Pinkbike Celebrates International Women's Day 2021

 I love this.

 Right on!

 @Nygaard: did you wake up today stoked to troll international womens day?

 @Nygaard: Below threshold wasn't enough; you want to get called out here too? You're literally the guy @pourquois-pas is talking about.

 @Nygaard: it’s not that people aren’t clicking the articles, it’s that they don’t want to get into arguments with people like you.

 @Nygaard: In some cases, for sure.

But I'd bet a fair $ a lot of members just avoid any female content.

 @Nygaard: So you get it now!

Ask yourself why you (or whomever) have no interest in content about biking on a biking website when women are involved.

Now challenge yourself to figure out why that is.

 @Nygaard: those weren't my words but i'm GUESSING the majority of people who regularly use pinkbike are male. the sport is male dominated. we just want to be looked at equally. you shitting on international womens day on pinkbike is just making it all the more obvious why women should have this day. i could go on and on about how dudes drop into trails simply because they see a female rider, assuming she is going to hold them up, how often we get unsolicited advice, how often we get run off trails because some strava dude is on our ass, how many times have you been asked if you needed help pumping up your tire? none? okay.

 @Nygaard: OK, I'll try, for what my opinion is worth. I think people (in this case mainly men) subconsciously assume that content focused on women might be in some way less wild, impressive or rad - basically not as satisfying to watch or read or listen to. You can see this, for example, in comments about the difference between men's and women's racing or even when someone says that a woman is a badass "for a woman", which implies that the bar is somehow lower.

I personally agree with pourqouis-pas that being more open-minded and clicking on content containing women would be beneficial a) to the women involved, as it increases their exposure and therefore showcases women riding bikes to a wider audience and b) to the viewer as they are exposed to perhaps different styles of content or even just great content that happens to focus on women.

Sometimes you have to point out a behaviour to help people realise they are engaging in it, especially if it's sunconscious because it's been ground into them by social norms. After that the change can become embedded once people get to the point where they are clicking to see content about women because they know it might be good, not just because they know they should.

That's my take on it, anyhow.

 @pourquois-pas: I feel that I have to stress that this is not an attempt to provoke before asking, but I am genuinely interested in knowing what leads you to that assumption? Why would people actively avoid content that they are interested in? I simply don't see why that would take place?

 @Nygaard: I don't think this is a troll. I think this is just not being aware of how privilege works.

MTB has typically been white, straight and male. Unless content editors (also typically white, straight and male) don't actually promote content that might not have as much interest to their readers (ie, content that's not showing white, straight and male riders riding at a high level because more of that demographic benefits from systemic cultural structures, both in the sport and external to it), then other demographics aren't as interested in the content. This can ultimately work to keep the sport white, straight and male. Think of historic black lack of interest in Hollywood, everything from Public Enemy's Burn Hollywood Burn to Jordan Peele's interviews, there just isn't the same connection or interest with the sport or medium when it's predominantly one demographic. This can work in subtle ways too, I live in a town with an amazing bmx track but I wasn't really interested until I saw sugarcayne.com because I just couldn't relate to what I thought was bmx culture.

Promoting content that doesn't interest the dominant group will lead to more inclusion, which leads to more diversity, which leads to a higher quality of riding. This is dynamic is already at work- I'm a white, straight male and I've never seen anything as impressive on a mountain bike as Hannah Bergemann dropping 40' at the old Rampage sight.

Props to pb for publishing this kind of material, despite it not always being the most marketable to the overall user base. I, for one, am interested in seeing how the sport will evolve as a result.

edit: taking links out that didn't embed and ampersands that got messy.

 @Nygaard: You are correct, they avoid what doesn't interest them.

I ask they challenge themselves why they're not interested in content that includes women, i.e. why are they closed-minded to this content. Maybe click through and try a few, be open minded, you'd be surprised. I was... not ashamed to admit I'm still trying to shake old norms and attitudes.


And maybe I am wrong. PB has the open rate data, I'm just extrapolating from the low article comment and video view counts.

 Amazing to see how triggered many people respond to a normal question.

I agree with Nygaard that it is weird to assume that many people on pinkbike actively avoid articles about women.
Why would they do that? It makes no sense.

 @fullfacemike:
Accidentally down voted

 i love women

 So we should ban your free speech too?

 @crysvb: I always stop and ask if riders need help when they have a puncture or a mechanical issue - regardless if their female or male. It's just common courtesy.

Sexism is definitely a big problem, but I please don't assume that I'm a big jerk just because I stop and offer my help and advice.

 @Skarhead89: Free speech, where it exists on paper, is always limited by its impact on others.

 Why more moderation? There is an up-vote and a down-vote foe every comment. If somebody says something stupid they will be downvoted by the community and thus below threshold.

 @NorwegianBackcountry: not trailside, see. Pumping up a tire in the parking lot. It’s happened more than once.

 @Nygaard:I think it's more because of how we as women are expected to not perform at the same physical level as men, be as strong as men, etc, we are trained socially to always hold men to the highest degree of progression and skills. Therefore while I don't believe many people out there come across an article or video featuring a woman and think to themselves, "yuck, why would I read/watch that," I think it's more that when you log on to PB and you just want to see some rad content or whatever you're looking for in that moment, it's easy to almost subconsciously pass up articles featuring women because men in western culture are expected to just perform better

 @Bureb: Because community self-regulation generally doesn't work when the composition of the group is biased.

 @pourquois-pas: I totally disagree. If you look closer the first comment you recieved was a dum one and it got below trashold so... it works. I believe in the democracy of this group. I believe that all the memebers are better than one who decides for everybody. We should all want to keep it like that. The moment it stops being like that we will loose members. this is not what we want.

 @Bureb: evidence would state otherwise. The community isn’t consistent.

m.pinkbike.com/news/laurie-arsenault-joins-emily-batty-on-canyon-for-2021.html

To take your argument one step further, if the community does indeed consistently downvote this content what, in practice, is the problem with it happening through moderation?

Do you think members would defect for moderating blatant sexism and crudeness? I would hope more would leave if Pb doesn’t step up it’s game.

 @crysvb: He was undoubtedly doing so with the best of intentions, thinking that he was doing a good deed. Pinkbike did after all document how only 3 out of 5 women are capable of working on their own bikes without assistance in the Pinkbike Academy show S1E1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHGt09eIyoI. Pinkbike's own Christina Chapetta, one of the most skilled female riders/wrenchers I can think of, even awarded a male contestant a "brownie point" for helping his female adversary. Have you considered the possibility that your view on men might be the actual problem here?

 @mortenkatrine: Having seen the comically poor maintainence some men do on their own bikes without assistance I do half wonder whether the proportion of those who really can mend and maintain their bikes might actually be the same across both genders. It's just that women might tend to be a bit more realistic about their own abilities.

Someone's intentions might be good but can still highlight their attitudes towards someone else. For example I once witnessed a Welsh local giving some pretty condescending advice to a group of East Asian visitors, assuming from appearance alone that they weren't experienced in the mountains. Apart from anything else, I did wonder if the guy had heard of the Himalayas.

 @mortenkatrine: LOL no, but thanks for your input

 I'm not going to flame anyone, but I'm not going open an article because it's written by a certain gender. I open articles for content, particularly tech articles on drivetrain and suspension technology. There are very few technical articles written by women on PB, IME.
Suggesting one open articles based on the authors gender makes as much sense as saying "Try reading this article on knitting, it's written by a man"

 @woofer2609: FWIW, I would absolutely read an article on mtb tech by a female, or articles on or other aspects of mtb, because the identity of the authors. I'm not only interested in mtb, but also mtb as seen by other perspectives and supporting the growth of those perspectives in the sport I love. Just sayin.

 @woofer2609: I agree with you on the first part: "I'm not going open an article because it's written by a certain gender. I open articles for content," and that we aren't consciously making these decisions based on our own awareness of an article being written by or featuring a certain gender. I'm getting at how a lot of the feelings we feel as we scroll through articles and see what interests us, often aid choices we make on what content to view that are indirectly influenced by these preconceived notions. If a certain PB user tried to put out content on bike maintenance, but the general opinion of this person's skills or validity was illegitimate, we will slowly start to subconsciously skip over their content because it is so ingrained and socially understood that their content isn't valid or worth reading into. The same applies here with how as women, we often aren't regarded as being capable of achieving more than men, or sending the biggest jumps, being the most technically minded, etc. Therefore again, it's not that PB users are consciously choosing to not read an article based on the gender of the poster or the gender of the person(s) featured, but that our subconscious is influencing how we feel about certain things, how interested we may or may not be, etc.

 There is still progress that needs to be made when you consider how companies such as YT treat women in their advertising:

www.pinkbike.com/u/DoubleCrownAddict/blog/yt-marketing-the-most-offensive-mysogynist-violent-pro-trump-company-in-bicycle-history.html

 @Baller7756: hit piece? Haha. That’s funny.

 ngl I teared up a bit out of how inspiring it was. It's insane how well pro athletes train their mind to overcome obstacles and endure pain holy shit

 And as always there's some f*cking doozies in there. To be so fragile that on a reoccuring day a year you are still not confident in your masculinity and yourselves you can't just enjoy the day and give props to all the lady senders?

Show me on the doll where the bad lady touched you...

 @RelapsedMandalorian: I'm conflicted about your second comment here. On the one hand, I'm here with you in support of the women riders. But then your last sentence is a joke about child sexual abuse, at its core. (In case you're wondering, I still gave an upvote after some contemplation.)

 @barp: I'm with you bro, on reflection, slightly insensitive. But you get my gist, thanks for being rad about it.

 @RelapsedMandalorian: Cheers!

 These should have been movies for your monday.

 @margauxjo you are incredible.

 @alicialeggett: Thank you and so are you! After barely surviving TDS with you in 2019 I needed something else to do on my bike! hah...that race was such a reality check for me!

 Yeah, to me, although it wasn't clear my post was in reply to those who think IWD is bullshit. Hence the line of napkins suggestion.

 @RelapsedMandalorian: No. My comment was right beneath yours, but was not in reply to you. It was in reply to Nygaard.

 This is interesting. So if I understand correct it seems that your target is that 50% of the content should be about females? If so how did you come up with that number? How do you see its connection to the "content pool" ?

It would be also interesting to hear what other "groups" should be brought under equal outcomes umbrella and why exactly those groups?

Sorry about multiple questions

 @Juuhan: Oh hello sock puppet account! You're about as sorry for the questions as the Unabomber was for making people go pop.

All ready for answers so you can drip on and show everyone your intellect?

 @RelapsedMandalorian: . It's somewhat sad that instead of honest discussions energy is spend on ad hominem.

 Flat table is FLAT

 @kmarmandy

I hear your concern about not covering everyone who deserves it -- there are definitely lots of women out there deserving of recognition, and we couldn't include all of them. The main reason the WST wasn't covered that it didn't happen in 2020, and this article is about achievements of the past year. The WST was included in the last Women's Day article, available here: www.pinkbike.com/news/pinkbike-celebrates-international-womens-day-2020.html

Of course there are many women in the sport who don't get the recognition they deserve, and we are working on changing that. Still, it doesn't happen all at once, and simultaneously we can also recognize the achievements of women we *have* heard of, since their being well-known doesn't at all diminish the importance of what they've achieved.

 Hopefully the lowlife's that threatened Amanda to the point she quit were banned for life.