Woman in Tour de France follow-up(April Fools Joke)

[beccaB]

I was given permission to post this from Tania Worgull, concerning the April Fool's joke from Trek travel-


Trek Travel Email Response Hello Rebecca,

I wanted to reach out to you regarding the email I sent last week. I received your email and voicemail and have been reading the comments on Team Estrogen. I have been out of the office but will be in tomorrow if you would like to set up a time I would love to chat with you.

First I am sorry that my email offended you. I meant it only as a light hearted April Fools note to poke fun at me personally and did not intend to offend. I very much support women in sports. I competed at a very high level in basketball and am an avid cyclist myself. I do a lot for Women in cycling and sports in general, not to mention my general support and advocacy for cycling. In no way was this joke meant to reflect a negative opinion of women. Women’s cycling has a way to go in terms of offering professional opportunities for women to compete on an international level and I believe we will get there.

I thought I would highlight some of the work I do for women in sports:


1. I coached women’s high school basketball
2. I coached girls middle school track
3. I mentor 1 young woman and 1 young man in the Madison area
4. I host a bike maintenance 101 breakfast each spring just for women
5. I co host a Friday morning bike ride just for women every Friday during the summer
6. Trek Travel is the only tour company that I know of to offer women specific designed bike on our tours
7. We support Trek and their Women Who Ride club
8. We offer Women Specific Trips
9. We support the Trek Tri series just for women through participation, sponsorship and trip donations
10. Trek Travel supports bike advocacy groups like Bikes Belong, IMBA, League of American Bicyclists
11. Trek Travel supports the Breast Cancer ride through trip donations each year
12. Trek Travel supports the local LuncaChix cycling club through donations and participation in their rides
13. I attend the National Bike summit in Washington DC to advocate for more funding for bicycles. Including Complete Streets, Safe Routes to Schools, Bicycle friendly communities etc.


Some other interesting facts about me:

1. I ride – a lot
2. I commuted to work by bike over 1000 miles in 2009
3. I played Division 1 Women’s Basketball and continue to support Women’s athletics
4. I have completed two Ironman races (slowly)
5. I have completed the Etape du Tour 4 times (Race an entire stage of the Tour de France - 8500 entrants and only 400 of them women)
6. I own and run my own business – Trek Travel


I also have to say that I was surprised and flattered that people including some of my close friends and Step Mom believed the email. They obviously have not ridden with me in a while


Again I appreciate your feedback and although we may disagree on the humor in the April fool’s email I hope you can look at all of the good things that Trek Travel and I do and consider all these points before making a final judgment.

Thanks for your time,
Tania
Tania Worgull

[shootingstar]

Nice of her to send this to you/us, but still the justification of her background was unnecessary if the joke hadn't all started to a bunch of strangers like us. Her joke might have worked better had we /many of us knew her and something about her in advance. But we didn't.

Do any of us have to give a huge resume to each other here when we joke?

We're her potential customers, for pete's sake. Would senior manager/executive at Apple Computing pull a joke on millions of unknown, faceless customers? I think she's lacking business marketing judgement.

[OakLeaf]

+1. All you have to do is take the text of the email and replace "woman/female" with "fat" or "Black" to understand the offensiveness of the joke. If it had been all about the individual, then fine; but the joke referenced Worgull's sex four times.

One of the major motorcycle racing sites did a similar joke in a non-sexist fashion this year. The gist of it was that a long-time also-ran racer in the US national series was going to replace one of the four top riders in the world championship. It was clearly a joke at the expense of the US racer (who has enough of a sense of humor and a good enough relationship with the writers at the site that it was okay). But there was nothing in the "story" about it being a breakthrough for rednecks, aging riders, or any other general group to which the US rider belongs.

Honestly, a simple apology would've been plenty as far as I was concerned. It wasn't that big of a deal in my mind. But five paragraphs of excuses along the lines of "some of my best friends are women " doesn't do anything to endear Trek to me.

[ny biker]

But five paragraphs of excuses along the lines of "some of my best friends are women "

I don't see it this way at all.

[tulip]

When I read the original post, I thought it was kindof stupid. I didn't read the follow-ups; it was just a failed joke so I didn't keep looking at it. I guess there were some people who bristled at it. While a little long, the apology seems genuine. I'm certainly not going to get in a huff over it. I don't have a Trek, but they do make good bikes. I certainly wouldn't boycott Trek over something like this.

Time to move on, is all I'm saying.

[SadieKate]

+1 with what tulip said so well.

[mariacycle]

any way anyone can post the original joke?

[Crankin]

The original joke was kind of stupid, and the response was weird, but without overanalyzing everything, I am not offended.
But, that woman owns Trek Travel? I thought Trek owned Trek Travel...

I say this with just a little interest, because basically, if I like a product, I buy it, without thinking about too much else. I don't own a Trek, but I did, and since it was the bike that I really became a cyclist with, I have a fond spot for it. I also went on 2 Trek Travel trips, both which, by the way, had all women leaders, who were amazing. I wasn't particularly fond of the other participants, but the leaders were awesome. From what they told me, it was very hard for Trek to find male leaders to do the European trips... they were lacking in language skills and, ah, people skills. There were some who did the US trips. This was a few years ago, so it may have changed.

[Adventure Girl]

any way anyone can post the original joke?

http://forums.teamestrogen.com/showthread.php?t=37048

[MartianDestiny]

We're her potential customers, for pete's sake. Would senior manager/executive at Apple Computing pull a joke on millions of unknown, faceless customers? I think she's lacking business marketing judgement.

Google does it every year, and puts significant amounts of efforts into their rouses.

The billions they roll in tend to suggest it ain't hurting them at all...

(and no, they aren't the only company I've heard of doing similar)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_hoaxes

[TsPoet]

OK, so re-reading the "joke" and realizing it was written by the woman named in the joke makes it totally different for me. IFF it had gone to friends and family anyway.
That would be like me sending a completely serious email to my mom saying I was going to run in the Boston Marathon this year and explaining that a running coach had seen me out with my dogs and thought I was a "natural", etc etc.
That's just a joke about myself, not about women...

[mariacycle]

thanks adventure girl!

[Desert Tortoise]

It was meant as a joke, not the greatest. She did not have bad intentions and her apology seems well intended. Long but well intended.

As a female and minority I'm a little more sensitive to how people say things about gender and race. Oak had a good point about insert women/female with fat or Black and people might respond differently. I frequently come across this when people make flip remarks about my race especially because I do not have the stereotypical looks of my race. When I jokingly repeat the comment replacing it with a characteristic of theirs, they pause. Inside it really bugs me but I do my best not to get angry (and it's not always worth it.) I try to be nice with no edge in my voice or mannerisms and use it as an opportunity to show what it really means.

That said, I will not boycott Trek or anything like that. But I will not go out of my to buy their products. Obviously her actions support women's sports. I applaud her for that. But for all the things she listed, something about it tells me she doesn't get the point of why some of us found it offensive.

Ok, I too am ready to move on.