[Closed] 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.

I agree with Matt ^^

Also, I had no idea about the use of the asterisk in trans* so took the chance to look it up. It's nice to learn.

It's a yes from me.

Good job.

I also did not know about the asterix, noted.

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

100% agree here, good work all round.

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.

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

Yes the knuckle draggers are out in force on FB

Meanwhile on Facebook, it’s clear how far the riding community has yet to come.

I was just about to comment on the FB comments.

This is a great initiative; well done to them and to STW for promoting it.

Awesome article, thanks for this Hannah.

I reported some of the comments on Facebook but they've  found that they 'don't go against their community standards'. I suppose that tells us all we need to know about Facebook.

Good article, thank you for promoting it.

This is great - FB is a sad place at the moment....

Ditto the above - great initiative and saddened to see the FB responses. Roll on more inclusivity!

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?

Classy first post.

Appropriate user name...

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?

I just think that discrimination is wrong.

Could I hazard a guess that you would also like to tell us that "All Live Matter".

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

@that-looks-sketchy. They offer courses for everyone (it’s just the are talking about the women’s etc one here), thus not discriminating.

Back under your bridge.

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?

Sketchy will be one of the FB-ers who decided spouting their nonsensical rubbish should not be restricted to FB...

I think that a person should be judged on the quality of their character

I’m certainly judging you on the quality of yours

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,,,

Can we all collectively agree to ignore that? ^ it will get bored and go away eventually

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.

Came here to say how utterly clueless and moronic those facebookers are who think promoting events for minorities is discrimination. And it seems to be their one unifying complaint that makes them puff up their feathers and feel all righteous!
Then I scrolled up. Brilliant.

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

Brilliantly put.

Well said jv

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.

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

Sadly not just on Facebook, from reports at a trans and intersex workshop I attended through work yesterday are anything to go by.

The silent majority need to speak up more and slap down those still living in the dark ages, though that may be doing a disservice to the dark ages.

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.

So gutted to see the response to this on FB. Such a different tone to the vast majority of forum commenters.

Over the last year I've spent a fair bit of time working on engagement projects with 'diverse' groups. It's been amazing and eye opening.

The best rebuttal I can think of to people that just can't seem to comprehend that this isn't discrimination, it's about seeking equity is to use a cartoon.

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.

Similarly we had online harrasment when we advertised 7 trainee Jobs for under 25s, targeted at under represented groups who work in outdoor education.

We too were told our (government funded) scheme was illegal under age discrimination and race discrimination.

I couldn't care less - we've the most amazing team on that project now, who have well earned the job, and I expect some of them will go on to continue to alter the near dominance of white, male, straight and Christian heritage workers in the outdoor industry.

STW and projects like this, keep it up and ignore the negativity.

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.

Sadly not just on Facebook

Yes, unfortunately some take reading shit like this online as validation for such views and then spout it out of their mouths in conversation.

It seems to me this is just a case of helping out people who need it - a good thing, in my view. What next, will retirement homes be classed as ageist?

As @matt_outandabout says, good on STW for reporting on this. It's always refreshing to hear some good news.

Why is this not a case of:

Pay for course
Learn
Apply for job

What am I missing?

@joshvegas & @reeksy spot on. @daffy totally agree, we (company I work for) love to "celebrate" diversity and inclusion internally but I have no idea what we actually do outside of the company. We make a lot of noise but do very little IMO.

Why is this not a case of:

Pay for course
Learn
Apply for job

What am I missing?

Because if you are the only person "like you" in a room, course, situation, whatever it can be really intimidating and put you off.

What am I missing?

The bit where you don’t get offered the job due to bias, either unconscious or conscious.

The idea is, as I understand it, to provide funding to train the underrepresented groups indentified. By training them they a. Encourage a more inclusive industry. And b. Feed the need for tran* women and non binary staff to run the women, non binary and trans* workshops the coop provide.

So what benefits would the coop get from training people who don't fit these definitions if they can't then be placed in the workshops the coop runs.

So just to be clear. I don't think you've quite grasped what they are trying to do. Train some people to run workshops for people who may feel excluded in normal conditions. Hopefully then gaining more confidence as numbers grow.

More people on bikes is good no?

I don’t think you’ve quite grasped what they are trying to do.

Perhaps because they haven't expressed it succinctly, and regardless of the ends it doesn't mean the means are either logical or appropriate necessarily?

Behind the cosy face of 'improving' representation, there are some extremely dodgy ideas lurking, but that goes for all this stuff.

I only asked that question seeking to expose these dodgy ideas, hence I probably won't get a straight answer because my framing was unflattering.

Lifted straight from the link on the first post.

These newly qualified mechanics will then form the backbone of Broken Spoke’s work with women, trans* and non-binary folk; supporting Beryl’s Night (their free monthly workshop sessions for women, trans* and non-binary folk), engaging in the other community programmes in our workshop, and running outreach with the wider community in Oxford.

How much more succinctly can they put it?

What “dodgy ideas” ?

Behind the cosy face of ‘improving’ representation, there are some extremely dodgy ideas lurking, but that goes for all this stuff.

Go on, I'll bite, what extremely dodgy ideas are lurking behind "all this stuff"?

How much more succinctly can they put it?

All that's being said there is that in order to discriminate they must discriminate. Hardly getting to the bottom of things.

Is that it?

Go on, I’ll bite, what extremely dodgy ideas are lurking behind “all this stuff”?

Some dodgy post-modern ideas concerning the nature of power, knowledge and reality if you're interested. That men (especially white men) form an oppressor class thanks to their place in the symbolic apparatus of cultural hegemony.