for people to see me as who I am.
As part of the fun of the event, body paint is encouraged for the ride. I initially intended to just paint my pronouns on my body as a way of affirming my gender while nude. While I waited for my turn to be painted, I decided to make a grander statement about the harm of not only gendering but subsequently objectifying, policing, and privatizing bodies. I asked a volunteer to paint the words “Not a girl’s body, just a body” on my arms. Bodies are just bodies — there is nothing special about them. And yet, we decide that certain parts of bodies are lewd, and therefore we should feel shame about them. We also look at these parts and force people into one of two categories that dictate allowable interests, roles, clothing, careers, incomes, and more. In our society, we call these categories “genders”, and we scoff at and threaten individuals who find the gender they were assigned based on their bodies isn’t the right fit. They are told their bodies are “girl’s” or “boy’s” bodies and mistreated for demanding respect. It is an act of resistance to demand that people see our bodies as *our* bodies, regardless of a person’s assumptions. This body of mine is not a girl’s body. It is a body. Just a body. Nothing to be scared of, policed, attacked, or objectified, regardless of what parts it has.
The event itself was phenomenal. Before the ride, there was a naked marching band and we all danced together. The band played us off at 8:00 on the dot when we started our ride. We rode 10 miles through most of the neighborhoods in the Greater Boston area. The reactions we got, whether laughter, confusion, or disgust, were reinvigorating for us because it meant that our point was being made. We were not ignorable. There were several passersby who threatened to call the police, which the staff was prepared to handle. Thankfully, there were too many of us, we were moving too quickly, and there was no published route we were following, so they could not really do anything to stop us. We ended the ride at a secluded area along the Charles River and had a dance party with nothing but the moonlight and our glowsticks to light the way.
There is something almost cathartic about meeting people while naked. Immediately, so many layers of awkwardness in a social interaction are (literally) stripped away. If you are anxious or uncomfortable, you can bet other people in the room are as well. It also adds new layers of anxiety to those for whom naked bodies have been used against us (fat, trans, black, feminine, etc.). I was very grateful to the event coordinators for putting so much focus on inclusivity. There is always room for improvement, but there was something so comforting about seeing so many other non-standard bodies and seeing the people to whom they belonged being treated with equal respect and compassion. We all faced our own challenges on the streets, being viewed differently by onlookers, but we knew that we were a community and that we had each other for support. I was able to safely challenge so many structures in our society in one night.
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I want to take a moment to acknowledge what was for me the most notable part of the event outside of my personal experiences. The organizers were thoroughly committed to creating and maintaining a police-free environment. As far as I am aware, we did not get any permits, we did not have any police “protection” or escorts, and all conflict/safety/other needs were tended to by organizers. There was even a response team specifically trained for what to do were police to attempt to interfere. The organizers made a statement of the intention behind this, focusing on the fact that many types of bodies are more harshly policed than others and that for many communities, police presence increases likelihood of harm. This was a critical decision and the right one.
