When I was a young girl, my brother taught me how to ride a bicycle. It was a very freeing activity. When I rode down that rocky road past farms and past slowly trekking people, I felt like one of those people in the exclusive league which my brother was born into, the free males. My mother didn’t object and neither did my grandmother nor my grandfather. My older cousin knew how to ride too but I rarely saw her on a bike. My mother was worried about one thing and one thing only, my speed. My mother might not define the term feminism but for buying me two pairs of trousers to go about my bicycle riding shenanigans in the village more comfortably and freely, I believe she was ahead of her time with girl child empowerment.
When I started joining the higher primary level classes, I began to receive the unsolicited advice of those who were a little older pointing out why the bicycle riding I was doing was a boy’s activity. If a girl should infact insist on riding a bicycle, she will break her virginity. The same was said about climbing trees. This one is not a lesson about the misunderstandings that surround the hymens. I would be worried about 100 more things now regarding a child or adult riding a bicycle; things like bursting your knee, traumatic head injury, fracturing any bone, ligament and tendon tears, need I go on?
I applaud the women from Northern and Eastern Uganda who ride bicycles comfortably like it’s the most natural thing to do.
Imagine my amazement when I got to a G7 country only to find that every city road has a bicycle lane, there are parking spots for bicycles on every building, bicycle space on the train and bus, and my friends, their friends, parents, siblings all have bicycles and they use them! It’s very easy to navigate the city with a bike, there are countless modifications for parents to carry their babies in carts, on little baby seats on the bikes, carry some loads, etc.
Riding a bicycle is not treated as anything other than a means of transport, an enjoyable exercising tool and to some a sport and not a gendered activity or a status symbol. Gendering a very exhilarating and practical experience such as riding a bike should be one of those beliefs that don’t move onto other generations. It is fair to say this is one of those things that bears useless myths.
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