The long goodbye or 30 days of salt

Tomorrow I'm stepping on a plane, ready to give my former city one last, month-long goodbye kiss.

I plan to ride my bike to the beach, sit on some driftwood, stare out at the Puget Sound and
get lost in conversation until my butt is completely frozen.

I plan to visit my favorite local haunts and stuff folded poems between couch cushions and under the legs of wobbling tables.

I will drink tea.

I will collect more hugs than I can stand. And I will not feel any shame.

I will shiver off my fingers while climbing the vicious of Seattle's hills. I will not give in or give anything away. This month will be about taking it all in. I will live by desire and steep in the fruits of my greed.

I will savor the cold even as it is my reason for leaving. I will not stay inside.
I will catalogue the smells of the people I love.
I will make soup.

I want to bathe in the salty air.
I want to dip my heart into the brine,
I will keep the salt in me as something stronger than memory.

The Puget Sound is in my body and my body is an organism most at piece within its systems. I think I could find comfort and function someplace else, and I am ready for that stretch. But right now, my body is rejoicing in the anticipation of this long goodbye. Its salt will ease the difficulty of building a brand new home out there in the unknown.

Marketing Feminism: I'm not buying it

So I'm wildly excited about this.

I support this project 100%. I think it is a vitally important development in safety and transportation. The critique this project has inspired has nothing to do with this product or its development (both of which I applaud). It has to do with marketing.

If you watch the promotional video, which is masterfully cut and filmed you'll notice that it and the article I cite lean primarily on the novelty of "women doing science" to sell their product.

I am wildly excited about this helmet as cyclist, science enthusiast, and feminist.

In that order exactly.

I am excited that women in technology are making fantastic products, but honestly I feel pandered to by their marketing strategy. I gives me big sads to realize that the idea of women doing good science is so alien to most people that it's actually considered an unexpected marketing idea. Women have been doing science all over the world for a long time. It's not a novel thing folks.

I appreciate the fact that Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin highlight the ways in which they faced sexist discrimination and I think their stories around it are important. But right now what's important to me for their product launch is their product information.

You know what would excite me more than the 'shocker' that women are doing hard and concretely useful science? Actual specs on how this helmet works. I want to know if and how this helmet protects against neck injury and whiplash (something traditional helmet are notoriously bad at protecting from, but that this inflatable model looks like it might reduce). I'm curious about the tests run on it.

In this case my practical concerns for safety as a cyclist trump my concerns as a feminist. Not everyone viewing this product will share my priorities, but putting the rocket of girl power behind this product's ad campaign implicitly sends the message that it's more important that women like this product than it is that it will save lives. Impracticality is not feminist.

In general and in this case I am opposed to gendered/sexist marketing strategies. If this helmet's primary features are life saving ones (that make it safer/more practical than traditional products on the market) then all cyclists should be marketed to.

Looking cute and girly is a wonderful thing but I'm sure it's not the top concern for all the cyclists who're interested in this helmet.

As I mentioned before I am excited about this product. My irritation at its gendered marketing is only emblematic of my constant irritation with gendered marketing strategies in general.

Since their advent of public relations marketers have been looking to get consumers to buy things through the use of psychology and manipulation. I think there can be ethical marketing strategies, but marketing in the US comes from a long history of such manipulation.

The Hövding helmet's marketing strategy is to stimulate solidarity and support for the women who made it. They are selling the false feminist novelty of women doing science.

I think solidarity & support for women scientists and entrepreneurs is excellent. I think giving women in science and tech fields more visibility is excellent. But neither of these things should be a marketing strategy. The use of feminism as a marketing device is unappealing to me. It limits feminism to those privileged by a capitalist society.

As much of an anti-capitalist as I am, I delight in products that're both useful and considerate of their users in design. The Hövding helmet appears to be exactly that. But no matter how much girl power is pumped into its marketing campaign, buying one will not make me a better feminist. I want the marketing to stop telling me that it will.

A Familiar Fear: Why cycling is sometimes like existing as a woman* in a misogynist culture

Every time I ride my bike legally centerlane through SoDo (south Seattle) I find myself, without fail, afraid.

This fear strikes my body in a familiar way. My stomach flinches with recognition. “I know this feeling.” I think in conjunction with gripping the brakelevers a little too tightly. My wrists and elbows harvest the the all-too-familiar tension of traveling through space that was not designed for my existence. At best these roads accommodate my journey with retrofits. Often these artificial additions serve as triggers for the the rage many drivers feel toward cyclists in general and me in particular.

Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely thankful when a roadway opens up with a bike lane or announces me and my simple machine with signs or white symbols. But it is not enough.

If it isn’t apparent already, that fearful correlation I feel in my belly-- the one I am attempting to draw out here-- is a parallel between the twisted visibility & ever-apparent danger inherent in biking in spaces designed for cars, and the problems and challenges presented by navigating a misogynist culture as a female-perceived person.

Ask any cyclist you know and they will tell you story upon story of either being physically damaged, verbally harassed or having their journeys otherwise disrupted by drivers and their vehicles. Ask any female-presenting person you know (who has an awareness of what harassment/abuse looks like) and they will be just as able to tell you many stories about having their journeys disrupted by physical, verbal or other means.

You see, there is this thing about being a vehicle or gender (and gender is just a vehicle) in a system not designed for you (which at best accommodates you with retrofits): Our journeys and our bodies are constantly subject to the self-righteous scrutiny and disruptions of those for whom the systems were designed.

There is a special sort of visibility afforded to a cyclist or a female-perceived person. One which immediately appears to insight ridicule from those for whom the cultural/transportation system was designed. Cyclists and women* are expected to accept the fact that they are often gawked at and even to have their performance and appearance scrutinized and commented upon without invitation or permission. And so often the space a woman or a cyclist requests to take up is seen as merely a flashy nuisance. Most drivers/misogynists identify us as hazards within their system and not as full vehicles/people (which legally we are!).

The most prescient way in which these two types of fear connected in my belly was on the grounds of implicit but (usually) unintentional threats of harm. When a driver/misogynist does gawk, comment, honk or pass my body/vehicle too closely, there is always the implied threat of violence. Regardless of the intent.

If a car passes me and my bike too closely & the driver shouts or revs their engine, they might not mean to be saying so, but the message I always receive is very clear: “You don’t belong here and if I wanted to do something about it I could kill/physically damage you (with this machine).” This is the same sort of message I receive as a female-perceived person in spaces where violence against women and misogyny go unchallenged as the norm. I want more bike lanes and less oppressive drivers. I want better marked and maintained avenues for journeys free from gendered violence and misogyny.


*I use woman/women in shorthand here to be a placeholder for female-perceived persons. I do not believe these terms mean the same groups of people, only that these two groups are the most often subject to misogynist violence and disruption.