Women and Trans Programs

From Bike Collectives Wiki
Revision as of 03:42, 1 March 2016 by Angel (talk | contribs) (re-added comments section, yay!)


please see our talk page for what is needed on this page and for what projects people have claimed

Related Topics: Safer Space & Patriarchy and Bicycle Repair

Naming this sort of event can be challenging, and you'll want to think carefully about who you may be including or excluding.

Every bicycle space unless otherwise stated is a de facto "boys club" and many femme / trans folks report feeling more comfortable in safer spaces designed specifically for them.

Ideally, the goal is for an entire collective to participate in a safer space agreement at all times.


Community Bicycle Programs with Women And Trans (sometimes femme) safer spaces

at least according to our fine wiki and WTF Cycles PHL circa Feb 2016

Canada

Europe

USA By Region

east coast

midwest

west coast

southwest

deep south


Comments

I sent an email on the Think Tank recently that only barely made a mention of safer space programs, but a lot of what I talked about was based on years of thinking about how to make bike collectives more accessible to a wider variety of people, and probably a fair bit of wheel reinvention. To summarize, a tautology: the more you do to make a space accessible to more people, the less it will be exclusively the default demographic that shows up and sticks around.

Off the top of my head, and I'm happy to expand on any of these bullet points:

  • access to basic food
  • if music, multicultural music
  • pedagogically-oriented learning environment
  • value all work, including admin work
  • safer space training for core volunteers
  • upholding clear shop guidelines and boundaries for appropriate behavior
  • providing an option for clearly defined volunteer tasks
  • informative, accessible website
  • have contact info for a mediator available
  • physical shop safety
  • being predictably and punctually open
  • having a functioning, physical land line telephone in the shop


Even if every single moment in a bike collective was filled with people striving toward a safer space as best they could, there would still be a need for WTF night because the people who show up couldn't be expected to know that. Until I understood that, I spent a long time feeling uncomfortable about the concept of WTF nights because I believed (and continue to believe, actually) that it puts the burden of the work of thinking about issues surrounding equality largely on the hosts of the WTF nights, and then the rest of the collective often only thinks about safer spaces at their convenience, when I'd rather see every single member of a collective taking that burden on together and making every moment as much of a safer space as WTF nights. --Angel York (talk) 11:59, 16 February 2016 (PST)