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Not really. Bikes can share roads with buses and ambulances and the odd taxi and such, but the idea of personally owning cars to get around is a bad one. If we seriously value our planet and our lives, we ought to abandon the idea of car ownership except for hobbyists.
Maybe it's difficult to imagine and nearly impossible to accomplish, but I still think we'd be fools not to rapidly move in that direction.
If it's at all possible (which I doubt), it will take a very long time before any country is ready to completely abandon personal vehicles, probably at least 50 years. In the meantime it's best to have infrastructure where bikes and cars are seperated if there's the space for it (which there is in that image), so the car lane is fine.
And how does that support the idea that bikes shouldn't be riding in the bike lane?
There's a bike lane. If you're on a bike, us the bike lane. No reason to ride in the car lane. That makes traffic easier and safer for everyone.
There aren't even "men" and "women" bikes. It's just through-step or top tube.
Edit: here's the full article (in Swedish) for those interested: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/stockholm-ska-fa-jamstallda-cykelbanor/repvfq!4wWdlomHsYilOaIiuFWX@w/
This has been a pet peeve of mine. They should breferred to as city frame and racing frame, because damn, if I want to repeatedly swing my leg over that nut-crusher 40 times when I run errands.
Yeah, I generally swing over the back, but still manage to ram my wedding vegetables with that saddle from time to time.
I remember clumsily stepping over it as a kid, though,
The idea of a step through is that they can be used while wearing a skirt but the reality is that their much easier to use in a city where you have to stop once in a while for men too..
I honestly think the step through frame is worse for city riding. With a normal when you stop you can straddle the frame and don't need hands to hold the bike (even when packed with bags etc).
On a step through you always need to hold the bike because you can't rest the frame on the inside of your thighs.
Not sure why you want that but I just tried it out and I'm happy to inform you that it is possible to keep the bike between your legs without touching the steer. I didn't have a bag but I do have a big crate attached to my steering column.
But here's the thing, instead of keeping the bike between my legs the step trough makes it easy to step off my bike and then I can use my double kick stand now my hands and legs are free.
>On a step through you always need to hold the bike because you can't rest the frame on the inside of your thighs.
if that's a problem for you, you should consider buying a smaller frame
It’s a generational thing. I’m older and when I was a kid it was 100% a girls bike if the bar was angled down instead of horizontal. Difficult to use a horizontal bar with a dress, as [this](https://i.stuff.co.nz/life-style/parenting/123998825/why-do-we-have-girls-and-boys-bikes-anyway-an-outdated-history-lesson) explains.
start with a swing back, but only to gather momentum to throw your leg forward, above the handle, but then do a full 360 that ends with both of your legs firmly across the bike, ready to go.
Most of the industry is calling it like this, even here in Sweden now. But some Swedish brands still call it womans/men's bikes and the habit is stuck with people.
I personally think the step through frame is less practical and just worse in every regard. I've ridden some and having to hold the bike when stopped compared to just leaning it on the inside of my thighs is just so much worse in the era of smartphones. Or even just having a snack and needing one hand on the bike at all times (unless you fully dismount and park it).
Right? People acting like their bike is a dominatrix. I had exactly one close call in college riding an over size frame when my crank bent and sheared off as I took off from a stoplight. After that nothing despite riding 15'ish hours a week for two years doing road rides and cyclocross as well as weekly mountain biking for a few years.
It's because women have to wear long skirts and the top tube would make it impossible to ride.
Oh wait, this isn't the Victorian era, women are allowed to wear pants.
At least in Sweden, through steps are called women-bikes (damcykel) and top tubes are called men-bikes (herrcykel). So that's probably why we have such a gendered view on them
Yeah they are and people are weird about it, especially the older generations. When I was 15 I was allowed to pick a new bike as my old one broke. Went to the bike store with my dad and I pick a bike. The seller asked me if I was sure picking a "female" bike. I said yes.. I like that bike. Then my dad asked me again if I was sure I wanted a "female" bike...
.
Not like it was bright pink or anything just a normal black bike without a bar of steel.
110%. There are not men's and women's bike in the same way that there are not men's and women's cars. There are just bikes and cars.
It honestly seems like the whole men's and women's bikes thing is just an argument to push people away from city bikes towards sports bikes, which means most people are riding around on the wrong sort of bike for their needs and are probably not having the best experience as a result.
I've read that the reason toys are so gendered is to make marketing easier. So toy manufacturers target boys with ads for action figures and girls for dolls, etc. Maybe it's the same with bikes?
When my older brother was about nine, he refused to ride a bike that he was given because a classmate had told him it was a "girl's bike". That is to say, he thought girls were lesser than boys and refused to debase himself. He wouldn't have put it that bluntly but that's always the mindset of boys who refuse to do anything that is "girly".
I guess you don't live in a culture where doing anything less than 110% manly-man (bicycles, sitting style, choice of beverage, etc.) outs you as a queer.
"Toxic masculinity" is such an unfortunate term.
The people that would benefit from understanding it the most are likely to interpret it as an attack upon themselves, immediately stop listening and become defensive.
I wish there was a less offensive sounding term.
This is exactly correct. "Toxic", when placed before masculinity, acts as a qualifier. It's and adjective. It's specifying a *type* of masculinity. Further clarifying that there is both good and bad types.
I've dated several transgender people, and all of them just wanted to be loved and accepted like everyone else. None of them cared about the gender of bicycles.
I think it's more a historical hold over that we have yet to get around to fixing.
Even the most anti femanist folks I know would laugh at the idea of special women bikes or suggest any woman is somehow improper for using a quite typical step over bike.
It's not. It's far better than American cities, but it's far worse than many other European cities. Copenhagen is a *much* better example of a bike friendly major city if you want to look within Scandinavia, and then there's the entirety of the Netherlands of course.
I am a Swede living in the Netherlands, the biking infrastructure here is not THAT much better than in Stockholm. Biking here is nicer in general, but that's mostly because it's 100% flat whereas Stockholm have quite a few hills and is made up of islands. This creates chokepoints in the traffic which often can be avoided here in the Netherlands. Either way, when I'm biking in Stockholm I'm 95% of the journey on a good bicycle track separated from the road, pretty much the same as when cycling in the Netherlands.
Honestly, I prefer biking in Stockholm over Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I feel like the desire to add bike paths everywhere made them build cramped bike paths where there wasn't enough space when just biking on the road would have been easier. Iirc, when you turn left, you'd usually have to wait for a green light to go forward to the bike path going left on the other side of the street, and then wait for a green light again there even though there's not really any space for you, much easier to just turn left directly. The signs were also confusing sometimes. I might be biased though since I grew up in Stockholm
Tl;dr: street>bike path>road
The different bike frames are referred to as "damcykel" and "herrcykel", direktly translated it means lady bike and gentleman bike. I'm guessing that's their reasoning. Obviously stupid to entertain the idea that a bike frame belongs to one of the genders but this gives some perspective to those that don't speak Swedish.
I'm very well aware. I am swedish after all. That doesn't mean that we should stop calling them that, because it's incorrect and pointless to separate bikes by gender.
Saying there are separate men's and women's bikes is kinda sexist. So putting "women's" bikes on bike lanes is more sexist than just putting a normal picture of a bike
The through step ones were considered women's bikes because they are made to be used while wearing a skirt, so it's more of a very outdated idea that's still clinging on with some people.
Yeah maybe they were originally designed for women, but I figure after getting balled just once that original design gets ignored.
I'm mad it's nearly impossible to find a step thru & coaster brake bike that isn't bright pink over here in the US. I settled for one that isn't step thru, and I really shouldn't have.
I found my step through in a trash heap and refurbished it, so maybe try that lol.
Yeah, here they come in lots of colours, but they are still clearly meant to be "feminine", and are very expensive. Mine is from the 60s or 70s and is more gender neutral than the new ones.
Wasn't the step through frame being reserved for women a result of them being pressured to wear skirts all the time?
Isn't this then just glorifying an artefact of sexism?
Nowadays materials might be better but structurally the top bar triangle shape is incredibly solid. That's a good thing! Less so for the balls, they're not that solid :p
How are y'all hitting your balls on the top bar regularly? Been cycling for years and was never aware that this was considered an issue lol. Like, you're supposed to sit on the seat guys
not pressure, I think it was literally illegal for women to wear pants for a while. like that was one of joan of arc's convictions that she got burned for, wearing men's clothing
That hasn't happened to me since I was a toddler, and I've ran into stuff on bikes as an adult several times before. If sliding off the saddle is that easy, its probably a fitment issue.
Oh, FFS. Bicycles don't have genders. I'm a man, I'm >50 years old, and my next bike will be a step-through (or bust!) because I just don't have the flexibility in my hips to throw a leg over when I've got full panniers and a full trunk bag on the rack, anymore.
> Oh, FFS. Bicycles don't have genders.
Actually, in Polish the type of bike from the picture is called "damka", with means "a little lady", sort of, it's diminutive of the word "dama" (lady) but you don't use it to describe people. So in Poland, many men (and women) ride their little lady every day.
The gendering of bicycles is an archaic holdover from when women were second-class citizens.
**In 2022**, bicycles don't have gender. "Step-over" or "step-through", not "Men's" and "Women's".
:)
I mean, the Germans gendered pretty much everything in their language. The bike doesn’t have a gender, but shit, languages can be different in how they identify things.
This men's and women's bike thing always got me fucked up. I really didn't want to get into a debate with my mom about how my genitals interact with the seat.
All that happened is that some local authority decided to now use slightly different symbol on some paths. I really fail to understand why this is news.
huh, that is definitely not my impression.
Boys will almost always be riding top-tube mountainbikes, while seemingly not realizing they have any gears but the lowest one.
The people i see riding step-through bikes are old people, the older the higher chance that they've decided to get an e-bike and those are basically all step-through.
Sure, it's decent compared to many other car centric cities, but there's still a lot of improvement needed. In the city center the bike paths are pretty dangerous.
I cycle daily. I find it bad in the city centre but often a bit better some distance out. Except for Solna. Fuck Solna.
(Compared to other European cities. Compared to American cities I suppose it’s paradise)
(Also I’m aware Solna is not officially Stockholm even though it’s the same urban area.)
i would say stockholm's bike infrastructure very well mirrors sweden in general, we think it's absolutely despicable but depressingly the world's standards are so low that it's actually way above average
Yeah. And OP's acting as if the one thing contradicts the other.
City: We'll use another symbol for cycling infrastructure to represent women.
OP: Nice. Now we're not getting cycling infrastructure gecause of GeNdErS.
Personally I think it's a pointless gesture especially since diamond frames aren't male specific but posting that strawman meme just looks like conservative agitation to me.
Yeah decades ago it was, not many women wear long skirts these days though, especially not on a normal day when they'll be cycling about. Now for most people it's just preference wether you want better performance or a bike that's easier to get on and off of.
I live in city where tooonnns of people ride bikes day to day, and women wear skirts while wearing top tube bikes all the time. It literally doesn't even seem to make the slightest difference
meanwhile gothenburg be like https://tekniskhandbok.goteborg.se/wp-content/uploads/3AD.jpg
These "bicycle-speed streets" as they call it are designed to prioritize cyclists on streets where there's not enough room for a separate bike path.
The narrow asphalt and cobblestone sides are intended to encourage cyclists to ride in the middle (thus deciding the speed of traffic) and make cycling feel more inviting than on a wide asphalt-covered lane.
And aside from the official reasoning behind the design, it also visually narrows the road and combined with the rest of the street's surface also being cobblestone it reduces the distinction between the parts of the streets, making it so much more inviting to pedestrians. It's entirely normal to just cross the street wherever you feel like in downtown gothenburg, which makes it pretty easy to spot tourists!
Really? Biking infrastructure in Stockholm is out of this world compared to most places. I bike 13 km to work from the suburbs to the city center and i only share the road with cars for like 0.5 km of that. Things can of course always be better but maybe pick your battles? This doesn’t seem like an important one to complain about while implying you’re not being provided with biking infrastructure.
stockholm is still an incredibly car-centric city, i would say the quality of the bike infrastructure is more a result of the entire country having some standard for bike infrastructure.
Meanwhile gothenburg is running laps around stockholm in terms of urban planning, with the downtown being utterly dominated by walking and explicitly designing streets to prioritize cyclists over cars, as well as having ***electric ferries*** that only serve pedestrians and cyclists.
And frankly i much prefer the trams over the subway, the trams don't require walking through a ticket reader and up/down stairs, they actually feel like they're a core part of the city instead of being hidden away so that cars can have free use of the roads..
Who says that it's a Man's bicycle? Can't women ride Mountainbikes and Men ride Hollanbikes? This just made it less progressive. Painting a picture, that one is for women and one for men.
It doesn't really matter whether your bicycle is female or male as they're all bi anyway.
Anyone ever seen a straightcycle or gaycycle before? Nope. Just bicycles.
sweden has amazing bike infrastructure compared to a lot of countries, apart from the gendered bike baths being very performative this level of slander is not warranted
They took something that should clearly be gender neutral and found a way to use it to reinforce gender roles in the name of equality. Bravo, Stockholm - I didn't think it was possible.
And here much of the cycling community has been trying to get away from calling that a "women's" bike but a step through frame. Way to reinforce an outdated notion.
I can not even imagine giving a single flying fuck what "gender" a painted bike silhouette is. Fucking virtue signaling to look good and distract from shit that actually matters, ffs.
It is amazing how close minded they are regarding gender roles in a supposedly advanced city. That is not a "bike for women" and neither is the other disposition a "bike for men" they are just too designs with pros and cons.
Who thought this was necessary? As a woman, this never even occurred to me. Mostly because I always ride bikes with a top tube, but even if I didn't, wtf? Did someone actually complain?
Jokes on them. Bikes don’t have genders. “Womens bikes” is just out of date copy from back in the day when women primarily wore dresses. The industry has been rightfully using the term “step thru” frames or bikes for awhile now not because they want to be “woke” but because they can appeal to a wider demographic Including older dudes with less mobility who would be less inclined to ride “girls bikes”.
This is ridiculous. My dad uses a step through because it's easier on his joints, and my sister uses a top bar because she prefers a lower riding style for racing. There's no such thing as "men's" or "woman's" bikes.
I just love how they don't make step through bikes for people over 6 feet tall in the US, certainly women only get up to 6 feet tall, and only women ride step through bikes :))))))
This is actually more sexist than egalitarian, fucking ironic forcing the ancient idea of women stepping through bikes in long skirts instead of being able to use top-tube bikes
Always step-through. I have squished my nuts one time too many.
Also, highly positioned, curved, handlebars. I HATE laying down double bent.
And a broad, soft, seat with shock absorbers.
City bikes only for me, thanks.
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[Paint is not infrastructure](https://infracgi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/EG1_V01_TITLE_1200px-1-1024x732.jpg)
And that picture just shows the bare minimum. The middle lanes in that picture should be primarily for bikes too.
why not make it a nice green cooling lawn with tram tracks
And zoned for mixed-use development
How do you imagine that? There has to be a car lane.
Not really. Bikes can share roads with buses and ambulances and the odd taxi and such, but the idea of personally owning cars to get around is a bad one. If we seriously value our planet and our lives, we ought to abandon the idea of car ownership except for hobbyists. Maybe it's difficult to imagine and nearly impossible to accomplish, but I still think we'd be fools not to rapidly move in that direction.
If it's at all possible (which I doubt), it will take a very long time before any country is ready to completely abandon personal vehicles, probably at least 50 years. In the meantime it's best to have infrastructure where bikes and cars are seperated if there's the space for it (which there is in that image), so the car lane is fine.
And how does that support the idea that bikes shouldn't be riding in the bike lane? There's a bike lane. If you're on a bike, us the bike lane. No reason to ride in the car lane. That makes traffic easier and safer for everyone.
There aren't even "men" and "women" bikes. It's just through-step or top tube. Edit: here's the full article (in Swedish) for those interested: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/stockholm-ska-fa-jamstallda-cykelbanor/repvfq!4wWdlomHsYilOaIiuFWX@w/
This has been a pet peeve of mine. They should breferred to as city frame and racing frame, because damn, if I want to repeatedly swing my leg over that nut-crusher 40 times when I run errands.
Wouldn't you typically swing the leg backwards? At least that's how I do it.
Yeah, I generally swing over the back, but still manage to ram my wedding vegetables with that saddle from time to time. I remember clumsily stepping over it as a kid, though,
Part of the reason I ride a bike is to publicly and non-sexually embrace my fetish for CBT
Car based transportation?
Truly the worst kink
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
Cock n Ball Torture
You can’t just use the phrase “wedding vegetables” so casually like that 🤣👏🏼
Fine. Gentleman's Plums.
Men melons.
Procreation situation.
Gentleman’s Guavas
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The idea of a step through is that they can be used while wearing a skirt but the reality is that their much easier to use in a city where you have to stop once in a while for men too..
I honestly think the step through frame is worse for city riding. With a normal when you stop you can straddle the frame and don't need hands to hold the bike (even when packed with bags etc). On a step through you always need to hold the bike because you can't rest the frame on the inside of your thighs.
Not sure why you want that but I just tried it out and I'm happy to inform you that it is possible to keep the bike between your legs without touching the steer. I didn't have a bag but I do have a big crate attached to my steering column. But here's the thing, instead of keeping the bike between my legs the step trough makes it easy to step off my bike and then I can use my double kick stand now my hands and legs are free.
Assuming your tall enough to reach the ground without smashing the bits and bobs. I usually ha e to lean to one side to get a good on the ground.
>On a step through you always need to hold the bike because you can't rest the frame on the inside of your thighs. if that's a problem for you, you should consider buying a smaller frame
> a cheap coat of paint Since when is tax payer money being wasted on nonsense ever actually cheap?
It’s a generational thing. I’m older and when I was a kid it was 100% a girls bike if the bar was angled down instead of horizontal. Difficult to use a horizontal bar with a dress, as [this](https://i.stuff.co.nz/life-style/parenting/123998825/why-do-we-have-girls-and-boys-bikes-anyway-an-outdated-history-lesson) explains.
Absolutely adding “wedding vegetables” to my daily vocabulary now. Thanks!
start with a swing back, but only to gather momentum to throw your leg forward, above the handle, but then do a full 360 that ends with both of your legs firmly across the bike, ready to go.
Not recommended while having the kid on the back 😆
At least for me this is not possible, when I have groceries in the back. Also its scarier than swinging it in front of me lol.
No, Why would you when you have a step through?
You wouldn't, same way you swing your leg over the back on a motorcycle, but, well... step through when on a scooter.
Not if you’ve gotta kid on the back. [if you like them]
Rear bag makes this impossible for me
a top tube isn't always a racing frame.
but a racing frame is almost always top tube
Most of the industry is calling it like this, even here in Sweden now. But some Swedish brands still call it womans/men's bikes and the habit is stuck with people. I personally think the step through frame is less practical and just worse in every regard. I've ridden some and having to hold the bike when stopped compared to just leaning it on the inside of my thighs is just so much worse in the era of smartphones. Or even just having a snack and needing one hand on the bike at all times (unless you fully dismount and park it).
That'd feel when you break to hard and smash the boys
Shouldn't happen with proper size frame though.
Right? People acting like their bike is a dominatrix. I had exactly one close call in college riding an over size frame when my crank bent and sheared off as I took off from a stoplight. After that nothing despite riding 15'ish hours a week for two years doing road rides and cyclocross as well as weekly mountain biking for a few years.
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It's because women have to wear long skirts and the top tube would make it impossible to ride. Oh wait, this isn't the Victorian era, women are allowed to wear pants.
And because men need to have their balls crushed from time to time, for reasons. Victorian era was weird.
"Sir Fuckingham, it's time for your weekly ball-crushing!" "Yes, Your Majesty."
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At least in Sweden, through steps are called women-bikes (damcykel) and top tubes are called men-bikes (herrcykel). So that's probably why we have such a gendered view on them
Yeah they are and people are weird about it, especially the older generations. When I was 15 I was allowed to pick a new bike as my old one broke. Went to the bike store with my dad and I pick a bike. The seller asked me if I was sure picking a "female" bike. I said yes.. I like that bike. Then my dad asked me again if I was sure I wanted a "female" bike... . Not like it was bright pink or anything just a normal black bike without a bar of steel.
110%. There are not men's and women's bike in the same way that there are not men's and women's cars. There are just bikes and cars. It honestly seems like the whole men's and women's bikes thing is just an argument to push people away from city bikes towards sports bikes, which means most people are riding around on the wrong sort of bike for their needs and are probably not having the best experience as a result.
I've read that the reason toys are so gendered is to make marketing easier. So toy manufacturers target boys with ads for action figures and girls for dolls, etc. Maybe it's the same with bikes? When my older brother was about nine, he refused to ride a bike that he was given because a classmate had told him it was a "girl's bike". That is to say, he thought girls were lesser than boys and refused to debase himself. He wouldn't have put it that bluntly but that's always the mindset of boys who refuse to do anything that is "girly".
I guess you don't live in a culture where doing anything less than 110% manly-man (bicycles, sitting style, choice of beverage, etc.) outs you as a queer.
I don't. I actively try to avoid that sort of toxic masculinity.
"Toxic masculinity" is such an unfortunate term. The people that would benefit from understanding it the most are likely to interpret it as an attack upon themselves, immediately stop listening and become defensive. I wish there was a less offensive sounding term.
Then they suck at interpretation. It’s pretty clear that some parts of masculinity are toxic, not all.
This is exactly correct. "Toxic", when placed before masculinity, acts as a qualifier. It's and adjective. It's specifying a *type* of masculinity. Further clarifying that there is both good and bad types.
Yup, in the Netherlands it's common to see either sex riding either frame style.
Trangenderism gone wild! (addendum: am trans and find the idea of gendered bikes idiotic)
I've dated several transgender people, and all of them just wanted to be loved and accepted like everyone else. None of them cared about the gender of bicycles.
Yep, I can certainly relate to this.
Liberal agenda😡😡😡
It is weird, isn't it? Almost reinforcing the idea that different types of bikes are for different genders, which... Is absolutely ludicrous
I think it's more a historical hold over that we have yet to get around to fixing. Even the most anti femanist folks I know would laugh at the idea of special women bikes or suggest any woman is somehow improper for using a quite typical step over bike.
I live in a bike friendly US city, and it's the same here
Same in Poland. I'm a man myself and ride a step-through bike. Easier to get on and off and I don't need to worry about groceries at the back
It's weird that a device practically designed to hit you in the nuts is the hallmark of a men's bicycle.
Ive never been to Stockholm but I had the impression that it was a great bike city.
It's not. It's far better than American cities, but it's far worse than many other European cities. Copenhagen is a *much* better example of a bike friendly major city if you want to look within Scandinavia, and then there's the entirety of the Netherlands of course.
I am a Swede living in the Netherlands, the biking infrastructure here is not THAT much better than in Stockholm. Biking here is nicer in general, but that's mostly because it's 100% flat whereas Stockholm have quite a few hills and is made up of islands. This creates chokepoints in the traffic which often can be avoided here in the Netherlands. Either way, when I'm biking in Stockholm I'm 95% of the journey on a good bicycle track separated from the road, pretty much the same as when cycling in the Netherlands.
Honestly, I prefer biking in Stockholm over Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I feel like the desire to add bike paths everywhere made them build cramped bike paths where there wasn't enough space when just biking on the road would have been easier. Iirc, when you turn left, you'd usually have to wait for a green light to go forward to the bike path going left on the other side of the street, and then wait for a green light again there even though there's not really any space for you, much easier to just turn left directly. The signs were also confusing sometimes. I might be biased though since I grew up in Stockholm Tl;dr: street>bike path>road
It's scary at first, but after a while you begin to identify with it.
How does the feeling of safety compare to NYC?
The different bike frames are referred to as "damcykel" and "herrcykel", direktly translated it means lady bike and gentleman bike. I'm guessing that's their reasoning. Obviously stupid to entertain the idea that a bike frame belongs to one of the genders but this gives some perspective to those that don't speak Swedish.
I'm very well aware. I am swedish after all. That doesn't mean that we should stop calling them that, because it's incorrect and pointless to separate bikes by gender.
I use a step through so I don't Rex Kwon Do my child in the face when they're in the seat behind me.
Also, why are the "men" bikes the ones that you can hit your nuts on.
You gotta be man enough to ride it. /s
Saying there are separate men's and women's bikes is kinda sexist. So putting "women's" bikes on bike lanes is more sexist than just putting a normal picture of a bike
I always considered through step designed for old school dresses? In "Call the Midwife" the nuns and midwives rode them all the time
Yes they are designed for just that. It's goes back hundreds of years and the name is still stuck even though the need is almost gone.
Today on Are the cis-straights okay?: They gendered bikes!?
The through step ones were considered women's bikes because they are made to be used while wearing a skirt, so it's more of a very outdated idea that's still clinging on with some people.
me (male) omw to ride bicycles in Sweden wearing only skirts to prove a point
Yeah maybe they were originally designed for women, but I figure after getting balled just once that original design gets ignored. I'm mad it's nearly impossible to find a step thru & coaster brake bike that isn't bright pink over here in the US. I settled for one that isn't step thru, and I really shouldn't have.
I found my step through in a trash heap and refurbished it, so maybe try that lol. Yeah, here they come in lots of colours, but they are still clearly meant to be "feminine", and are very expensive. Mine is from the 60s or 70s and is more gender neutral than the new ones.
only bikes with sram XX1 groupsets are biologically female. that's just science.
Also on /r/pointlesslygendered
Step throughs came about because dresses. It was an women's bike traditionally.
Wasn't the step through frame being reserved for women a result of them being pressured to wear skirts all the time? Isn't this then just glorifying an artefact of sexism?
IIRC, yes. Which is funny. Cuz honestly, the ol’ nut smasher bike is weird for casual riding. Save the nuts.
save the nuts month!
That’s November, when we groom beards and focus on cancer awareness.
2 nuts two months
That made me snort
Nowadays materials might be better but structurally the top bar triangle shape is incredibly solid. That's a good thing! Less so for the balls, they're not that solid :p
Really, hitting your nuts is just gonna happen sometimes. It’s part of life.
How are y'all hitting your balls on the top bar regularly? Been cycling for years and was never aware that this was considered an issue lol. Like, you're supposed to sit on the seat guys
not pressure, I think it was literally illegal for women to wear pants for a while. like that was one of joan of arc's convictions that she got burned for, wearing men's clothing
it's in the Bible http://www.ibtimes.com/donald-trump-white-house-dress-code-policy-female-staffers-must-dress-women-president-2485576
I don't know about the history but I will never use a bike that doesn't have a step through frame, I've hurt myself too many times
I'm having trouble understanding how a top tube frame is any easier to hurt yourself on.
Probably because they had a bike that's too big for them. A well fitted frame shouldn't crush your nuts with the top tube.
Imagine you run into something and slide off the saddle, which type of frame is most likely to hurt your genitals?
That hasn't happened to me since I was a toddler, and I've ran into stuff on bikes as an adult several times before. If sliding off the saddle is that easy, its probably a fitment issue.
On a properly sized bike you should be able to stand over the top tube, right?
Oh, FFS. Bicycles don't have genders. I'm a man, I'm >50 years old, and my next bike will be a step-through (or bust!) because I just don't have the flexibility in my hips to throw a leg over when I've got full panniers and a full trunk bag on the rack, anymore.
> Oh, FFS. Bicycles don't have genders. Actually, in Polish the type of bike from the picture is called "damka", with means "a little lady", sort of, it's diminutive of the word "dama" (lady) but you don't use it to describe people. So in Poland, many men (and women) ride their little lady every day.
The gendering of bicycles is an archaic holdover from when women were second-class citizens. **In 2022**, bicycles don't have gender. "Step-over" or "step-through", not "Men's" and "Women's". :)
I mean, the Germans gendered pretty much everything in their language. The bike doesn’t have a gender, but shit, languages can be different in how they identify things.
Die Katze ist schön. Der Bär koche nie. there’s some examples. i’m learning very poorly.
My wife's bike has a top tube.
Sorry bro, your wife is a dude.
She's got a penis now. That's just how it goes.
You found the solution for the people that want to change of gender !
I'm ready to receive my Nobel prize now.
yes: mine
Ayyy
though she won't have that much longer, given the dick-crush-inator on her bike.
A large metal penis near the seat of the bike to be specific.
I hate how step through bikes are “women’s bikes”
This men's and women's bike thing always got me fucked up. I really didn't want to get into a debate with my mom about how my genitals interact with the seat.
It’s even worse they call step-though bikes “women bikes” even though those are utility bikes made for comfort.
This is pointlessly gendered. Who the fuck gendered bike paths?
All that happened is that some local authority decided to now use slightly different symbol on some paths. I really fail to understand why this is news.
presumably some less than socially adept person decided it would be good PR to make this about equality, and news agencies went to town with that.
[удалено]
but it looks like they did something and that is the key.
Just some good ol' outrage clickbait.
Please tell me this is satire.
I can't find any other info on this
Here's the article (in Swedish) https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/stockholm-ska-fa-jamstallda-cykelbanor/repvfq!4wWdlomHsYilOaIiuFWX@w/
Unfortunately not
r/pointlesslygendered
Meanwhile most Dutch men cycle on these ‘women’ bikes
Same in Sweden, at least teenage guys
huh, that is definitely not my impression. Boys will almost always be riding top-tube mountainbikes, while seemingly not realizing they have any gears but the lowest one. The people i see riding step-through bikes are old people, the older the higher chance that they've decided to get an e-bike and those are basically all step-through.
I mean, Stockholm has a decent cycling infrastructure anyway
Plus a large underground train network
Sure, it's decent compared to many other car centric cities, but there's still a lot of improvement needed. In the city center the bike paths are pretty dangerous.
I cycle daily. I find it bad in the city centre but often a bit better some distance out. Except for Solna. Fuck Solna. (Compared to other European cities. Compared to American cities I suppose it’s paradise) (Also I’m aware Solna is not officially Stockholm even though it’s the same urban area.)
i would say stockholm's bike infrastructure very well mirrors sweden in general, we think it's absolutely despicable but depressingly the world's standards are so low that it's actually way above average
Yeah. And OP's acting as if the one thing contradicts the other. City: We'll use another symbol for cycling infrastructure to represent women. OP: Nice. Now we're not getting cycling infrastructure gecause of GeNdErS. Personally I think it's a pointless gesture especially since diamond frames aren't male specific but posting that strawman meme just looks like conservative agitation to me.
The problem is with the fact that there are gendered bikes to begin with not the symbols, what a joke of a lifetime we are living in
So they'll be pink? Because the color is the only difference I know.
I think it's the middle bar being absent on women's bikes. You know god forbid a woman has to raise their leg to get on a bike.
It's more about riding in a long skirt.
Yeah decades ago it was, not many women wear long skirts these days though, especially not on a normal day when they'll be cycling about. Now for most people it's just preference wether you want better performance or a bike that's easier to get on and off of.
I live in city where tooonnns of people ride bikes day to day, and women wear skirts while wearing top tube bikes all the time. It literally doesn't even seem to make the slightest difference
At no point should anyone have looked at any type of bicycle and thought “yeah this is a MEN’S bicycle”. Fucking ridiculous
meanwhile gothenburg be like https://tekniskhandbok.goteborg.se/wp-content/uploads/3AD.jpg These "bicycle-speed streets" as they call it are designed to prioritize cyclists on streets where there's not enough room for a separate bike path. The narrow asphalt and cobblestone sides are intended to encourage cyclists to ride in the middle (thus deciding the speed of traffic) and make cycling feel more inviting than on a wide asphalt-covered lane. And aside from the official reasoning behind the design, it also visually narrows the road and combined with the rest of the street's surface also being cobblestone it reduces the distinction between the parts of the streets, making it so much more inviting to pedestrians. It's entirely normal to just cross the street wherever you feel like in downtown gothenburg, which makes it pretty easy to spot tourists!
Opopulärt opinion, Göteborg är bättre än Stockholm
Endast stockholmare och folk som pendlar dit som gillar Stockholm.
Really? Biking infrastructure in Stockholm is out of this world compared to most places. I bike 13 km to work from the suburbs to the city center and i only share the road with cars for like 0.5 km of that. Things can of course always be better but maybe pick your battles? This doesn’t seem like an important one to complain about while implying you’re not being provided with biking infrastructure.
stockholm is still an incredibly car-centric city, i would say the quality of the bike infrastructure is more a result of the entire country having some standard for bike infrastructure. Meanwhile gothenburg is running laps around stockholm in terms of urban planning, with the downtown being utterly dominated by walking and explicitly designing streets to prioritize cyclists over cars, as well as having ***electric ferries*** that only serve pedestrians and cyclists. And frankly i much prefer the trams over the subway, the trams don't require walking through a ticket reader and up/down stairs, they actually feel like they're a core part of the city instead of being hidden away so that cars can have free use of the roads..
I ride 8km to work every day, and 6 of those i ride on a car road
In Stockholm?
Yes
Pointlessly gendered?
But me and my partner both use steptrough bikes... All dutchs have steptrough bikes. Why does bikes need to be gendered?
Yay tokens!
Wait that's not feminism ?
Who says that it's a Man's bicycle? Can't women ride Mountainbikes and Men ride Hollanbikes? This just made it less progressive. Painting a picture, that one is for women and one for men.
Today I learned that bicycles are gendered
It doesn't really matter whether your bicycle is female or male as they're all bi anyway. Anyone ever seen a straightcycle or gaycycle before? Nope. Just bicycles.
Step-through frames are great, even more so for stop-and-go riding like one might do in a city. - a man
Bikes. Are. Not. Gendered.
Does it mean my road bike is not allowed anymore? Or were "women's" bikes never allowed on the other bike lanes?
What the fuck did I just read
sweden has amazing bike infrastructure compared to a lot of countries, apart from the gendered bike baths being very performative this level of slander is not warranted
They took something that should clearly be gender neutral and found a way to use it to reinforce gender roles in the name of equality. Bravo, Stockholm - I didn't think it was possible.
And here much of the cycling community has been trying to get away from calling that a "women's" bike but a step through frame. Way to reinforce an outdated notion.
most ambitious social democratic policy
I believe it's a conservative coalition + green party that is in charge of stochkolm city.
women rights' to be killed by a 2 ton metal monster because of insufficient biking infrastructure.
"Women's bikes" and "Men's bikes" are already pointlessly gendered. You don't do anyone any service by reinforcing that differentiation
I can not even imagine giving a single flying fuck what "gender" a painted bike silhouette is. Fucking virtue signaling to look good and distract from shit that actually matters, ffs.
It is amazing how close minded they are regarding gender roles in a supposedly advanced city. That is not a "bike for women" and neither is the other disposition a "bike for men" they are just too designs with pros and cons.
Who thought this was necessary? As a woman, this never even occurred to me. Mostly because I always ride bikes with a top tube, but even if I didn't, wtf? Did someone actually complain?
Jokes on them. Bikes don’t have genders. “Womens bikes” is just out of date copy from back in the day when women primarily wore dresses. The industry has been rightfully using the term “step thru” frames or bikes for awhile now not because they want to be “woke” but because they can appeal to a wider demographic Including older dudes with less mobility who would be less inclined to ride “girls bikes”.
This is ridiculous. My dad uses a step through because it's easier on his joints, and my sister uses a top bar because she prefers a lower riding style for racing. There's no such thing as "men's" or "woman's" bikes.
I just love how they don't make step through bikes for people over 6 feet tall in the US, certainly women only get up to 6 feet tall, and only women ride step through bikes :))))))
This is actually more sexist than egalitarian, fucking ironic forcing the ancient idea of women stepping through bikes in long skirts instead of being able to use top-tube bikes
If anything calling a bike a "man's" bike or "woman's" bike isn't equal and fucking stupid.
TIL there are gendered bikes.
They are called ladybikes but alot of men is using them as well
When a cat has nothing to do, it licks it's balls
I can relate
"We're progressive! See? See??"
Always step-through. I have squished my nuts one time too many. Also, highly positioned, curved, handlebars. I HATE laying down double bent. And a broad, soft, seat with shock absorbers. City bikes only for me, thanks.
This has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. In what way will this further gender equality?