User:Benjiboi/Dykes On Bikes

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Post-war many women including lesbians declined opportunities to return to traditional gender roles and helped redefine societal expectations that fed the women's, black and and gay liberation movements.

Contents

[edit] Non-profit, local or national

[edit] Legal battle to keep DOB name for non-profit use

*August 23, 2004 – Brooke Oliver Law Group submits response to PTO Office Action with evidence about Dykes On Bikes, the word dyke in the LGBT community, and legal argument about the correct legal standard to apply.

  • April 28, 2005 – Brooke Oliver Law Group and the National Center for Lesbian Rights submit a Request for Reconsideration to the examining attorney, together with more than two dozen expert declarations, and simultaneously submit an appeal to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) to appeal the refusal if the examining attorney does not reverse her decision. The TTAB suspends the appeal while the PTO considers the Request for Reconsideration.
  • May 26, 2005 – PTO denies the Request for Reconsideration, making its third refusal of the application and claiming, for the first time, that dyke is “vulgar” in addition to disparaging. Despite hundreds of pages [400 to be exact] of evidence and 26 expert declarations, the PTO said there was little new [evidence], and cited a 1913 Webster’s dictionary definition that had been put on the internet by an independent company and an individual’s Spanish/English translations of vulgar phrases as evidence for its decision.
  • December 5, 2005 – PTO reverses its position that Dykes on Bikes is disparaging and approves the trademark application for publication.[1][2]

[edit] form of escapism

Motorcycling demands moment-by-moment awareness and, unlike driving, rewards the rider with direct experience. On a motorcycle a rider "has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear."[3] The process and experience of motorcycling forces the rider into the present. The environment of the road engulfs the senses, and the need for constant awareness fills the mind. The total involvement in motorcycling leaves little room for worrying about tomorrow, or second-guessing yesterday.

[edit] Dyke empowerment

Further information: Coming out

motorcycle is a symbol of lesbianism[4]

Sirens Motorcycle Club leading the New York City Gay Pride Parade. photo:David Shankbone
Sirens Motorcycle Club leading the New York City Gay Pride Parade. photo:David Shankbone


"Dykes on Bikes, is likely an interpretive community, practically inscribing meanings of feminist challenge to patriarchal institutions and male privilege"[5]

sense of freedom[6]

"Whether we present ourselves as bull daggers, dykes on bikes, nelly queens, or as ordinary as the boy or girl next door..." "While coming out has been a privileged movement strategy, uneasiness remains when the "wrong people" claim visibility. Thus, how we present ourselves is as important as that we present ourselves. "Queer" families, then, force issues of visibility and invisibility in distinctive ways."[7]

when riding class differences are de-emphasized toward enjoying the thrill of riding[6]

[edit] Political expression

The high visibility of the Dykes on Bikes is in contrast with the traditional backseat that the masculine dykes have had throughout LGBT and mainstream culture which has generally marginalized and stigmatized them.[8][2] Although the general atmosphere is becoming more diverse and welcoming there is still a preference for showing hyper-feminized lesbians aka lipstick lesbians reinforcing that a ‘homosexual’ life or act must leave unchallenged the dominant sexual and gender categories,” masculinity, femininity, heterosexuality, marriage, “and the great law of quiet private life, all components of a complexly constructed and [proper] cultural society.”[8][2]

Same-sex marriage Gay parenting Binational Bisexual

[edit] Increase in motorcycles, clubs?

DOB a "social grouping" of Harley- Davidson consumers brand morphing - "as facilitated by ad practitioners' efforts to accommodate, reinforce, and create diverse cultural meanings across different international markets."[9]

"connection between a community and its legitimate brands" "different socioeconomic contexts. A seeming anomaly, challenging this explanation, is that posed by Dykes on Bikes. How could Harley's"[10]


ethnographers consider the DOB a "self-selecting, consumption-oriented subcultures." "consumption activities, product categories, or even brands may serve as the basis for interaction and social cohesion" "Dykes on Bikes serves the needs of lesbian motorcycle enthusiasts" [11]

[edit] Dyke status symbol

(these speak to transgressive in lede) Photo historian and Rhode Island School of Design teacher Deborah Bright edits The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire including Elizabeth Stephens's staged photographs of dykes on bikes and her essay Looking-Class Heroes: Dykes on Bikes Cruising Calendar Girls, in which the author examines "photography, biking, sex, and desire"

  • "...queer identity in our culture has a particularly close and complex relationship to questions of visual representation." and the queer visuality with the status of desire
  • "political and theoretical questions surrounding the staging of gay sexuality in the mass media, political discourse and art."
  • "material and political forces that impinge on and constrain what might be termed the "privilege of performance." including the intersections of class, race and sexuality."[11]

"Bitch seat" or "bitch pad" is vulgar American motorcycle slang for the pillion, as is "riding bitch" instead of "riding pillion". "Bitch seat" Pillion

[edit] Clothing and accessories

In San Diego the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) picketed DOB because they have a fetish for leather clothing and accessories.[12]


Just like the wider motorcycling community there is a range of of experiences, class and cultural preferences dictating preferences for clothing for riding and events as well as cycling accessories like

"motorcycle leathers" or leathers

The latter style, the jackets in particular, are also worn by people who are fond of the style but do not ride motorcycles. The classic American Perfecto motorcycle jacket with epaulets and diagonal zipper, made famous by Marlon Brando in The Wild One, (1954)


Motorcycle helmet

Motorcycle boot

[edit] Extra butch

gay bikers including 'leather queens' and DOB have a fetish for leather clothing and accessories.[12]


DOB bike culture with "butch-femme play and the butch bonding over how the bike is or isn't running"[6]

being a DOB, in part because of family class history, regional background and being a butch who loves femmes[6]

[edit] Eroticism

sexual power[6]

riding bare-breasted [13]

[14]

Motorcycle essayist Sarah Boslaugh writes, "Lesbian creative artists such as the filmmaker Barbara Hammer[15] and singer Chabela Vargas[16] have used motorcycles and leather motorcycle clothing as symbols of female power and sexuality in their art."[4]

[edit] Outlaw and outcast status

DOB are viewed as "special outlaws" within lesbian communities[6]

"Marlon Brando made the motorcycle into a universal symbol of rebellious masculinity in his role in The Wild Ones, but Dykes on Bikes took that rebellious image one step further and gave the rebellion some content in the way of a defiance of gender norms and an embrace of queer identities. Brando famously responded to the question about what he was rebelling against by answering: “what have you got?” His response makes rebellion itself into the activity and specific politics seem beside the point. The members of Dykes on Bikes, however, riding as they do in the Pride parades, indicate that their rebellion is specific, focused and meaningful."[17][2]

[edit] Criticisms

"Dykes on Bikes thrummed slowly down Market Street last Sunday past the curb-side perch of a 6-year-old girl. The first grader, who recently learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels, was fascinated by the squadrons of Harleys and Hondas that launched San Francisco's 27th annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade. Out-of-towners must have been amused, or scandalized, or both, at the costumery. Miles of leather. Two bridal gowns. One torso clothed in blue paint. Nighties. A tuxedo. Cowboy chaps. Creative tattoos. Bare breasts. Bare skulls. Bare buttocks. It wasn't Kansas. The little girl from San Francisco was staring. "Mommy," she said. "They're not wearing helmets!"[18]

To combat homophobia, the LGBT community uses events such as pride parades and political activism. Some parts of the festivities are criticized for reinforcing stereotypes about LGBT people (e.g. Dykes on Bikes, the prominence of cross-dressing, a gay male fascination with musicals, the colour pink, a sex-positive atmosphere that may seem to give endorsement to a promiscuous lifestyle which in turn relates to the problem of AIDS, etc). Other portions tend to challenge stereotypes, including the presence of religious organizations who support gay rights and oppose homophobia (See Religion and homosexuality), the families of LGBT people, and LGBT people with children. Much of the colour, glamour, and noise of pride parades can also be seen as a simple celebration of LGBT culture, or of life in general.

Ellen Degeneres compared the DOB being shown as representative of gays and lesbians to "scary" heterosexuals on talk shows like convicted ?killer Joey Buttafouco as representing all non-gays. She correctly points out that mainstream media has traditionally failed to show the diversity of the LGBT communities while disparaging the DOB for compromising queer visibility. Since Ellen came out images of queers has increased in quantity and activists continue to work for quality of those images as well including the DOB who are extremely diverse and present a spectrum of backgrounds, ages and interests.[19]

Conservative Fox News' Bill O'Reilly condemned the DOB saying “Dykes on bikes? Take a hike!” stating that they were corrupting his children despite the lack of evidence that gay people pose any threat to the young.[19]

"The cluster of stories inside the magazine were all about lesbians but with a clear division between those stories about 'mainstream' lesbians and those on the 'fringe'. Those represented as being on the fringe were dykes on bikes from a gay price march, lesbians in the military, and political activists. They all wore clothes conventionally coded as lesbian or presented themselves in such a way that it was obvious they were queer. They were also shown in public, especially urban, spaces, and so were in some senses doubly visible."[20]

""Our children are seeing things they've never seen before and they don't exactly understand everything that's going on," Sherry Watkins told CNN. "We're trying the best we can to explain it to them.""[21]

In two studies of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals one of the most common mistakes well-meaning heterosexuals’ have made when interacting with them was relying on stereotypes about gays. [22]

Although

"Gay Pride parades are often fantastic spectacles of corporeality with drag queens, buff boys, dykes on bikes, leather bears taking part, increasingly these parades are forming the basis of a growing international queer tourism market. From Sydney to Rome Queering Tourism analyses the paradoxes of gay pride parades as tourist events. The book explores how the public display of queer bodies--how they look, what they do, who watches, and under what regulations--is profoundly important constructing sexualized subjectivities of bodies and cities. Gay pride parades are annual arenas of queer public culture where embodied notions of subjectivity are sold, enacted, transgressed and debated.Drawing on extensive collections of interviews, visuals and written media accounts, photographs, advertisements and her own participation in these parades, Lynda Johnston gives a vibrant account of "queer tourism" in New Zealand, Australia, Scotland and Italy. In each place, Queering Tourism looks at how the relationship between the viewer and the viewed produces paradoxical concepts of bodily difference, and considers how the queered spaces of gay pride parades may prompt new understandings of power and tourism knowledges."[23]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Oliver, Brooke (December 2005). Application Timeline: Dykes on Bikes Trademark Application Description of Services and Timeline, P.C. 6 .. Brooke Oliver Law Group. Retrieved on 2007-08-21.
  2. ^ a b c d Ilyasova, K. Alex (November 2006). Dykes on Bikes and the Regulation of Vulgarity. International Journal of Motorcycle Studies. Retrieved on 2007-08-21.
  3. ^ Milan Kundera, Slowness: A Novel,1995, HarperCollins, New York
  4. ^ a b Boslaugh, Sarah (March 2006). Getting Past the Stereotypes: Women and Motorcycles in Recent Lesbian Novels. International Journal of Motorcycle Studies. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
  5. ^ Kates, Steven; Schouten, John W. and James H. McAlexander (1995). Marketing's Interpretive Communities: A New Form of Sociocultural Segmentation? Ref. “Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers,” Journal of Consumer Research, 22 (1), 43-61.. Monash University, New Zealand. Retrieved on 2007-08-18.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Stephens, Elizabeth (1998). The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire. Routledge. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  7. ^ Bernstein, Mary; Renate Reimann (2001). Queer Families, Queer Politics: Challenging Culture and the State. Columbia University Press. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  8. ^ a b Epstein, Debbie; Richard Johnson (1998, p. 19). Schooling Sexualities. Buckingham: Open University Press. Retrieved on 2007-08-21.
  9. ^ Kates, Steven M.; Charlene Goh (Spring 2003, Volume 32, Number 1). Brand Morphing--Implications for Advertising Theory and Practice. Journal of Advertising. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  10. ^ Kates, Steven M. (2004, volume 31, pages 455–464). The Dynamics of Brand Legitimacy: An Interpretive Study in the Gay Men's Community. Journal of Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  11. ^ a b Schouten, John W.; James H. McAlexander (June, 1995, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 43-61). Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers. The Journal of Consumer Research. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  12. ^ Sender, Ph.D., Katherine; Renate Reimann (2002). Business, not Politics: Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgender People and the Consumer Sphere. Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
  13. ^ Stewart, Thomas A.; Renate Reimann (December 12, 1991, 46, Baltera, "No Gay Market yet, Admen, Gays Agree," 199; and David Mulryan, interview.). Gay in Corporate America. Fortune (magazine). Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
  14. ^ Kate, Haug (29 Jan 2006, Wide Angle 20.1 (1988), 64-93.). “An Interview with Barbara Hammer”. PBS. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
  15. ^ Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne (29 Jan 2006). Crossing the Border with Chabela Vargas: A Chicana Femme’s Tribute. Lola Press. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
  16. ^ Halberstam, Judith (March 2005). “Declaration of Judith Halberstam Under 37 C.F.R. § 2.20.” Exhibit 15. Declarations in Support of Request for Reconsideration.P.C. 18. Brooke Oliver Law Group. Retrieved on 2007-08-21.
  17. ^ Tykes on Dykes. San Francisco Examiner (July 6, 1997). Retrieved on 2007-08-18.
  18. ^ a b Clarke, Eric O. (1995). Virtuous Vice: Homoeroticism and the Public Sphere. Duke University Press. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
  19. ^ Sandell, Jillian (March 1994, Issue #12). The Cultural Necessity of Queer Families. Bad Subjects. Retrieved on 2007-08-18.
  20. ^ Shepard, Alicia C. (July-August 1993, Vol. 15). Did the Networks Sanitize the Gay Rights March. American Journalism Review. Retrieved on 2007-08-18.
  21. ^ Conley PhD (Social Science Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California), Terri D.; Christopher Calhoun BA (Public Policy Division ACLU Southern California), Sophia R. Evett PhD (assistant professor Salem State College), Patricia G. Devine PhD (professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) (Apr 30, 2002, Volume: 42 Issue: 2). Mistakes That Heterosexual People Make When Trying to Appear Non-Prejudiced: The View from LGB People. Journal of Homosexuality. Retrieved on 2007-08-18.
  22. ^ Johnston, Lynda (2005). Queering Tourism: Paradoxical Performances of Gay Pride Parades. Routledge. Retrieved on 2007-08-18.

[edit] Further reading

  • Joans, Barbara. 1995. Dykes on Bikes Meet Ladies of Harley. In William L. Leap (ed.), Beyond the Lavender Lexicon: Authenticity, Imagination and Appropriation in Lesbian and Gay Languages. New York: Gordon and Breach Press. Pp. 87-106.

[edit] External links

Category:Activism Category:LGBT terms Category:Motorcycling Category:Motorcyclists organizations Category:Pejorative terms for people