motorbike

Anon

I’m a young woman and ride motorbikes – I got my first one at 17. At my school another person in my year had a bike at the same time and so we spent a lot of time boasting about our bikes (being both proud and immature!). Every time (literally every time) I mentioned that I had a bike to someone new and male, the response would be ‘You mean a scooter?’. No one ever said that to my male friend as presumably he was fully capable of riding an actual motorbike. As I got older I started to ferry people around on the back and particularly one boyfriend would ride pillion for trips out and about. Everyone would assume it was his bike and flat out ignore me to ask him what he was riding. More recently a guy I worked with was perfectly normal and friendly – until he found out that I ride motorbikes, at which point I was told that I ‘had’ to give him my number because now I was sexy enough for him to want to sleep with. Not connected but after years of being catcalled I now cross the street if possible, to avoid any bloke in a hi-vis jacket and get extremely nervous if I have to walk past them, especially if there’s more than one person there. It makes me feel deeply self-conscious about my clothes and I avoid all eye-contact. Normally I smile at everyone and I do feel guilty about it.