[TheThinkTank] Women and Trans Night

[joshua muir]

Women's and Trans day/night/time is vital, and I think it is important to
keep it exclusive- at the Bike Church, male mechanics are kept away.

It is a time for those (women,trans, etc) to discover the shop space at ease
in a welcoming environment.  I find that women coming to these hours feel
more and more comfortable comoing to regular hours.  It took a decade of
saying "how do we get more women to work in our shop?" and finally the Bike
Church has a fair balance (roughly maybe) and we are still committed to the
womens/trans day.

Ignore the bad press.  Those who feel disimpowered for the few hours are
learning something too by being asked to stay out.

We have patrons and even mechanics who dont like it at times (It took me
some time to get used to not just dropping by on a sunday afternooon, cause
I'm a man- it can be hard).  Its not that big a deal.

Ours is only every other Sunday, 11am to 3pm

josh muir

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 7:52 AM, <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
>



-- 

Joshua Muir
joshua at santacruzhub.org

Frances Cycles -- francescycles.com
Handbuilt cycling framesets
Touring, Track, Road,Cross, and Cycletrucks for hauling any distance


The Bicycle Church Collective
Community Self-Service Cycle Repair
3pm to 7pm everyday except Sunday
703 Pacific Ave (enter on Spruce St)
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
(831) 425-2453
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/pipermail/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org/attachments/20080322/e6541a4a/attachment.html