Community on Two Wheels: LA’s Gender Expansive Ride

Below is a guest post from Anne Marie Drolet, sharing her story of the beginnings of the Gender Expansive Ride. CalBike appreciates the opportunity to connect with the work others are doing building the bicycling movement. 

Gender Expansive Rides are every 1st and 3rd weekend (they vary between Saturdays and Sundays). Meet at Grand Park in Downtown LA at 9:00 am. Check their Instagram for information on how to join their rides and updates @genderexpansiveride.

Contrary to popular belief, Los Angeles is a cycling city. There are so many group rides in Los Angeles, which is amazing. Every night of the week, all over the city, you can find a group ride to attend. 

Because it’s such a car-dominated city, riding a bike becomes a political act and a way to resist car culture, even if it’s just for the amount of time your bike ride lasts. 

Creating a safe place for gender nonconforming riders to build community

Cycling is truly a means of creating community. While group rides can proclaim themselves to be welcoming spaces, this statement is almost meaningless if it doesn’t include intentionality. Like many spaces, the cycling community in LA is dominated by cis men, so after riding with Trash Panda Cycling, a bicycling community ride, for some time, a small group of us created the Gender Expansive Ride because of a need we saw in our community. Our first ride was bigger than we thought it would be: about 20 people showed up, so we felt like we had an audience pretty quickly. People were excited about having that space. There aren’t many rides in Los Angeles specifically for riders of marginalized gender identities, and that alone makes it unique.

To have spaces that are welcoming, you cannot simply say that everyone is welcome and assume that a caring and mutually respectful culture will magically form. Groups don’t operate in a vacuum; the power dynamics that we experience in the world repeat on a smaller scale unless we recognize and actively address those dynamics. The cycling scene is no different. While I have found it to be a welcoming space overall, it is also a male-dominated space, which comes with its own set of challenges if you do not identify as such. This includes an assumption of physical abilities and an (often immediate) assumption of being a dating prospect. The Gender Expansive Ride provides a space where women, trans, and nonbinary folks can experience the joy of riding in LA without those pressures. Like anyone else, we go to group rides because we want to hang out and ride our bikes. 

It’s important to have spaces like these. While they are separate spaces from general group rides, they are meant to promote connection rather than exclusion. Our goal is to create a safe space for historically marginalized gender identities to ride bikes. It is a space centered around gender expansive, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, trans, nonbinary, gender fluid folks, and cis women. This is especially important in today’s world, where the safety and well-being of trans folks are constantly under attack. 

The rides are meant for all skill levels and range from slower-paced and relaxed to fast rides and climbing rides, and no rider is ever left behind. Our goal with this ride is to create a space where folks can feel seen, validated, and supported. Riding bikes with friends is a simple concept, but it’s also potent. It is a form of resistance not only to car culture but to a patriarchal culture as well.

Start with your friends to grow a bike community

Some advice I would give on starting your own ride in LA and beyond is to simply reach out in whatever way you can to your social networks — social media, word of mouth in the cycling scene, creating fun flyers to promote rides. Giving detailed information on rides is helpful, too: How long is the ride? How hilly? How fast will it go? 

We also have a detailed explanation of what our ride is about, why we created it, and who it’s for. For folks who may be hesitant to join group rides or are just getting started, that information can be really helpful so they know what kind of space they’re entering into. 

The Gender Expansive Ride just celebrated three years of existence, which is exciting. We hope to keep creating a supportive community within the cycling scene of Los Angeles and to provide a space to hang out and ride bikes for years to come.