Well Behaved Women…

…Seldom make history.
-Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I don’t know how many of my readers have kids (seeing as I somewhat regularly express my dislike of kids), but kids are a little bit of a motivator for today’s post. Last week’s Tiger Lane crit really made me think about how women are treated and plucked a bit of a feminist cord with me. So, what you’re about to read is just stuff that’s been running through my head during my long weekend of training.

After my race,  I was talking to a local guy while his daughter (teenage-ish… I’m not good at guessing ages) was longboarding around the parking lot. She came over to talk for a second, and we got on the subject of MMA (I’d seen them out at a couple of the fight nights here in Memphis, so I knew they were fans). She’s into Muay Thai, and we chatted for a minute before she was off again. It was the next day before I really started thinking about how cool it is to see a young woman who (at least, based on our brief interaction) isn’t afraid to come across as a little daring and assertive. In other words, she’s not listening to anyone who is telling her to calm down and act “like a lady.”

Also occurring after my race- the Category 1/2/3 men’s race. While the Marx-Bensdorf women had arguably raced a tactically more interesting race than the men, the owner of Marx-Bensdorf wasn’t on our sidelines writing out checks for $100-300 primes in an attempt to “spice things up.” Their ladies squad went out to kill it over the weekend at the Mississippi Gran Prix Stage Race- winning the overall GC and filling 5 of the top 10 spots.

Young women (and older women) experience those things on a regular basis- don’t be “bossy” (“bossy” being the female-shaming-word used in place of “assertive”) or aggressive, and we’re usually not encouraged to take risks the way a male would be. Those of us who do are often called “man-ish” or “lesbian” or something of the like (it doubly pisses me off when I hear “gay” or “lesbian” hurled as some sort of insult, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant). There’s a grown man in town who, in a conversation about the women who ride bikes in Memphis, once referred to me as “Mandrea.” While that doesn’t change a damn thing about how I personally look, act, or race my bike, think about how it might effect the woman who overhears it… “Oh, if I am a fast, aggressive bike racer, then people might associate me as being overly-masculine, so I’d better just stick to the occasional charity ride.”

The same goes for boys who want to do anything considered “feminine.” Teaching your son how to cook, nurture, or express a full range of emotions is taboo for a large portion of our society. To me, it just doesn’t make sense to keep following those contrived gender roles. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with teaching your kid to both kill and cook his or her own meals.

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^Carey Lowery‘s daughter bringing home the (turkey) bacon^

I’m grateful that when I was young and wanted to learn how to shoot a gun, go hunting, fishing, roughhouse, climb trees, catch frogs, play in the mud, and do other “boy” stuff, my parents didn’t force me to “act like a lady.” I did occasionally get called “bossy” by my peers, which only partially put a damper on my personality at the time- I didn’t like that I was being made fun of, but in my mind, bossy didn’t register as a totally negative trait the same way as something else a kid could get made fun of for being, like “stinky” or “dumb.”

I was also somewhat fearless, and found great entertainment in things like climbing as high into any tree or playground structure as I could and running around on a glacier the one time we took a family trip to Alaska (I was a 9-year-old wearing sneakers and a pink London Fog windbreaker in the company of dudes in full ice climbing gear- no joke). While my parents tried to keep me safe, they never tried to discourage that sort of behavior by telling me that I wasn’t being lady-like.

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^Clint Austin, another FB Friend of mine, posted this pic of his daughters just yesterday.

On the “older person” end of the spectrum, things get a little uglier. I dare you to read the “comments” section on any large cycling media publication involving a woman like Selene Yeager. While most people respect her for the strong, fast, and intelligent female cyclist she is, there’s always a handful of men who want to point out that they are very uncomfortable with the fact that she’s built like a brick shithouse (I mean that in the most complimentary way possible, of course). Again, like someone calling me “Mandrea,” men who want to try to bully Selene Yeager into looking like their version of what women should look like are obviously not at all successful in that endeavor, but it doesn’t mean that other women don’t see their sexist diarrhea of the keyboard and feel pressure to conform to that sort of bullsh*t standard.

Until we stop telling our girls that they have to be well-behaved (and stop raising boys to think that girls have to fit into that cookie-cutter look and personality type), we’re going to continue to see the product of that way of thinking. At the acute, local level, it’s things like unequal treatment of men’s and women’s bike races (and any other sport short of beach volleyball). At a larger level, it’s things like the lack of females in leadership positions and pay discrepancies between men and women.

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^These Afghan female cyclists are acting out and making all sorts of history.

There’s not really a way of changing the current generation of male internet trolls and dudes who can’t handle mine and Selene Yeager’s awesomeness. There’s no way that you’ll turn on the TV tomorrow and see a floor cleaner or paper towel commercial that doesn’t portray a guy as being a clumsy, mess-producing dunce, either. However, there is a whole generation of impressionable young people who can be taught and encouraged that personalities, hobbies, and physical activities don’t have to have a gender. It’s us, as adults who have, will have, and/or will come into contact with those young people, who are responsible for setting an example and being good mentors. Otherwise, they’ll keep learning from the trolls and marketing departments who want to put them into neat little categories of what’s an acceptable look, behavior, and personality for their respective genders.

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