How being a cyclist is like being a woman

I ride my bike to work as often as I can. I’ve been doing so for about five years now. I have a car; I have a drivers license; I can drive if I want to, but biking just makes me feel better. I’m less stressed out at work if I ride in, and it gives me time to think. I’m not a self-righteous eco-terrorist; I’m not a cycling fanatic; I’m not even very fast. I just enjoy it.

Once upon a time I had a fabulous eight-mile ride to and from work on a bike trail where there were no cars (just the occasional sleeping homeless person), and I arrived at work refreshed and without road rage.

More recently I’ve been riding a four-mile stint that is all road cycling on not-so-busy-but-still-car-covered streets. It’s less enjoyable. I have to watch over my shoulder all the time; cars rarely know how to handle my presence; people hate me for no reason; I have a monologue running through my head constantly about my rights as a cyclist.

And I realized that riding a bicycle on a car-heavy road is very similar to living as a woman.

1. They are normal, you are the aberration. “Normal” means “car” on the road; “normal” means “male” in public life. I pay more for the same stuff because I’m a woman. The air conditioning in the office is set to a man’s metabolism. When I’m riding my bike, lights are set to pick up a car’s weight or the amount of metal in it; I could sit at a stop light for an hour waiting for a car to show up and trigger the light. One big difference between being a cyclist and a woman in this example: women aren’t actually the minority, numbers-wise.
2. You have to be exemplary. As Madeline Albright said: “there’s plenty of room in the world for mediocre men, but there is no room for mediocre women.” There’s plenty of room for shitty drivers; there is absolutely no room for a shitty cyclist. Everything I do as a cyclist is judged against the entirety of my cycling brethren (sistren?); same goes for being a woman.
3. You can’t expect them to know the rules, but you can certainly expect them to be upset when you point out what the rules are. When you’re on a bike, you have to assume that the drivers in their cars have no idea what rights you actually have, and you can expect to be yelled at if you exercise your rights in a way that makes a driver unhappy. Same goes for being a woman: you’re going to get a lot of stuff thrown at you if you stand up for yourself against the existing power structures, especially if you complain about something in, say, an online forum.
4. The impetus is on you to make sure you’re safe. Regardless of what the law says, if something goes wrong, blame falls to the cyclist or the woman. The same questions come up if a woman is raped as when a cyclist is struck by a car: What were you wearing? (A short skirt? No helmet and not enough highly reflective clothing?) Where were you? (Walking down a dark alley? In the bike lane?) It doesn’t matter that the offending party is disproportionately larger or has more power; it doesn’t even matter that they destroyed your life; it doesn’t matter if they were in the wrong to begin with; it’s your responsibility as a woman or a cyclist to stay out of harm’s way, even if that means avoiding normal daily activities that you technically legally have a right to participate in.
5. There’s a pretty good chance no one will be prosecuted if something bad happens to you. According to statistics, only 36% of sexual assaults are reported by survivors — that’s just reported, not even taken to trial. If a motorist strikes a cyclist and kills him, there’s very little chance the motorist will go to trial.
6. You take your life into your hands just by existing among them. As Louis C. K. once quipped, “Men are the greatest threat to women.” Yes, it’s hyperbolic, but women who are murdered in the U.S. are most often shot to death by an intimate (usually male) partner. 1,706 women were killed by men in 2012. 726 cyclists were killed in motor vehicle accidents in 2012.
7. Some of them will hate you for no reason, and you’ve got to assume any of them could be the one that hates you. Some drivers really just hate cyclists. Maybe they had a bad experience with one; maybe they just don’t believe you have a right to be on the same road they do (even though you pay the same taxes and your vehicle does less damage to the road and the environment than theirs does). Maybe they’re mad that you make them look bad. Who knows? But they’ll hate you. Same goes for being a woman — you can’t know why misogynists have such ire against your sex, but they do. The worst thing is, you can’t know which ones hate you and which ones don’t until it’s too late, so you’ve just got to assume every single one of them hates you until they’ve proven otherwise. It’s a nerve wracking and paranoid existence, being a woman or a cyclist.
8. You can’t trust that the rest of your ilk will stand up for you or have your back. Most cyclists don’t know the rules, either — they’ll giddily ride down the sidewalk, or blow through stop signs, endangering pedestrians and undoing all the good work you’ve been trying to do as an exemplary cyclist. And we judge each other, incessantly. I shake my head at more cyclists when I’m driving than I do at other drivers, for sure. Women do it to each other all the time — we tear each other down and refuse to stand up for each other’s rights. It’s impossible to get a consistent movement going in either sphere.
9. Things are better if you’re in Europe, especially Scandinavia. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that countries wherein cycling is more normalized are also the countries wherein women enjoy greater equality. Nevertheless, there’s the truth: Swedish women and men get paid parental leave and they can bike to work without fearing for their lives. Basically what this means is: it doesn’t have to be this way, America!
10. You’re healthier and you live longer (as long as you’re not murdered by one of them). I mean, it can’t all be bad, or no one would keep cycling OR being a woman, am I right?