Hi readers– remember Sunday, when I wrote about my love and extreme sappiness about the Boston Marathon? Well, I’m not alone in having strong feelings for all things having to do with this event. Witness the hullabaloo around the following signs put up recently in Boston by running shoe companies. Here’s one advertisement ill-advisedly run by a company that rhymes with “Mikey”:
Red sign saying “Runners Welcome. Walkers Tolerated,” Really, Nike? For shame.
Bostonians and visitors alike were feeling serious consternation and not keeping quiet about it. Yes, the Boston marathon requires pretty ambitious qualifying times (e.g. 3 hours for men ages 35-39 and 3:30 for same-aged women). But lots of people who enter are raising money for charities, so their finishing times are much longer.
Also, those who are not runners and who complete the race in wheelchairs or in cooperation with others on dual teams were also mentioned in comments. Don’t they count, Nike?
After realizing their bonehead mistake, Nike made this tepid statement of non-apology:
“We want more people to feel welcome in running – no matter their pace, experience, or the distance. During race week in Boston, we put up a series of signs to encourage runners. One of them missed the mark.”
Ya think?
Then their corporate sign-makers got to work and put up this more contrite version:
The new Nike sign, saying”Boston will always remind you, movement is what matters.” hmph.
Other shoe companies were not unaware of Nike’s gaffe. A company whose name rhymes with “basics” put this sign up in short order:
Purple-bluish sign saying “Runner, Walkers. All welcome. Move your body, move your mind.”
And that’s not all. The shoe company Altra put out an ad that led with “Run. Walk. Crawl,” and captioned a social post, “Go where you’re celebrated. Not where you’re tolerated.” Yes, I know that this is corporate piling-on for the purpose of rearranging market shares. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it, right?
Congratulations to all those who entered the Boston Marathon and who completed it, regardless of mode. And speaking of signs, if any of these corporate folks need some tips, asking the people at the Wellesley scream tunnel for advice. Here are a few of my favorites. Enjoy…
Signs saying “blink twice if you need Dunkin'”, among other things.
My friend Susan Simmons in British Columbia has a passion for marathon open water swimming and for coaching swimmers with disabilities.
She and her swimmers have done some amazing things over the years, but today marks a new step.
The Spirit Orcas, Canada’s only inclusive Masters “para” swim club, is competing at a Masters Swim Association of British Columbia (MSABC) swim meet in Nanaimo today. Five adult swimmers with intellectual and physical disabilities are set to compete amongst neurotypical and able-bodied swimmers in several events.
The Spirit Orcas, many of whom have their roots in Special Olympics, formed a swim club last year when British Columbia’s only para swim club halted its program. To promote inclusion in sport, the club members opted to take the bold step of registering as a Masters rather than para or “disabled”.
The Spirit Orcas have become well known for their open water achievements, including their relay swims in the Great Bear Rainforest and an 80km staged around Victoria’s peninsula. The swim meet in Nanaimo, however, is their first official competition outside the disability community.
As Susan says “It is only when we compete in the same spaces with each other that we have achieved inclusion”.
Maria, Drew, Melisa and Dixon, all members of the Spirit Orcas, prepare for a relay
Good luck to everyone! I hope you have a great time.
I have never seen myself as a “gym person.” Long before I developed the chronic disability trifecta of rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and degenerative disc disease, this was not a place where I felt at home. I have long been uncomfortable with my body – size and type – and being in a gym seemed to be a form of public exposure.
This, it must be admitted, is hypocrisy of the highest order. For most of my career – over 30 years – I have ensured that the universities where I worked held sessions for those who might feel uncomfortable in a communal gym environment. I have run numerous workshops on respecting and honouring all body shapes, sizes and weights. All that time, and I have never admitted this in such a public forum, I have hated how I looked.
At the same time, I was doing numerous rounds of physical therapy, which often seemed indistinguishable from what people might be doing in the gym. I remember working on various pieces of equipment and making this comment. The physio said, “It is exactly what you would do if you were paying for Pilates classes.”
In my first decades, I walked everywhere, and at a rapid pace. My only previous gym membership was to use an indoor track for walking in the winter. In May 2021, I became a dog parent for the first time, to rescue husky Atlas. He gets me walking about 13,000 steps on a weekday (I work from home) and up to 20,000 on the weekends. This has been helpful for my health generally but has also led to several injuries requiring more physical therapy. After the last one – a partially torn rotator cuff caused by slipping on the ice on one of those Atlas walks – I began to wonder whether I should be doing something to strengthen my body.
However, searching for a trainer and gym seemed a scary proposition. Fortunately, before I got far in my search, I saw a Facebook notice from a colleague in another part of my life.
This seemed perfect timing – someone who met all my exacting criteria had space. Without giving myself time to doubt, I made contact. When I asked my rheumatologist if I could try strength and conditioning classes instead of the physical therapy he was recommending for yet another joint issue, he looked somewhat surprised but said as long as I was sure to do stretching beforehand and be careful to stop if there was pain.
So, in September I made my first entrance into a gym as a client, entering into this new setting with some trepidation in spite of my trust in trainer Laura. It was not dissimilar to walking into any new culture – ignorant of the purpose of the many machines and sure I wasn’t going to be able to make use of them.
However, very quickly, I was immersed in my new environment, learning the language thrown around casually – Romanian Deadlifts, Dead Bugs, Superman, Plank, Bird Dog, Leg Press, Leg Extension. Bands, Around the World, Kettlebell Farmer’s Carry and so on. It must be said that many of these challenge my mind-body coordination but I have managed to complete all – increasing numbers and weights each class.
I find most classes hard work and it would be easy to give up, but I try to make it a point to never stop unless it is clear that I am moving into the area of disease pain rather than exercise pain. This is the type of distinction for which there must be absolute trust with the trainer. Laura will listen to what is happening with my body and suggest variations on the exercise, or a different one. I appreciate that she doesn’t let me off completely but takes the risk to my health seriously.
There are obvious similarities with physical therapy – including working toward achieving the same goal of strengthening body parts and enhancing quality of life. However, I find upper body, core and leg training far more holistic than physical therapy on individual body parts. I get through both in a similar manner -much as I cope with painful medical procedures – muttering in my head, “It will soon be over and things will be better.”
And I do feel better. For the first time, I care less about how my body looks and more about gaining strength and capacity that will be of assistance as diseases progress.
So, what make a gym comfortable for me, a 60-year-old British South Asian Canadian woman living with disabilities?
This gym is small, located in a local strip mall. In large gyms I have visited, or been on the periphery of, the feeling of entering an alien culture has always been reinforced. The spaces are often cavernous, with sound echoing (Tinnitus is a side-effect of my diseases so this is always disconcerting), people moving from machine to machine, none of which I know the purpose of or how they are used. In addition, the majority of those present seem in great shape already. I rarely see the very fit but larger physique individuals I know exist. There is also often a notable lack of clothing which enhances the feelings of inadequacy for someone already concerned about their body. As I mentioned, it is a small gym. In my timeslot, there are never more than three individuals working with different trainers – we are all at very different fitness levels. Still, there is no air of competition, something I perceive in other gyms I have been in.
The trainer’s description of herself is not hyperbole and speaks to what makes me so comfortable to enter the space, as well as sometimes fail in the space:
Laura has been a beginner in the gym. She’s been the only woman in a gym. She’s had aggressive coaches and trainers who made assumptions (over-estimating and under-estimating) about what she could or could not do. She’s felt unwelcome and uncomfortable, and she’s been made to feel unwelcome and uncomfortable.
And she doesn’t want any of that for you.
Training with Laura means training with a trauma-informed coach in a supportive environment where she meets you where you are in your health and fitness journey. It means being encouraged to try new things and do more while being listened to about what you/your body can do that day. It means learning that you’re stronger than you know while being motivated by a compassionate and knowledgeable coach/trainer.
So, this January I don’t need any resolution (not that I make them) to keep me going to the gym. At least to this gym to work with this trainer!
Leela MadhavaRau is the owner of LMR Human Rights and Equity Consulting. She has spent her working life in the field of equity and inclusion, working at universities in both Canada and the United States. Her academic background is in Social Anthropology, with a specific focus on the transmission of culture across time and space. Her degrees are from McGill and the University of Cambridge. She has lived a life between cultures and countries, one of the few multiracial children born in 1960’s London (UK). Leela immigrated with her family to Canada in the 1970’s when “Where are you from” was one of the most common questions. Her career has been one of working to create dialogue; wanting all of us to be able to maintain curiosity and be independent thinkers. This responsibility has been inculcated in her four children, now ages 24 through 31. She adopted her Siberian Husky, Atlas, in May 2021 and her life hasn’t been the same since!
But the thing is I can ride a bike. I just can’t walk anywhere without my cane. Don’t worry. It’s not my left knee that’s the issue. It’s happily replaced and rehabbed. Mostly, some stiffness aside, it’s working fine. But my right knee is in tough shape. It’s painful, not particularly stable and not happy bearing weight while walking.
Now if I were only going bike riding it would be fine. If I stop somewhere I can even use the bike as an assistive device while walking. The issue is if I’m going somewhere with my bike where I need to walk around indoors, say my office. I guess I could leave a cane there. But what about shopping inside?
I think I need to carry the cane with me. I might get a collapsible one for my backpack but I like the idea of being a cyclist who is visibly in need of walking assistance. See ‘A rolling walking stick’ to find out more about cycling as a way of getting about for people with disabilties.
“In the context of an ageing global population, mobility experts are increasingly seeing cycling as a way to help people with disabilities move around cities independently. A bike can act as a “rolling walking stick”; yet looking at its owner you wouldn’t know they had a disability: around 40% of disabled cyclists simply use a regular two-wheeled bike. For two out of three disabled cyclists, riding a bike is easier than walking, easing joint strain, aiding balance and relieving breathing difficulties. According to recent research by Transport for London, 78% of disabled people are able to cycle, while 15% sometimes use a bike to get around.”
There are some great photos here on the Cycle Chic blog of people riding while carrying various assistive devices.
Photo from Scopio. A bike’s rear wheel in front of bright leaves.
Image description: Book cover, Ivanka Trump: Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success
In my last post, I argued that beauty culture, which is supported by beautyism (a preference for “beautiful bodies”), is an artefact of ableism eugenics. In this post, I will explain why I think that choice feminism supports this ableist system. Choice feminism treats women’s choices as inherently justified and politically acceptable. If women choose to cosmetically alter their appearance, this is nobody’s business but their own. There are two main problems with this view.
First, choice feminism ignores the intersectionality inherent in the category “women.” It is patently false that women’s choices cannot be criticized as racist, heteronormative, ableist, and oppressive in other ways. Nondisabled white women, in particular, are complicit in the prevailing system of white-supremacist eugenics, because their choices routinely contribute to this system of oppression. Choice feminism shields privileged women from accountability for their ableist preferences and values. It says that women should be allowed to fear and scorn disabled (black, fat) bodies with impunity from judgment. In other words, choice feminism denies the force of the critique from Black, queer, and disabled feminists (as outlined in my last post), that the beauty industry promotes a white, thin, nondisabled appearance, and people who use cosmetic products to achieve this look are participating in a system of able-bodied privilege.
Second, choice feminism treats beautyism as a purely personal and private choice as opposed to a response to a system of oppression that compels obedience and submission. Choice feminism, that is, gets things backwards. Beauty culture isn’t the outcome of many private consumer choices, but rather a political economy that sells able-bodiedness as the onlyreasonable choice. As Robert McRuer puts it, able-bodiedness is “compulsory” in the sense that it is a condition of being seen as normal, but “compulsion is here produced and covered over with the appearance of choice…, mystifying a system in which there actually is no choice.” Choice feminism papers over the system of compulsory able-bodiedness that demands physical conformity from everyone. When women participate in this system, they are contributing to the politics of eugenics. Their choices are not independent of this system, but integral parts of it.
Having said this, it’s important to recognize that we can and should resist beauty culture. But in order to do this, we need to do two things. First, we have to admit that beauty culture is a system of oppression that stigmatizes and eliminates socially disvalued traits, which are labeled as disabilities. Second, we have to recognize that ableism, racism, fatphobia, and other prejudices intersect with each other and contribute to a eugenics culture. In this culture, being “beautiful” simply means being able-bodied, and being able-bodied overlaps with being white and gender-conforming. Having these traits confers social capital and status. Beautyism, then, is a pillar of ableist eugenics in that it selects and favors these traits. It is not a “mere preference” that consumers happen to have. It is a component part of a system of ableist eugenics that punishes and eliminates disability. Choice feminism mystifies this system by denying that women’s choices have political import. It prevents us from criticizing women’s ableist choices.
Bio:
Mich Ciurria is a queer, disabled philosopher who teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her/their research interests include moral psychology, Marxist feminism, and critical disability theory. She/they is the author of An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility (Routledge) and a regular contributor to the blog BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
I recently came across this article on Vice.com asking filmmakers to “stop making hot actors play normal people.” I think that this is a real problem but not for the reasons most people assume. Instead, I think that mainstream beauty culture – which encompasses Hollywood cinema – is structured by beautyism, by which I mean a prejudice in favor of “beautiful” bodies and against “ugly” bodies. And beautyism overlaps with racism, heteronormativity, and, above all, ableism.
More specifically, beautyism is part of a eugenics culture that favors white, gender-conforming, nondisabled bodies, the kinds of bodies preferred by eugenicists throughout history. Indeed, disability is partly defined as white and gender-conforming.
Yet few people seem to notice this, even in feminist spaces where one would expect to find such critiques. I believe that this is largely because of the prevalence of “choice feminism,” an ideology that treats women’s choices as “[inherently] justified and always politically acceptable.” In other words, choice feminism holds that we should not critique women’s choices, no matter how problematic they may be.
Here, I want to debunk choice feminism and argue that beautyism promotes a eugenics society. I will do this in two parts. In the first part, I will explain why I think that beautyism is a component part of eugenics. This argument is supported by critical disability feminism. In the second part, I will unpack why choice feminism not only ignores these critiques, but actively silences them by presenting women’s choices as private matters that are beyond reproach.
Beautyism as ableist eugenics
First, let me explain why I think that beautyism is a form of ableism. Beautyism is exemplified in Hollywood’s preference for “beautiful” actors, as well as ordinary people’s attempts to live up to Hollywood’s standard of beauty. Beautism, as such, is an institutionalized preference for “beautiful bodies.” This preference picks out and favors certain traits over others. Which traits?
Above all, beautyism selects for able-bodiedness. It favors bodies that are “normal” and “healthy,” bodies with two arms, two legs, a symmetrical face, an athletic build, and other marker of able-bodiedness. In contrast, disabled bodies are seen as abnormal, freakish, and (hence) ugly.
Asymmetrical bodies, paralyzed bodies, amputated bodies – in general, disabled bodies – are “ugly” because they are not “normal” or “healthy,” much less ideal. But normalcy and health are social constructs, not natural or “prediscursive” states of affairs (to use Foucault’s term). A “normal” body is thought of as a nondisabled body only because of contingent historical and political circumstances that conflate “normal” and “able.”
These associations can and should be resisted. But to change them, we need to understand their origins in industrial capitalism, and their ongoing role in hierarchies of power and domination.
Disability historians have shown how disability came to be seen as ugly, freakish, and profane in the wake of the industrial revolution. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson traces the social construction of disability as deviancy by contrasting freak shows against beauty pageants circa 1860-1920.
Freak shows displayed disabled bodies under the guise of “armless wonders,” “Siamese twins,” “fat men,” “bearded women,” “spotted boys” (with vitiligo), and so on. In contrast, beauty pageants showcased white, thin, gender-conforming women. These two spectacles helped to solidify the notion of disability as ugly and freakish on the one hand, and able-bodiedness as beautiful and normal on the other hand. These opposing contexts also illuminate the associations between disability, blackness, queerness, and gender-variance, as opposed to able-bodiedness, whiteness, straightness, and gender-conformity.
Historically, disvalued traits of all kinds were treated as disabling conditions, and were in fact disabling in the sense that having these traits would often result in socioeconomic exclusions that could both cause disablement (due to injury and neglect) and position one as disabled (marginalized, poor).
Sarah F. Rose corroborates this analysis by tracing the source of disability circa 1840-1930 to the exclusion of non-standard bodies from the economy in the wake of the industrial revolution. Newly mechanized industries demanded bodies that could keep pace with the new machinery. Hence, non-interchangeable bodies were, for the first time, seen and treated as disabled (i.e., disposable). At this time, Black, feminine, and gender-nonconforming bodies were disproportionally disabled because they were relegated to the most disabling industries (e.g., mining, handling toxic chemicals), which solidified associations between Blackness, femininity, and disablement.
These groups were then forced onto welfare and private aid, which didn’t cover cost the cost of living. Meanwhile, white union workers were protected from disabling jobs by labor laws and collective bargaining, which ensured better working conditions, and entrenched the relation between able-bodiedness and white masculinity. In this way, disability was raced and gendered as a result of capitalist labor relations and social policies.
Sabrina Springs adds a further layer of analysis to this critique by explaining how diet culture, and beauty culture in general, emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries in response to white people’s fear of the Black body. She describes how Blackness was constructed in opposition to the ideal of Whiteness, as uncivilized, fat, unhealthy, and ugly. 19th-Century scholars wrote of “Black savages” as “stout,” “corpulent” and “excessively fleshy.” They particularly targeted Black women as exemplars of fatness, laziness, and poor hygiene – figures to be adjured by “civilized white ladies.” This racial ideology mobilized white women to invest in diet and beauty products in an effort to avoid traits associated with Blackness, particularly fatness and disability. This ideology also reinforced the notion of disability as a feature of fat, Black bodies.
These three analyses converge in conceptualizing ugliness as a social construct with roots in eugenics, a system of oppression that conflates Blackness, queerness, and disability, and punishes disability as such. While these critiques are historical in nature, they are just as relevant today as they were 200 years ago. We still live in a compulsory beauty regime that seeks to eliminate disability in all its forms. Today, people invest more than ever in diet and beauty routines that promise thinness, pale skin, a youthful appearance, and other markers of able-bodiedness. The beauty industry is a multi-billion-dollar racket that continues to capitalize on our fear of the disabled-Black-fat-ugly body, leading to an ever-shrinking range of acceptable bodies.
As Jia Tolentino puts it, social media is fueling the “emergence… of a single, cyborgian face,” one that is young, thin, and “distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic.” The more we invest in the beauty industry, the faster we approach a Gattaca-type society in which biological diversity is reviled and reduced. Note that in Gattaca, everyone is miserable – not only the genetically-unmodified “invalids,” but also the gene-edited “valids,” who feel that they can never live up to their genetic destinies or meet each other’s expectations. How much longer until scientists start using gene-editing technologies to create “beautiful” designer babies? This is the “brave new world” that Aldous Huxley warned us about, and it is already well underway with the current use of fillers, injections, surgeries, and other technologies used to erase disability. Gene-editing tools will allow parents to ensure their children’s genetic sameness at birth.
Gattaca, movie cover
We need to intervene now if we want to prevent a slippery slope into an even more dystopian future. Scientific advances are already allowing people to use more invasive techniques to eliminate markers of disability and achieve a more homogeneous (boring and elitist) society. If we want to avoid Huxley’s prediction, we need to recognize beautyism as a produce of racial-patriarchal-capitalist eugenics, a system that abjures disability and demands bodily conformity.
Bio:
Mich Ciurria is a queer, disabled philosopher who teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her/their research interests include moral psychology, Marxist feminism, and critical disability theory. She/they is the author of An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility (Routledge) and a regular contributor to the blog BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
This post has a lot of different things crammed into it, kind of like an average December day. I tried to make them into a somewhat coherent whole but I’m not sure it worked. Let’s roll with it anyway.
On Day 3 of her 2020 Wellness Calendar, Martha telling us to Remember to Eat. This is another one of the basic that we often let slide during this busy month. We don’t feel like we have time to sit down for a proper meal so we just grab a snack and the next thing we’re cranky and running on empty. While I get that this kind of thing will happen from time to time, please do what you can to prepare in advance. That might look like making a plan about when you will take downtime for meals or it might look like planning for something quick to eat while you are on the run.
Speaking of all the busyness of the month ahead, one of the ways I’d like you to create space for yourself today is by ditching something from your to do list.
I know that sounds like heresy when there is SoVeryMuch to do but that’s exactly why it is a good idea.
Have a look at your to do list -whether that is on paper, on a screen, or in your head and turn your attention either to the list of stuff that you will do ‘if I have time’ or to anything on your list that you are absolutely dreading.
I would like you to ditch (or at least change) one of those things.
Yes, decide right now that you are not going to do it.
If it is something on your ‘if I have time’ list, then you will be able to create a little extra quiet in your brain. You will have one less thing that can float up to fill any downtime you are trying to create for yourself. And you will feel better about not doing it if it is a decision instead of a lack of time.
If it is something that you are dreading but that you really feel needs to be done, I’m wondering if you might be able to pass it on to someone else. Could there be someone in your life who would happily take that on – maybe not exactly in the same way you do but that’s fine too. Perhaps there’s someone you can pay to do it. Maybe you can trade disagreeable tasks with someone else. Or, maybe the task itself can be changed, reduced, or reshaped to make it less dreadful.
And, I realize that in one of the paragraphs above I told you to add something to your to do list (plan for your meals) and then immediately afterwards I told you to ditch something from your list. I stand by that apparent contradiction.
Adding things to your to do list that increase your well-being and your ability to take good care of yourself are more likely to reduce your stress than increase it. Taking good care of yourself increases your capacity to enjoy the rest of the preparations that you choose to include in your month and to keep the things you *must* do in perspective.
When I prepared last year’s Making Space posts I tried to include videos of people with a range of body types and abilities. I was moderately successful but I am determined to improve things for this year.
Since today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities I wanted to be sure to be open about my intention to be inclusive and to invite anyone who reads this to share any videos that they find useful. I don’t always know what search terms to use and I may be missing excellent videos because my vocabulary is limited.
These Making Space posts are not exactly the forum for an in-depth discussion of these issues but since I have your attention, I wanted you to know that the theme for this year’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities is “Transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world.”
I don’t think that my posts here are at all part of that sort of broad change but hopefully I can at least raise some awareness about today and give some of my readers something to think about.
I’ll be the first to admit that I know very little about disability activism but some things things I do know are 1) every person on earth has the right to live with dignity 2) change depends on listening to those with lived experience 3) any practice, policy, or accommodation that increases accessibility, diversity, and inclusion is a good thing for everyone who makes use of the service/visits the building/ participates in the activity – an inclusive world is a better world 4) inclusive practices are not about catering to anyone or providing special treatment, they are about creating a more just world.
And I think we can all be part of that change by seeking more just and equitable practices in our organizations, workplaces, and daily lives.
Okay, back to the stated purpose of the Making Space 2022 posts: short workouts and meditations to help create space for yourself on your to do list!
A video entitled ‘7 Minute – No Equipment Workout – Ella’s Wheelchair Workout- Video 40’ from Ella Beaumont, she is wearing a orange tank top, has her hair pulled back in a ponytail and she is in her wheelchair in her living room. Behind her is a couch lined with multi-coloured pillows and a bookshelf filled with books and knick-knacks.
If you’re not feeling up to a workout today, perhaps this meditation from Headspace might be just the thing.
A video from the Headspace YouTube channel called ‘Feeling Overwhelmed? Try This Quick Meditation.’ The still image shows an orange rectangle in the upper left corner that encloses the word ‘Meditation:’ in white and blue text below that reads ‘Feeling Overwhelmed SOS’ on the right side of the screen is a cartoon image of an orange bucket that is overflowing with drops of blue liquid falling from the side into a blue puddle below.
However you choose to take good care of yourself today, I wish you ease in the process.
So the bike rally is over and all we’re left with is a giant pile of dirty laundry… so much laundry.
We’re still waking at 6 am hungry but there’s no breakfast waiting for us.
Also, our bikes are on trucks heading home to Toronto.
Yes, we have lots of wonderful memories. See here’s me bike dancing waiting for the final stretch into Montreal.
Sam bike dancing
But the day after the rally isn’t easy. But it’s especially not easy if like me you can’t walk very far at all. Yes, I can ride my bike from Toronto to Montreal but my knee is in such tough shape that I struggle to walk.
I had a miserable walk to breakfast with Sarah when Sarah spotted the Bixi bike stand. Yes, our bikes might be on trucks but we could still ride!
Breakfast was delicious and after we biked over to Bota Bota, the spa on a boat and soaked in tubs of various temperatures.
I love riding the Bixis. Mina is the Bixi Queen of Montreal but I feel like honorary visiting royalty. No helmet, regular clothes, no clip in shoes, a bike that weighs at least twice as much as my road bike, and it’s a totally different cycling experience than the rally. Not zoom, zoom more cruise, cruise.
They’re fun. But for me they’re also very much necessary. Another reminder that safe cycling is a disability rights issue. I really struggle with walking any distance these days but I love cruising around the city on the Bixis.
The past twelve months of my life have been overflowing with adventures and exciting changes. In May 2021, I began to realize that my beloved London, Ontario community would not be my home forever. But I wasn’t sure what my next steps would look like.
In late August, I hopped on my trusty pedelec (pedal electric assist cycle) loaded with camping supplies and headed north along Lake Huron. At that time I assumed I’d be back in London by November or December, but had no plans set in stone.
In mid-October, I was biking from Wikwemikong to Manitowaning when I snapped a milestone photo showing 1200km on my trip odometer. Although I continued on to Kagawong & Ice Lakes afterwards via a bus-bike combo, in many ways it marked the end (or at least nearly the end) of my first bike camping adventure.
A week later I was supposed to catch the last ferry of the season back to Tobermory… but I didn’t want to leave. In the short time I’d been on Manitoulin, I had already begun to feel a sense of belonging. Community care, breathtaking beauty, and changing scenery around every corner make Manitoulin a place unlike any other that I came across in my travels.
Several weeks of stealth bike camping increased my comfort with making decisions based on rapidly changing contexts, rather than trying to plan everything in advance. Manitoulin feels like where I need to be during this season of my life. So I took a leap and unexpectedly moved to Northern Ontario via bike camping!
This December sunset bay photo feels like a warm winter hug! To the left, a few trees are silhouetted against a pastel pink sky. A couple islands can be seen on the horizon line. A thin row of rocks poke through ice which reflects the sky near the horizon, but is covered with snow closer to the shore line. The shore has patches of snow interspersed with sand and tufts of grass. On the left side of the foreground is the corner of a weather worn wooden fence, with tall dried grass spilling out to the right and gradually thinning out. Despite the busyness of this photo, it somehow feels inviting.
As a disabled cyclist, I used to think bike touring was impossible. Most of the time when I hear/read about people bike touring, they’re riding 80-100km/day and make it seem like no big deal. That’s not currently something I’m capable of, but a few years ago – even with e-assist – riding 25km was a shocking accomplishment for me.
Last summer I rode 40km round trip to visit my Grandpa. Yes, I took a rest for lunch. Yes, I was exhausted before I got home. BUT it also encouraged me to dream bigger.
Soon after that a close friend went on a weekend bike tour… and I was super jealous. This spring a bunch of us in the local WTF (Women Trans Femme) Bike group chatted about the idea of stealth camping to make bike touring accessible with shorter distances… and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
So I’ve quietly been planning my first solo bike tour… scouring the map to estimate manageable distances & factor in spots to charge batteries (mine & my bike’s). I leave one week today… and I can’t wait! Shorter distances & e-assist are gonna make this an amazing adventure!
My first few nights are planned, but I’ve got no plans after Iverhuron Provincial Park until I reach Little Current. So hit me up with your ideas! I’m aiming for 40-60km/day. With a full load at max assistance I’m guessing my battery charge will only go for 40km, so longer days will require a mid-day charge somewhere. In order of affordability + security I’m aiming for: friend’s backyards/Warm Showers, stealth camping/Crown Land, Hip Camp, and lastly traditional camp sites.
Oh yeah… I’ve also never gone camping on my own… or really at all since I was a teenager… so it’s going to be a HUGE learning curve! Apparently when I do something I go all in…
Here’s to trying new things, troubleshooting mishaps (because that’s going to happen many times on this adventure), and being a kick-ass woman who can solo camp & figure it out… even though I hate most bugs.
Since I won’t be on my bike more than 2-3 hours a day, I’m bringing along a few extras for fun & a low-tech mental health break. I’ve recently discovered that watercolour paints & markers give me freedom to express myself artistically without worrying so much about perfection, so I’m bringing bare minimum art supplies, plus writing materials, and a book.
Interestingly I’m equally as excited about being schedule-free, as I am about developing routines through the natural rhythms of being more immersed in nature.
Image: The correct Ortlieb hooks are on back order until October so my friend Emily helped build this rack attachment, roughly based off of a design from my friend Jack.
