Amanda Batty Leaving Pinkbike

[ridebikeme]

I'm glad to hear that Amanda had the courage to leave Pinkbike and take action! I think we all realize how far the womens movement has come, but in hindsight, I'm reminded how far we have to go.... very sad!

[Irulan]

I'm really surprised and somewhat disappointed that there is not a stronger reaction to this, here. Whether you are a pinkbike user or not, or even knew what pink bike is before all this, doesn't mean that the issues at hand aren't something that affect we women, whether we are cycling, writing programming, in the workplace, or just speaking our minds.

[OakLeaf]

Um ... I never heard of pinkbike before this, and after reading her piece, there was no way I was going to give them a single click to find out what it is.

I'm disappointed, angry, frustrated, everything I felt over the more-publicized instances of exactly this same thing in other realms.

I just didn't feel like I had anything to contribute to this conversation, since I still have no idea what pinkbike is.

[Crankin]

Thanks for saying what I wanted to say.
It sounds like a terrible way to be treated, but I am not familiar enough with the whole Pink Bike thing, I really have no idea what it is. The text of her post is kind of rambling, I am sure due to frustration, but I am a bit fatigued from reading angry things on line!
I do everything I can to call out that kind of sexism in the groups I ride with. Of course, these are recreational riders, not racers. I've had a bit of experience, through my son, with the culture of road racing, and it was not pretty. That's why my son quit. In his words, too many mean boys. They made fun of him, because he stuck up up for the hotel cleaning staff when he was at a regional development camp. The other juniors were acting like pigs and he called them out. All kinds of slurs. He got in his car and drove home... in the middle of the week.

[Irulan]

Short version - she challenged a review "comparison by a male Pinkbike writer who compared the malleability and handling of a bike frame to a ‘girlfriend after too many shots’ in that both would do anything you asked." She said the words, "promoting rape culture". The sh*t has really hit the fan and many big players in the cycle world are paying attention. Or acting tone deaf. It doesn't matter if you don't know what Pinkbike is; it's constant denial of our reality of misogony in (sports) culture that's the issue. Speak out, you lose your job, get told you are crazy, get told to get over it, you are overreacting and so on.