Funded cycle mechanics training for women, trans* and non-binary folk

This is a good thing.
Both the project itself and STW for using it’s platform to share the news.

It’s a yes from me.

Good job.

I also did not know about the asterix, noted.

This is great, I was showing a young lady at work who is pretty shy and falls under LGBT and this would have been good for her. She had a bad experience at a local bike shop once and was reluctant to go back to them and asked if I could show her some basic maintenance skills so she could maintain her bike herself. Even gave her some spare tools to help her out and now she’s confident in most of the basic stuff to keep her own bike going.

Yes the knuckle draggers are out in force on FB 😒

Awesome article, thanks for this Hannah.

This is great – FB is a sad place at the moment….

Serious Q – Given that STW Towers decided to block links to the Daily Mail, because they felt that it’s editorial policies were too much at odds with their corporate stance/culture, have they thought about pulling their Facebook presence, given that it’s been shown many times to not really GAF about what people post, and the comments under this article are just another example?

Spoken as a hypocrite who checks FB regularly, obviously.

Well it was nice while it lasted.

If you had read the article, even glanced at it… You’d maybe see why you are so very wrong?

Is it time for a “real name” policy on this forum? Or some other way of ensuring genuine users can chat without the fresh account troll for laughs pollution?

Well, it was nice while it lasted before it went the usual way down the STW drain.

Interesting Josh, so you appear to argue that discrimination on the basis of one’s gender or allocated skin colour is a positive move

Are you suggesting scholarships are discriminating to wealthy people?

The funding is to remove a barrier for a community that is underrepresented. Is there anything preventing you taking a training course in bike maintenance?

Sure thing bigot. You believe discrimination is good and I think it’s evil. You are entitled to believe that discrimination is good. That’s the beauty of free speech. I’ll not convince you that equality matters,it’s clear. It’simpossible to reason with the unreasonable…Chamberlain found that out the hard way. Discriminate and break the law as you will,,,

I’ll try once more sketchy.

This is not negative exclusion of anyone. It is the positive inclusion of a section of society that is often missing,not just in the shops but it general cycling the numbers are still very very white male. I have female friends and colleagues who have felt uncomfortable in bikes shops before while the shop keeper kept answering their questions to the male companion. Hell I’ve had to point out it wasn’t me buying the bloody bike and they should redirect their attention.

You are ofcourse entirely correct that people should be judged on their skills and abilities.

However if we just do that from now on How do you break down the engrained issues, if every shop is majority men how to you promote more women applying?

Ofcourse I might be totally off message. As someone who has a penis and feels like someone who has a penis and is attracted to people with vaginas that so far have felt that is their identity all these issues I have to open my ears to because I can only learn from others. I’ve never felt that I shouldn’t strive for what I want and I know sometimes competitors may get an external edge not available to me but so what? It’s not a personal attack on me it’s not a personal attack on people who look like me or feel like I do?

I think it’s ace, i think single-track is great and I believe it’s better for it’s mix of contributors than most magazines. I know nothing about any of their gender identies or sexual preferences it’s just a better feeling place than most and I want that everywhere.

One thing I do know about single-track employees. Never be behind Charlie in a morning queue for the portaloos at a single speed UK we vent.

Edit: that last post is a belter, I knew I was wasting my time typing that, ah well.

This is not negative exclusion of anyone. It is the positive inclusion of a section of society that is often missing

Brilliantly put.

Thank you for the supportive comments here. Meanwhile on Facebook, it’s clear how far the riding community has yet to come.

Facebook has become a proper cesspool. I wouldn’t pay attention to owt that goes on there.

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity is illegal in the UK. How can this particular discrimination be justified in law? Why can certain identities be discriminated against. I believe that this project is unlawful.

Another way to look at it is this scheme redresses existing discrimination, lots of groups are under represented in cycling and it’s related industries, put off (not unreasonably) by a somewhat male dominated culture. Are you going to deny that?

As a straight, white, middle-aged, middle class individual I don’t feel discriminated against, I very much doubt I would have trouble accessing any training for a role in the cycling industry or find my gender identity any sort of barrier to employment or participation, I already enjoy a defacto, discriminatory advantage in almost all areas of life.

Those who believe in actual equality look for ways to help raise everyone up to the same rights and privileges that often means looking for the underrepresented groups and making additional efforts to include and motivate them, not lazily defend an already skewed status quo with the pretense that we already enjoy “equal opportunity” when that is patently not true.

The approach is great. The title of the article (and others I’ve seen) is poor.

I’d imagine that many aren’t reading the article before commenting.

The title would have you believe that it’s just offering a boon to one disenfranchised group while excluding others. In reality, the paid-for-training is only a tiny fraction of what the approach is trying to do. It’s that bit that’s the most important, but the title focuses on the funding and the group, not in any way how it means to address the inequality in a systematic way.

We’ve had similar problems in Enginnering where women are under-represented. We promote women to management positions, to achieve equality at a career level, but never leverage those women and their achievements to encourage more women into aerospace, except within the company and by that point it’s too late, people made their choices a long time ago and women in engineering is still 10% (at most) of the workforce.

They need to be outside, engaged with universities (schools really) to encourage others by example. The above approach does exactly this. The exception in aerospace which proves the point was/is Grazzia Vittadini – she’s a great example of this. Highly skilled, highly competent, a great communicator and a great promoter.

This is not negative exclusion of anyone. It is the positive inclusion of a section of society that is often missing

Well said Josh. It should be this hard though should it. But. Idiots will be idiots.