Love and Hate: the Folly of Youth
Hate smitted Cain. Love Mookie, love.
Before he donned spandex pants and asked if you thought he was sexy (and if you wanted to touch his body), Rod Stewert sang in a little band called “Faces” and uttered these immortal words: “I wish I knew what I know now, when I was younger”. Dennis Lyxen once howled “hate breeds hate” in the early days of Swedish hardcore and there is a reason Ian Mackaye mellowed out and Fugazi didn’t scream “what the fuck have you done?”.
Youth is a beautiful, delicate thing, but it’s also the fertile breeding ground for rash actions and hateful speech. Like Radio Raheem, I’m going to tell you the story of love and hate.
Love and passion can light a fire under your belly, the ability to create, the inspiration to love and do something beautiful and joyous can be driven by pain, it’s true. Some of the best work is fueled out of despair and anguish… but this isn’t the same thing as hatred. Hatred, ignorance, fear and reactionary stances are the result of youth. We’ve certainly all been guilty of this and marginalizing an entire group of people is easy. It’s less complicated than actually doing the ground work and, you know, talking to people. This is what separates great editorial from empty, hate filled vitriol. If I love you, I love you (these five fingers reach into the heart of man).
It was with this in mind that I, still woozy from a few too many Cosmo’s the evening before, stumbled across another local blogger, who apparantly has started a bit of a tiff with my good friend Broox Pulford (of xrocksthespot where I, once in a while, post something… of course being the more loner nerd type, I’m just not as connected as he is: we’re all a bit different at the end of the day).
This blogger goes by the title, “The Boulevardier“. It’s a portmanteau, of several real words… more of a contrivance, but I understand the subtext and it is clever, in its own way. Unfortunately it appears rash and quite misinformed… the subject of his ire is the “macho-ness” of bike culture.
Anarchy is fancy. Did you read "Failed States" or are you just posturing?
He spends a good deal of time blasting Artcrank, for not having more female artists… this is a classic logical fallacy. He’s assuming that women were discouraged from participating, that just isn’t true. This could be described, in formal terms, in a variety of ways… I’d call it more of a non sequiter (literally Latin for “it does not follow”) than anything else. While it is indeed true that there were few female artists, this is not because they were not allowed to participate, it is more because there just aren’t that many women in cycling.
It's not like it was a tribute or something. Keith Morris, by the way, sang "Live Fast, Die Young", kiddos (and he was the first singer in Black Flag)
Now, of course, your mind is immediately jumping to the gotcha that he seeks to employ, “there are not enough women in cycling”. In other words, that somehow the culture of masculinity prevents women from participating. There is a fundamental flaw in this type of thinking: it may indeed be true that there is some type of masculinity in cycling, granted. However there is no rule somehow embedded into society that says all activities, hobbies, and subcultures must seek a 50-50 split in gender equality. The plutonic form of subculture, is perhaps what he’s driving at… some standard somewhere, that says everything will be made fair. You can’t dictate tastes, it’s subjective for a reason.
Sure, I rant, foam, and spray spittle at the rafters, like some red faced imaginary southern baptist preacher… maybe more of a Johnathan Edwards “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God” way. But I have this caveat: it’s my opinion, you don’t have to agree with me, you don’t even have to agree with me to be my friend. I have mad love for all people, and I don’t pretend to know better than anyone else (again, the old hardcore kid was reared on Earth Crisis and Bad Brains… as Chuck Duckowski said, once upon a time, “do what’s right even if no one sees it”).
This may be the Boulevadier. His style isn't my cup of tea, but that's ok... that's what subjective means.
Is cycling misogynisitic? Are cyclists angry, red blooded jocks?
Once upon a time (in 1995, to be exact), I was a tiny little kid with blue hair, wearing Counterfeit t-shirts and this got me called “faggot” and my locker “cleaned” by the wrestling team several times (i.e. throwing everything in my locker in the trash). That was only fourteen years ago. Cyclists are often called “faggots” and spit on, run into, yelled at, honked at, threatened to be killed (I’ve had all of these happen to me), sometimes red blooded American good old boys even make radio shows about killing “the cyclists cause they’re all flamers anyway” (regular readers are familiar with this).
There is a good deal of hate for cyclists, of all stripes.
The other logical issue with the young Bouldevardier’s otherwise “airtight” reasoning is that cycling isn’t some unified club… okay, I kid. It is, we have meetings weekly to decide what is going to happen in fashion: penny farthing enthusiasts clad in wool, track racers in keirin garb, cat 4 club riders in team kit, downhill and freeriders in jeans and t-shirts and full face helmets, cyclocross fanatics with their handlebar moustaches and hearty stouts, fixed gear freestylers with their sick retro haircuts (lines bitch) and giant BMX bikes, dirt jumping kids with dirty baggy jeans, parrotheads with their beach cruisers, even the Dutch city bike riding yuppies (yes, this is a good bit of stereotyping… it’s easy)… it’s a big club and we have made the decision: no more women.
I'm a mans man. Here I am, gird to fight a forest fire, kill a terrorist, and play some football. Blue 42, hike!
It’s not as if shy, quiet aspiring freestylers who write blogs hate women and don’t ever want to meet them. You know, because that guy is such a misogynist and he’s very competitive and full of ego (and semen and testosterone and hair, in fact so much hair that it’s probably coming through your screen as you read this).
Because, of course, I love being single and cannot stand the thought of hearts and flowers, making crepes for breakfast, getting her copy of Lonesome Crowded West signed by Issac Brock, driving out twenty miles in a blizzard to fix her flat tire… I mean, I’m just about fighting, football, and angry sex.
I digress.
Cycling will always have a tinge of masculinity, because it’s something that more men enjoy than women. That’s just reality. I’d love a world that is perfectly balanced, but testosterone drives one to show off and compete… just ask anyone who has undergone gender re-assignment and started taking it, let’s let science make this argument. That’s unfortunate and I won’t pretend to like it, but it is reality, so just settle down. (Remember, cycling makes you gay… if you haven’t forgotten.)
Susan B Anthony once said, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
Some of us can't pull this off... not everyone is born with these genetics. Isn't that also a form of "hate crime" and discrimination? My giant ass legs do not make that look good.
I don’t want to fight this kid, it’s a big world and cycling is something that we all can love. Love and hate. Reach into the heart of man, and love to respect difference. Violence is the last tool of the desperate and threats of violence are asinine and, paradoxically, more masculine than introspection and patience.
Love a brother.