[road]

Tribalism is a serious problem in our society, and the media often make it worse.
In the world of cycling, and on road.cc particularly, we hear about “cyclists” and “drivers” on a daily basis.
The use of these words not only assumes the existence of such categories of people, but it also plays a significant role in constructing them.
This, in turn, reinforces the “drivers vs cyclists” narrative, one of the many variants of tribalism corrupting our thinking.
Words are powerful.
With the exception, perhaps, of those for whom cycling is a profession, the word “cyclist” does not apply to anybody else. The sole act of driving a car does not make one a “driver”. When I make dinner I’m not a “cook”, when I write an email I’m not a “writer”, when I paint a wall in my house I’m not a “decorator” and so on. To put it another way, riding a bike does not define who I am. Nor does driving a car. These are actions, not categories of people.
The urge to categorise people according to what they happen to be doing at any given moment is not healthy.
A recent road.cc article reporting on a crime where somebody shot somebody else in the US was presented as if it was somehow about cycling since the killer was described as a “cyclist”, as he happened to be riding a bicycle when the incident took place.
The original article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described the killer as a “bicyclist”, and the Associated Press, from which news outlets picked up the story, ran the headline “Cyclist gets 25 years in deadly road rage shooting”.
All of this gives more ammunition to the relentless anti-cycling campaign that much of the media are engaged in.
But I think road.cc should have the moral obligation to counter the normalisation of the “cyclists vs [insert other category of people]” narrative.
I wonder, for example, if alongside the “Near Miss of the Day” feature, there could be one like the “Bad Headline of the Day”, pointing out instances where the word “cyclists” is obviously misused and serves to misrepresent a story as being about an imaginary category of (bad!) people rather than what it is really about.

Topic

[Anonymous]

mdavidford wrote:

mdavidford wrote:

I think part of the problem is that the concept attached to ‘cyclist’* has become removed from that of ‘person’. Which makes it easier, when reading the word, to bring to mind a lumpen ‘tribe’ (whether your view of that ‘tribe’ is good or bad), rather than a feeling, fragile, and flawed person.

Exactly that!

[hawkinspeter]

mdavidford wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

Comrade Stevenson obviously meant “everyone riding a cycle”

Does that include the penguins?

Obviously – it’s not like they’re gonna fly instead

[mdavidford]

hawkinspeter wrote:

Comrade Stevenson obviously meant “everyone riding a cycle”

Does that include the penguins?

[hawkinspeter]

lesterama wrote:

I think we are all happy to be described as cyclists. The issue is the othering that comes with it from people that just hate cyclists. I would like the press to use human on a bike instead of cyclist when reporting RTAs and legal stuff.

I’d rather we just concentrated on a free and impartial press rather than letting Murdoch take control. If we stopped putting oil and cars at the centre of everything, then people would understand better that cycling is a solution to lots of problems.

[hawkinspeter]

chrisonatrike wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

John Stevenson wrote:

I am perfectly happy to be included in the same category as absolutely everyone riding a bike.

We’re all comrades here

Wait – I’m not?

Comrade Stevenson obviously meant “everyone riding a cycle”

[lesterama]

John Stevenson wrote:

I am perfectly happy to be included in the same category as absolutely everyone riding a bike. Why aren’t you? Again, which more-virtuous cycling tribe do you want to be a member of in order to differentiate yourself from the bike riders you appear to look down on?

I think we are all happy to be described as cyclists. The issue is the othering that comes with it from people that just hate cyclists. I would like the press to use human on a bike instead of cyclist when reporting RTAs and legal stuff.

[chrisonabike]

hawkinspeter wrote:

John Stevenson wrote:

I am perfectly happy to be included in the same category as absolutely everyone riding a bike.

We’re all comrades here

Wait – I’m not?

[hawkinspeter]

John Stevenson wrote:

I am perfectly happy to be included in the same category as absolutely everyone riding a bike. Why aren’t you? Again, which more-virtuous cycling tribe do you want to be a member of in order to differentiate yourself from the bike riders you appear to look down on?

We’re all comrades here

[John Stevenson]

OnYerBike wrote:

Thanks for tracking this down and proving I’m not completely senile just yet! I guess the contents of comments aren’t captured by Google?

Yep, good sleuthing there, especially the web-searching equivalent of jumping naked through a burning hoop of flame.

And apologies for insinuating that road.cc had perpetuated that particular headline – as is evidently the case, where there is no genuine connection to cycling the story isn’t picked up by the staff writers.

Oh I’m sure we occasionally cover stories where the cycling link is a touch tenuous, just not that tenuous.

[John Stevenson]

WeLoveHills wrote:

we should move away from simply labelling anyone on a bike as a “cyclist” as if that very fact — being on a bike — somehow was meaningful enough to justify their inclusion in the same category of people as the vast majority of road.cc readers, for example. 

I am perfectly happy to be included in the same category as absolutely everyone riding a bike. Why aren’t you? Again, which more-virtuous cycling tribe do you want to be a member of in order to differentiate yourself from the bike riders you appear to look down on?

[Anonymous]

Thank you!!! Great video!

Thank you!!! Great video!

[mdavidford]

I think part of the problem

I think part of the problem is that the concept attached to ‘cyclist’* has become removed from that of ‘person’. Which makes it easier, when reading the word, to bring to mind a lumpen ‘tribe’ (whether your view of that ‘tribe’ is good or bad), rather than a feeling, fragile, and flawed person.

Personally, I have been trying (and commonly failing) to refer to ‘people/person cycling/driving’, but breaking the habit of using the shorter ‘cyclist/driver’ isn’t easy. It can also impact the fluency of what you’re writing, but in a way, perhaps that’s the point – it seems not fluent because it breaks with what we expect and forces us to think differently.

( and, to an extent, ‘driver’ too, although there’s more of a tendency there to use the depersonalised ‘car’. )

[chrisonabike]

I agree in some ways with

I agree in some ways with your concern about “cyclist” but there are several driving forces keeping this as it is – dictionary usage, the common stereotypes and also some self-identification (“reclaiming” a pejorative use of “cyclist”).

Most of that covered well here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMed1qceJ_Q

Ultimately it’s not the words which make cycling convenient or safe. Especially not in the microclimate of road.cc. I would agree that overall for leaders (politics, business, media) the ideas about cycling and how “most people” consider it can have important effects however.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much to

Thank you very much to everybody who commented on my post, and to Simon in particular for offering such an engaging reply.

I agree that “moral obligation” was probably exaggerated. I guess that came from the fact that road.cc is more than just tech news or race news, and things like the “near miss of the day” are part of a certain ethos about general road-user behaviour.

The point about the validity of the word “cyclist” is, in my opinion, less trivial than it may look. Let me adjust my glasses as I write this. Besides the legal or even the dictionary definition of “cyclist”, the fundamental issue is that words — “cyclist” or any other — don’t actually have meaning. We mean, i.e. convey ideas, and we do that largely through language.

The word “cyclist” is a vehicle for meanings that we create, share, negotiate etc. So when we say something like “Cyclist gets 25 years in jail”, we’re not only using the word “cyclist” in a legally correct way, but we are also contributing to constructing the idea that a particular category of people — “cyclists” — exists and is determined by the use of a bicycle. That may be legally correct, but the effect of that categorisation in day-to-day discourse is unhealthy.

I agree with OnYerBike: maybe “cyclist” should not be restrcited to professionals. I also agree with Rendel that a site dedicated to cycling is bound to talk about cyclists a lot. But what I’m trying to say — badly — is that we should move away from simply labelling anyone on a bike as a “cyclist” as if that very fact — being on a bike — somehow was meaningful enough to justify their inclusion in the same category of people as the vast majority of road.cc readers, for example. 

I guess I’m tired of seeing headlines declaring cyclists this and cyclists that when what they’re really talking about is a huge array of different people who simply happen to use a bike in the context in which they are referred to. 

In the end, I’m not suggesting we should replace the word “cyclist” with some comvoluted phrase. All I’m saying is that maybe we should be more aware of what we do when we use this word rather than simply what the word “means” in a legal sense. 

[Dnnnnnn]

road.cc readers.

road.cc readers.

[Author]

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