[TheThinkTank] Women and Trans Night

Sat Mar 22 10:40:29 PDT 2008

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     Hi, Colin.

         Back Alley bikes in Detroit has had wonderful Women and
Trans nights for over a year. The amazing B got the idea from the
people at Plan B. She and C ran it.

         It was great. The shop was so quiet. Everyone asked
politely for tools and shared and helped, we usually had homemade
food we'd made to feed each other, so it became a potluck. There
were often  babies (and no one shouted at the little ones), and
usually a fantastic dog called Ruby. We played music and you could
actually hear it. The whole energy of the shop was more gentle and
mellow. For most women, it was our favorite night. Lots of women
came out, so it was often just as busy as a usual night, but the
shop seemed larger and cleaner and better organized on Women and
Trans night. It was peaceful and fun.

         A whole other crowd came out-- Detroit is a homophobic
place, and transgendered people have a tough time in this town.
There are not many spaces respectful of them. It was such a
fantastic thing to have happy, relaxed transgendered people just
fixing their bikes.

         Women who don't usually come to the shop came; other women
who are usually nervous and quiet all of a sudden emerged as strong
and raunchy and funny and really good at things. More older women
came; one said that the regular shop nights had too much background
noise for her to hear anything, as she is partly deaf.

         Many women seemed to learn twice as fast as they usually
do. B and C were the only two people who were really great
mechanics. The rest of us know our own bikes pretty well, or else
we know how to make some repairs and not others. We were pretty
good at helping each other, and many of us felt confident to try to
teach or assist for the first time on these nights, but B and C
really, really worked hard.

          It is too bad that one of your members is upset by Women
and Trans night.

          There is a lot of terrible violence and injustice in the
society as a whole, and a lot of women and particularly
transgendered people have some real safety concerns and scars.
Despite everyone's best efforts, our ordinary shop nights are NOT
always safe or cool.

          We have a collective member and a couple of regulars that
have to be spoken to with alarming regularity. Many of us can speak
for ourselves, but there is only so much BS you really want to deal
with on your off hours, and some people are a little fragile.

          I nearly lost it one night when some f**kwad started
lecturing me about how to pump up my tires on a day when I was
taking things slow because I'd had chemo that morning. He made some
comment about not having to pump up my breasts but wanting to
squeeze them, and I was just freaking done. Lucky for me other men
in the shop are stellar human beings who hustled him out of there
so fast his feet left the ground.

          The exclusivity of Women and Trans night is a decent band-
aid solution for now.

          Maybe you could tell your upset person that if he would
take on the task of totally policing your regular shop hours and
making the place feel really secure, and if he'd do the outreach in
the local women's and  transgendered communities to recruit female
and transgendered mechanics, and if he could address the concerns
of the conservative Muslim women who won't be given permission by
their fathers and husbands to come to the shop if it is a mixed
gender space-- good luck changing THAT one over night, buddy-- the
special nights could be phased out.

          In Detroit, no one has complained about the exculsivity
of Women and Trans night. Every one who comes to the shop is cool
with it.

          We've had a different problem, though. We have one
collective member who has been really disrespectful of the
authority that B and C demonstrate. He treats them really badly,
some times even pretending that he does not hear their voices, or
telling someone to stop working on something that either B or C
asked them to do. On ordinary shop nights, there are little blow-
ups that get hustled off into corners and smoothed down by other
(male) collective members. B and C are the main women of Back
Alley, and this guy does not do this to male collective members,
but he does get pissy with them if they stick up for B and C.

          All the shop regulars and volunteers have noticed this. B
and C are sick of it, and may be leaving the shop for a while or
permanently, until the people who are squeamish about directly
addressing this man's behavior (he is one of the original
collective members) are willing to do so. No one wants B and C to
go, but the situation is pretty unbearable. What should everyone do
about THAT situation?

           The women and transgendered people who have created a
safe and happy space for each other at our Women's only nights
might lose that space because a disfunctional silverback has been
allowed to run amuck. This man has lots of good points, and he is a
founding member, but everyone is troubled by his conduct.

            I love Women's night, but agree with your guy who is
upset about it that there is something disappointing about it, too.


            It would be great if the shop as a whole was so totally
free of ugliness at all times that special arrangements did not
have to be made.

            It's hard to fix a bike wearing a chador, though, and
so totally cool to have chador-wearing women becoming bike
mechanics along side transgendered people that pretty much whatever
you have to do to keep that happening should be done.

            Incidentally, we do run kid's only programs, and no one
gets upset.

             We have mechanics classes that are closed to people
who just want to fix their own bikes and not take the class.

              We are trying to figure out how to set up a sessions
for the homeless men so they don't have to choose between fixing
their bikes and a bed for the night.

              Treating everyone in exactly the same way all the
time does not always lead to a just society. Seeing people's real
lives and responding to their real needs gets you closer to a
beloved community than a one-size-fits-all approach.

             What do you all make of this one? --   There are some
people who have floated the idea of having shop hours that would
only be attended by black men. Some black male shop users have
indicated that they would like to have a black male space once a
month. Totally needed conversations and forms of community building
might happen on those nights that would make our neighbourhood as a
whole a better place to live, in the same way that those special
women's conversations happen when we have the shop to ourselves.
One man wanted it to be about fathers and sons.

            A lot of the dads in this community are non-custodial
parents who look for good things to do when they have their
visitation rights, and if fewer numbers of people were in line to
use the shop, the dads and their kids might have more quality bike
repair time with each other, as opposed to sitting-outside-in-the-
sun-waiting time, which isn't much fun. (There are ants.)

            If those kids had a better time with their fathers,
wouldn't that serve all of us, even if we had to wait a couple days
to true our front wheels?

            There isn't enough demand for this yet to make it real,
and no one who has said they want it has come forward to agree to
organize and lead it, but given where our shop is and who it
serves, if people want such a night, if they see that it would
serve a good community building, family strengthening, purpose, why
shouldn't it go forward?

            I'd be really, really uncomfortable with a whites-only
night, but things like a Spanish language or Manderin and Cantonese
 shop night, or this black father-and-son thing, all seem fine to
me.

            What do other people think?

            Good luck to you with your Woman and Trans nights,
Colin.

                                                        Sasha


On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:52:48 -0400 freeridemp at riseup.net wrote:
>Hey Bike Shops,
>Does anyone else hold a Women and Trans night or Ladies' night? I
>know
>Plan B does. We had a weekly one last summer and will be having
>another
>this summer. The women who have held the shift have found it
>effective to
>keep the shift exclusive, closed to male-bodied masculine-
>identifying
>people. We have had a backlash from one of our members, who
>accuses us of
>sexism, discrimination, and injustice. We have gotten some
>incomplete and
>bad press.
>
>Please let me know if you hold a shift like this one, exclusive or

>not,
>and what you have done about any complaints your membership or
>community
>has had.
>
>Thanks,
>Colin Gunn
>Freeride Montpelier
>Montpelier, VT
>www.freeridemontpelier.org
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Thethinktank mailing list
>Thethinktank at bikecollectives.org
>http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-
>bikecollectives.org
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