Tokenism, exceptionalism and the comodification of women in skateboarding

The issue of participation of women and girls in skateboarding is contentious and not likely to be resolved soon - it’s also a reflection of wider society - and with a couple of high profile skaters (Vanessa Torres and Lacey Baker) calling out the industry on its sexism, along with the success of organisations like Girls Skate Network and Longboard Girls Crew, it’s probably time to talk about the elephant in the room.

Strangely this issue always seems to boil down to arguments about whether girl/women only sessions are sexist or not. Which is really strange because these kind of sessions are a symptom of the real issue - which is that skateboarding is not a friendly environment when you’re not a man.

Now because I know what is going to happen next like I’m reading it off a script, I’m not saying all men are terrible, I mainly skate with guys and they inspire me, help me out when things are bad and are generally an awesome bunch of people - this isn’t about individuals, it’s about Men, a distinct social class (and yes male supremacy and patriarchy are actually things). So if your initial reaction to my words is an angry proclamation of “Well I’m not like that”, turn off your computer, make a cup of tea and come back when you’ve calmed down.

Okay?

Feel better now?

The issue of getting women and girls involved in skateboarding is so full of nuance that I could probably write a book on it, and there is a lot more going on than girls and women being intimidated by the guys at the skatepark/session. I think it’s more interesting - and productive - to look at how the skate industry treats female pros and women in general. How many times have you seen a skate company present women in an overly sexualised way and as little more than an accessory to skateboarding? Often they aren’t even riders.

watch this and see what I'm talking about https://vimeo.com/146929050

The end of this video sums it up perfectly’ “What’s this got to do with skateboarding? Not Much”. The thing is, representation matters, and this kind of media isn’t unique (not even unique to skateboarding) and it sends a very distinct message that they are either there to look pretty, or some million to one exception to the rule. This shit-baggery is compounded if a company or brand has obviously sponsored a female skater because they’re attractive. I have heard lots of guys - from teenage boys to grown ass men - complain that some girl/woman “only got sponsored because she’s pretty”.

No shit Sherlock.

Lacey Baker talks about how the men who run the skate industry (I’m referring to it as the skatriarchy from now on) don’t judge women and girls on how well they skate but on how good they look. These same men will then pat themselves on the back for including a single woman on a skate team, as if that kind of tokenism does anything to actually inspire girls and women to skate. These token female skaters are then held as an exception to whatever lazy stereotype about women in skateboarding you can think of (poser, skater-dater, not a real skater etc), which can leave you feeling that if you can’t skate as well as the best female pros, that somehow you’re not good enough to call yourself a skateboarder at all. Sometimes it genuinely seems like guys get to be mediocre and still be told that skateboarding is for them, but when you’re not a man then even being one of the best isn’t always enough to get a seat at the table.

So to the point of all this, if the skatriarchy has created a space that is centered around and caters to the experiences of Men, where do non-men fit in? The answer is in the spaces we create for ourselves, from women only sessions to brands run by women for women. These spaces are important because they give us the chance to do our thing in an environment that isn’t subtly (and sometimes blatantly) telling us we don’t belong.

It’s relaxing, it’s freeing, it’s about knowing you won’t be the only woman at the park. Some women will only ever want to skate with other women, and that’s fine. Some of us, after building up the confidence are happy to skate with the guys, and that’s fine too. It takes a lot of entitlement to complain about these spaces and tell us that sexism doesn’t exist in skating because we’re all just skaters - a worthy sentiment, but just saying it doesn’t make it true - when I know plenty of women who do experience sexism in skateboarding.

If you’ve made it this far, and you’re a Man you might be sitting there in a bit of a defensive huff thinking “Well, what can I do about it?”.

Fortunately my friend, there’s plenty.

Firstly listen to non-men when they talk about how uncomfortable a space skateboarding can be sometimes, because if they’ve opened up to you, it means they trust you, and trust me that can be a big thing sometimes. Remember that our experiences are not universal - what doesn’t even register for one person, can make another feel completely unwelcome.

Support and encourage the non-men who skate with you - this can vary from coaching to just making sure they get runs when the parks busy. There’s a fine line between support and encouragement, and forcing people into doing something they’re not ready for - again this is where listening comes in.

Finally, let non-men have the spaces that we’ve created for ourselves. You literally have the rest of skateboarding catering for your needs, it’s petty as fuck to complain about the spaces non-men have created to centre what skateboarding means to us.

Skateboarding as a Liminal Space

I have spent most of my life in the boundary between the places whose rigid definitions I've failed to fit. It’s lonely growing up not knowing who or what you are. As you grow older you begin to unpick meanings and realise that the threshold is as much a real place as the ones either side of it. I began to accrete labels - dyke, lesbian, queer, trans, ace - and started meeting those fellow travellers in the void between the things society tells you are true, and it became less empty, but I’ve always existed between. The world refuses to make a space for me, so I made my own.

Skateboarding in its purest sense is one of these liminal spaces, balanced on a knife edge, trying to figure out whether it’s a sport or a calling. To those of us already living on the threshold between places, it offers the seductive ability to belong by not belonging - and no matter how corporate and sanctioned it becomes - it will, at some level, always speak to those of us looking for a way translate the spaces we exist in.

The simple act of seeing the potential for a spot - maybe doing any DIY that’s needed - creates the spot, carving out a space that is uniquely ours where before there was nothing. This is why that, no matter how toxic the masculinity that permeates the corporate skate world is, I’m drawn to skateboarding, because it reflects what it’s like to live in the world as a queer, non-binary grrrl. The space I have to be me, is the one I created in order to be me.

I doubt there will ever be a space for me in the corporate behemoth that skateboarding has become, I’m a non-man whose body is too queer for the men who built it and now run it, but I don’t care. I’ve found my space and you’ll never take it away from me.

*walks off humming the Firefly theme music*

Leticia Bufoni and the ESPN body issue

So unless you've been hiding under a rock, you'll have probably noticed that Leticia Bufoni posed naked for ESPNs body issue and the net it trying to decide if this is a good or a bad thing.

I'm going to put my cards straight on the table, my initial, visceral reaction to the pictures was one of dislike. This is because I'm a skater grrl, and for me it feels like they feed into the way women in board sports are sexualised and marketed to a predominantly male audience. However, when I went and looked at the body issue - well the pictures from it at least - I liked looking at the images, not in a titillating way, but just seeing myriad different ways a body could be athletic and powerful and beautiful. I realise beautiful is quite a loaded term, but there was something incredibly captivating about seeing all these different shapes of athletic body - especially when they were caught in sporting motion. Go and have a look and tell me I'm wrong. Clearly if I'm happy looking the naked bodies of female athletes in sports I don't care about, but I'm upset about Leticia Bufoni's pictures, there's something else going on.

I need to say that I've read comments pretty much slut shaming Letica Bufoni for doing this. This is not on. It's her body, her life and she can pose naked if she wants to... it's not even like it's massively out of context either, because that's the whole point of the bloody magazine. So stop with the slut shaming already because it ain't big or clever.

This is the point to start talking about objectification, and whether or not the Body Issue is guilty of this - and before someone dives in with "but the men are being objectified too", I'm well aware of that and don't particularly like it much either, however once a woman has been presented as a sexual object it can be hard to shake that off, whereas it doesn't seem to define men in quite the same way. Objectification is all about power and who has it - this comic explains it all very neatly. Now it gets messy and complicated when we're talking about professional athletes because part of your job as a sponsored pro is to rep the companies that sponsor you. I doubt that any of Letica's sponsors straight up told her that she "had" to do the body issue, because this is 2015 and ewwww - so she almost certainly had a choice and the ability to say no if she wanted to.

So far so good.

It gets complicated here because the Body Issue is a very high profile thing, it does drive advertising and that's kind of her job as a sponsored athlete. Do sponsored skaters have pressure to put out media, to compete, to win? Sure, being sponsored isn't a badge of merit, it's something you have to work hard to achieve and then put a lot of work into to keep. When that's how you make you're living, you're always going to consider how your actions affect your value and worth with a sponsor. Does that mean she was forced? No, but it does mean that the answer about how much of a choice she had is murky. Obviously this is purely speculative, I neither know Leticia nor am I a mind reader, and this is just based on stuff I've been told and experienced - Though my brief stint as a sponsored skater hardly set the world aflame.

Then we need to throw in the horrible truth that in the wider context of the world and society we live in, a naked women will be regarded as a sexual object and her public nudity will follow her and define her in a way it really doesn't for men, no matter how empowering the initial act was. This is because the world is a shitty place most of the time, and personally I can't wait till the thumb cats take over and we can get down to being ruled by our new feline overlings. They can't make as much of a hash of it as we have.

Jokes aside, public female nudity feeds male entitlement to women's bodies - and before someone dives in with #notallmen, I realise this, I'm using male as a label for a class of people who aren't women and not you personally - and I think this is going to follow her for the rest of her career. Whether it ends up being a good or a bad thing remains to be seen.

And it's still not her fault, so stop thinking it.

Team no Balls

I went to the Summer Swine Stomp freeride at Hog Hill recently (by recently I mean last july) - it was fun,the weather was good, there were a bunch of ladies skating the hill and generally the stoke was flowing in full effect. However something happened there that just niggles at my feminist soul - I was told I had balls for skating down the hill on my Rayne Phantom (basically an over sized skateboard). Now I let it slide for a number of reasons - I was having fun and didn't want to kill the vibe, it was unintentional, and because (despite everything you may have heard) feminism isn't about publicly shaming individuals; instead it's the case that we live in a world that normalises certain ways of thinking. We all feed and support that system unless we consciously check our privileges and language all the time, and feminism is merely a set of tools that allows us to do this.

Photo by Steven Cornish Photography

This is critical - I know the red mist often descends when I mention the 'F' word - but critique of the system of patriarchy that we live in is not a critique of you. So please take a few deep breaths, maybe have a cup of tea and then come back.

I don't hate you... No really, I don't.

Me "having balls" was most likely a comment and compliment on the fact I was skating the hill confidently on a board with a 19" wb... What can I say, I like wrongboarding. But having balls does not equal confidence any more than having (or being) a pussy equals being timid, doubtful, or apprehensive. Confidence is built up of many different things: experience, technique and attitude. If you put in the time, you learn good technique and you keep at it no matter how hard it seems, then you will get better. Any dangly things you may or may not have between your legs never come into it. As someone of the female persuasion it's actually a little bit insulting to brush aside the blood, skin and tears I've sacrificed to skaten over the years in order to gain that confidence, by saying it's about having balls. It needlessly genders a compliment, it says that my skating can only be good when it's considered to have attained some weird abstract of maleness. It may not be quite the slap in the face of "you skate like a guy", but it is firmly headed in that direction.

You may think this is unimportant, trivial even, but it does genuinely matter. Gendered compliments subtly reinforce male dominance of the space that is skateboarding, and indeed society in general. It's not about swapping one kind of gendered compliment for another, it's about realising how ridiculous they are in the first place. Generally women don't have balls (and most of those that do don't want them). If you happened to meet a trans skater and you told her she had balls, you would ruin her whole day - tell her she looks really confident doing what she's doing and she'll be stoked. There is a growing movement in the world of female skating to reclaim the label of "skates like a girl", not because we think it's better than skating like a guy - see comments about needlessly gendering stuff - but rather because as girls, when we skate, we skate like girls. Some girls shred, some don't - same goes for guys. Experience is gained through hard work and determination and is not gendered. Ever.

So to the point of this little diatribe. Please stop gendering compliments and insults, they demean and lessen the safe and welcoming space that skating should be. I have been told countless times that guy or girl skaters are just skaters, something I agree with completely, but instead of just saying it, make it true by living it. The language is there to say what we need without resorting to tired and damaging gender stereotypes. So, no more telling someone that they've got balls when what they really have is confidence, and no more calling your mate a pussy if they're bottling a trick.

Let's all keep skating awesome.

If you have read this far without rage throwing your cup of tea at you monitor, you may want to learn more about feminism and why it's important for everyone, so I've included some links to some feminism 101s. Enjoy.

https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/

http://www.derailingfordummies.com/

How to complement female skaters... A handy flowchart for getting things right.

I woke up this morning to an excellent article written by Steve Kong, it made me smile a lot and I think Steve may be one of my new favourite people.

In response to it, I've constructed a handy flow chart to help you compliment female skaters without ending up looking like a creep.

Because it's a bit hard to see that version, here's a link to a hi-rez version.

We're queer and we're here

Someone I know through face book and chat to about how awesome skating is raised a question recently... Where are the queer skaters and queer culture within skating? He'd just come out as queer to his skate friends and it had been a complete non event (rather like my experience of coming out as queer to my skate friends), and he was wondering why, if skaters are so open minded (and they are), isn't there a recognised queer culture in skating?

It's a good question... The are undoubtedly lots of queer skaters, and queer and skate culture both have roots in rebellious counter cultures where the freedom to express yourself was prized, so why do queer skaters, by and large, choose not to share that bit of themselves with the world?

At this point someone usually chimes in with the “someone's sexuality has no place in skating, skaters are skaters” argument. Which is great, except for the fact that saying something doesn't actually make it true. When sponsored queer skaters are asking where the rest of the queer skaters are - it is a problem... Not because queer skaters should have to broadcast the fact that they're queer, but simply because virtually no one has. There are some high profile, openly queer female skaters but I can't think of any equivalent guys. EDIT - I now know that there is at least one openly queer male pro in the longboarding world.

There is a huge problem with homophobia in skating, and it's very rarely addressed. You may think that throwing the term “gay” about when your buddy does something stupid or a bit lame is harmless, but it isn't. It subtly frames gay in the negative, and given that even in these supposedly enlightened times people are still struggling with coming out, being reminded that gay = wrong by a bunch of people who claim to be accepting of difference can be like a kick in the cunt. And don't get me started on using faggot as an insult because right now, somewhere in the world, someone is being beaten to death by people yelling that very word at them*. So just don't okay.

There is a macho culture that permeates skating, you know, the whole lifestyle thing of how long your last standie was, how fast you've been, how much skin you've sacrificed to skatan and how many beers you've shot gunned at the end of the day. Which is cool, a lot of skating can be like that, but when it gets packaged up and sold by big business as the entirety of the skating lifestyle it creates a toxic space where being perceived as anything other than some sort of hyper-bro stereotype is frowned upon. And because stereotypical bros are always straight, queer skaters get pushed aside. Life isn't that black and white though, how you act and project yourself has little relation to who you're attracted to, but there's this enduring and completely false belief that queer women are women who want to be guys and queer guys are guys who want to be women. And that all feeds into the way the patriarchy deems anything to do with women to somehow be lesser than men, so we end up in a situation where gay and faggot are used as put downs for guys who don't conform.

This is bullshit and we need to call time on it right now, because the “skaters are skaters” line should be true... who you're attracted to has no bearing on your ability to skate, just as your gender has no bearing on your ability to skate. But skaters, and the skate community, need to act in a way that makes this true, rather than just firing off the line when ever anyone tries to talk about it. So stop throwing gay and faggot around as insults, and call out your friends when they do it, because you never know who is listening. Make skating a space that is truly welcoming to anyone who wants to be a part of it.

As skaters we've spent far too long ignoring this issue, pretending that it doesn't exist. But people are ready to talk about it... This is just a start. Basically we're queer and we're here... actually we've always been here. But that really doesn't change anything so lets go skate.

*I have no way of determining if this is true but it probably is because the world can suck when you're queer.

Skate like a girl

Alicia Fillback just put her latest edit out and it's covered in awesome sauce. She knows how to skate down hills and does it in style. This is not a problem, like I said it's awesome and she's a huge inspiration for me as a skater. The Cook Your Own Damn Meals edit she did with Carmen Shafer is still one of my favourite skate videos of all time, and I the first time I watched it I remember just wanting to be able to skate like that. Two years on and I'm firmly moving towards that goal.

What I'm pissed about is someone on facebook, after watching the video trotted out the “she skates like a guy” line and meant it as a compliment. And it's a compliment that often comes from the mouths of guys who will tell you that gender has no place in skating because skaters are skaters.

Except when they're girls it seems.

I can't speak for Alicia, and what drives her passion for skating but what I do know is that she skates like someone who understands the form of DH sliding and has begun to master it. I also know that form isn't gendered, form is merely technique and anyone can learn technique given enough drive, determination and most importantly of all, time. I get that there aren't a whole lot of female riders who skate that way and people are used to only seeing guys skate that way, but that doesn't mean that understanding and mastering form is an exclusively male domain, or that any girl who understands and masters the form has to skate like a guy, or be one of the boys, or any other of the tired cliches that people trot out in order to do it. If skating truly is genderless then she skates like a skater, and if you do want to bring gender into it, then she skates like a girl, a girl who rips.

End of story.

Except there's more to the story... I think the whole skating like a guy stereotype of girls who shred can put off other girls who want to skate like that but don't really want to be seen as that tomboy skater chick. Yeah there are plenty of girls who are tomboy skater chicks (I'm one of them), but the fact that we are tomboys has nothing to do with the fact that we're skaters... Okay, maybe a bit because we do fit the whole stereotype, but we still don't skate like guys, because (shock, horror) we aren't guys. There's a whole lot of macho bullshit culture in skating, which I think comes from big companies trying to sell a life style to teenage boys, and saying someone skates like a girl is often used as a putdown (also calling things gay, but that's another issue). We need to stop this, skating like a girl is a good thing, especially when the skating is defined by the girls doing it. And you know what, once we've accepted that we'll actually be moving towards a place where skaters really are just skaters. 

And here's the video because it is amazing and everyone should watch it and be inspired, because Alicia Fillback is badass.


Blood Orange: Introducing Alicia Fillback from Blood Orange on Vimeo.

Skate don't Hate - Longboard Girls Crew and why it isn't sexist.

I'm a skater, I also happen to be a feminist; and no, the two things aren't mutually exclusive. The statement that “LGC is sexist”, is one that crops up far too often and the very fact that people feel able to make it actually highlights why we need LGC in the first place.

Here's why:

There is no such thing as reverse sexism. Period. There is no all pervasive system of matriarchy that marginalises men and privileges women just for being female... It just doesn't exist. Sure women can be nasty, intolerant and discriminatory towards individual men (just so you know, this is bad too), but without that all important matriarchy to back up these negative behaviours it's a bit like throwing up into the teeth of a gale. You end up stinking of vomit after it ends up straight back in your face.
Sadly there is such a thing as the patriarchy, a system so ingrained into our various cultures that it is all but invisible, and it does exist to marginalise women and their voices, and gives systemic privilege to men just because they're men.

Now before I go any further let me categorically state that longboarding is generally quite open minded and accepting. However, it doesn't exist outside of the rest of society (well at least not until the time where we all move to Cali, kick out all the non-skaters and secede from the union), so things that are part of wider culture are part of longboarding as well. This doesn't mean that longboarding is a reflection of some of the nastier aspects of sexism, and it doesn't mean that every guy out there is a hurtful pig, deliberately being sexist (or indeed the girls who think the same way are being deliberately hurtful... Yes women can be misogynistic too). Most of the sexism in longboarding is of the unthinking everyday kind that has just been normalised because if you don't intend to be sexist you can't be sexist, right?

Wrong!

Regardless of intent, something is sexist if it marginalises women's voices and ability. You may think that telling the lady shredder that comes out to some sessions with you is “...good, for a girl” is a compliment, but you're judging her based on her gender. If she rips, she rips and tell her... She may not be the best skater on the hill, but she will have put in the blood, sweat and tears to get to the level she's at, just like you have, so respect that.

Oh and on the subject of judging ability on gender, please refrain from bitching that a female skater was “...only sponsored because she's a girl”. This may actually be the truth, certainly in surfing female pros almost always fit the stereotypical image of the surfer babe, and as longboarding gets more commercial this may happen as well. Just because the sexism has benefited her, doesn't change the fact that it's sexism, if you have an issue with companies sponsoring girls whose ability to skate is eclipsed by their ability to look pretty, take it up with the companies, not the riders. Support brands who treat their female riders as riders rather than marketing opportunities.

Side note: Adverts for skate gear that needlessly objectify women are not legitimised if said company runs an advert that needlessly objectifies a guy. Both are wrong and that's why I won't buy Caliber trucks.

So where have we got so far? There's no such thing as reverse sexism, and not intending something to be sexist doesn't mean it isn't. So how does this tie in with Longboard Girls Crew, and why if we have LGC don't we have a longboard guys crew. Well the reason there isn't a guys crew is because it already exists, I like to call it the bro club and it's pretty much called all of longboarding. Now before the red mist descends and you wittily post a comment calling me a man hating, dyke bitch (to save time just email all your hateful bile to Idon'tGiveAFuck@TalkToTheHand.com), consider how many female skaters regularly turn up to the sessions you go too. Now consider how many guys turn up to skate, particularly to gnarly, high speed skids kind of sessions. I would be pleasantly surprised if in a group of say 30 skaters at a session more than 5 were girls. The fact that I went to a freeride at the start of September and out of nearly 140 riders I was the only girl kind of suggest that things need to change. Especially as everyone wanted to see more girls on the hill and having fun.

Everyone, unless you really are a hateful, misogynistic twat, wants to see more female riders out there, having fun and taking part, but we have a long way to go before we have parity. Heck, if we ever get to the point where a quarter of riders at an event are female we'll have improved things, and maybe LGC won't be as necessary as it is now. But until then it won't be going anywhere.  

Girls who shred

There has been a bit of an internet backlash today against Thrasher Magazine after the published an interview with Nyjah Huston... Specifically what he thinks about girls in skateboarding.

Yeah, it's horrific isn't it.

Now as a girl woman who shreds and has taken her fair share of bails, stacks and falls I have to say I find this pretty god damn offensive. Women do down hill because they think it's just like sidewalk surfing? 

Really?

Is my judgement somehow less because I'm female? Does my flighty female nature mean that the lessons I've learnt the hard way by hitting the road and earning my scars will be forgotten as soon as the road rash has healed? Of course not, we live in the 21st century rather than the 19th and the female half of the human race are generally considered to be more than capable of making their own damn minds up about what they want to do with their lives. And sometimes what we want to do with our lives is skateboarding, be it downhill, street, slalom or whatever... And you know what, we fucking rock doing it. 

I could go on, but I really don't think I have to, especially seeing as how the bit of the skate-verse that I inhabit has been incensed by the opinion expressed by Nyjah Huston, because it isn't skating. Skating doesn't care whether you male, female, gay, straight or whatever... Skating just cares about skating, having fun with your friends, smiling and the sheer joy that those little wheely planks bring into our lives.

  

Good for a Girl

Here's a question for any female skaters out there…have you ever been complimented on your skating to have the suffix "for a girl" screwed on the end? For me it rankles just a bit, which doesn't mean I want put on my man hating dyke hat, lace up my DMs and kick the offending complimenter, because it's almost always meant sincerely…it's just the unthinking and misguided misogyny behind it that gets me.

Yes guys…there's sexism in skating. 

Now, before I get tied up and burnt as an evil feminist witch at the next freeride I go to…this isn't an attack on any of the guys I skate with, because believe it or not I'm just as guilty of the kind of unthinking misogyny I'm talking about.

Let me explain… when you quite sincerely tell one of your many female skater friends that she is "good at skating, for a girl" you're judging her buy different standards. It's actually quite demeaning and a bit condescending, it kind of says that you think that the skater in question can never just be good… only good for a girl. Imagine if we all started saying this to skaters with red hair?

"Oh you're good at skating… for a ginger."

See what I mean? You wouldn't base your praise of a skater on the colour of their hair, so why do the same with their sex?

And what about my unthinking misogyny? Well at the recent Bristol board meeting Mark Short ended up holding an impromptu slide jam and I was the only girl skating the hill. When it came to giving out prizes a bit of me was hoping for something for being the only girl on the hill. Mark actually judged everyone skating on their ability rather than sex and the right people were awarded the prizes. I salute Mark, and I'll dedicate my next safety meeting to his wisdom, because the fact I didn't get any prize made me want to be a better skater. If I'd been recognised as being "good for a girl" it might have made me lazy, as it is I'm determined to up my game… not because I want to win lots of swag (though everyone loves free swag) but because when I skate a hill with a bunch of guys I want to be their equal. As things stand, that will never happen while people tack "for a girl" on the end of compliments.

So, do a skate… and stop judging girls (and gingers) by different standards.