What’s on your mind?
Tonight, 6pm Omdurman Road by the common, bare as you dare.
Tomorrow, ladies’ ride, 10am, somewhere on the common, look for the hats, Five miles to fabulous.
Sunday, daytime, Riverside Park (by the Itchen in Bitterne Park), Springwatch/Breathing spaces festival thing. Bat boxes and green stuff and that.
Your gratuitous rant for the day:
“Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will rape them.”
a) Many women modify their lifes - smoothly, naturally, without thinking about it - based on that fear, a background fear, not a constant panic, rather an awareness.
b) Society and the media propagate that fear. Our local news constantly publishes stories about sex attacks and tries to label places as no-go areas. Sex attacks do happen and are bloody horrible, but the fear and the statistics don’t seem to be in the same place.
c) Same with cycling, actually - many people’s fears of cycling and being hit by cars and things don’t match with statistics.
(d) which is perhaps one of the reasons cycle lanes are useful for getting more people cycling, even if regular cyclists often hate them)
e) and cycling can mitigate the fears of attack (at least compared with walking, but probably not so much as driving)
f) and cycling gets safer if more people are seen on the roads on their bikes, just as “dangerous” no-go areas after dark might be safer if people thronged through them
g) “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will rape them.” is probably a neat summary of the reactions of the people _not_ going on the naked bike ride. The men say stuff like “Southampton can’t handle my naked body yet”. The women think they’ll be perved over. ( yeah yeah I’m generalising)
h) Gender dynamics exist. Get over it. And that means a mixed ride won’t have the same dynamics as a ladies’ ride. Here, have a tissue.
Oh yeah, cycle2work scheme should be open now. If you’re uni staff, buy a bike! (Details in previous post).