“Whose streets? Our streets!” was one of the chants repeated Saturday night by organizers of the Los Angeles edition of Clitoral Mass. The ride’s official start time was 5:00 pm from Watts Towers in South Los Angeles, and would take the women and women-identified cyclists throughout Los Angeles, traveling north through downtown Los Angeles, and east into Pasadena, Highland Park and Boyle Heights.
“What are you riding for?” People would shout as we rode past houses on South LA side streets, or from storefront churches, or hanging outside of the corner store. “For women! For gay rights! For fun!” people would shout back a variety of responses.
“Where are you going?” “Is it all girls?”
The League of American Bicyclists recently released a report on “Women in Cycling,” suggesting five focus areas that are key to increasing the number of women cyclists.
- Comfort
- Convenience
- Consumer Products
- Confidence
- Community
Group rides like Ovarian Psycos’ Clitoral Mass do an incredible amount to create a sense of community and sisterhood among cyclists, and help build confidence in novice riders. The organizers of the ride were careful to maintain the pace of the slowest riders, making sure that nobody was left behind or dropped as we zipped through the dark and desolate Pasadena hills surrounding the Rose Bowl.
Urban cycling can come with quite a few risks, but as a woman, cycling can make you feel slightly more exposed. Streets that aren’t well-lit or highly-trafficked can often seem more menacing. People feel strangely comfortable shouting highly explicit things to women who walk or bike outside. But Saturday night, seeing women en masse cycling down the streets, people honked their horns, shouting questions, words of support and encouragement.
This will hopefully become a more common occurrence for the kids (boys and girls) who ran to their fences all throughout Los Angeles, shouting and counting as the ladies on bikes went past.
“Whose streets? Our streets!”
