Given the clickbait headline, I know half of you opened this article to roll your eyes, and half of you clicked this to read while you make Molotov cocktails for the coming culture wars. Unfortunately, this will be a letdown for you both. That’s because this isn’t a call to ban men—I am one—but just a list of simple ways men can make skateboarding more welcoming for women and LGBTQ+ skaters in the coming year. Because really, equality is what smashing the patriarchy is actually about.
Words: Tobias Coughlin-Bogue
“But it’s fine,” you might be saying, “I don’t care who skates. If you wanna skate, just show up and skate.” Unfortunately, that is your privilege talking. If you are not a straight, cisgender man, it is not fine. Sometimes, it is so fucking far from fine you can’t even see fine.
If you’re here on SKATEISM, and you’re a man, you’re probably the type of man who does not call women sluts, prey on them, or throw their boards over a fence at contests. You probably don’t leave transphobic comments on Cher Strauberry’s Instagram. Good on you, my guy. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Chipping away at the rest of that iceberg is the real task at hand. Patriarchy persists because it has done a really good job of disguising itself as a normal, banal fact of life. It lives in the idle chatter at the top of the ramp, the subtle pecking order of whose turn it is to drop in, the unspoken agreements about who’s “down,” and other barely noticeable bits of behavior. It’s the stuff that you, a generally good dude, don’t even know you’re doing. The good news is, once you start paying attention to the little ways in which women and queer folk are made to feel unwelcome, it’s really easy to root them out.
And it’s so, so worth it. The biggest lie you’ve ever been told as a man is that social justice isn’t fun. That the PC police are coming to sanitize skateboarding, and we’ll all have to live in fear of accidentally misgendering someone or being nebulously accused of “abusiveness.” This is absolute horse shit. Not intentionally misgendering people, not aggressively hitting on every woman at the park, not using “faggot” as an epithet, and answering many of the other basic asks of non-male skaters does not mean that you cannot skate all night, drink like a fish, smoke mad spliffs, be crass, cause property damage, or engage in any of the other glorious mischief that defines our subculture.
My bet, as a queer skate bro who very much passes as straight, is that there’s plenty of women and LGBTQ+ skaters who want to do all that fun stuff with you. They just haven’t been made to feel welcome within “core” skateboarding. Hold the door open for them, and you’ll find yourself with a whole new world of rad, weird people to skate with. Here’s how:
- Literally invite people in. Most women and visibly queer people don’t exactly feel like they can just plop down at the meet-up spot and begin participating in skate culture. Now, I realize that the same is true of most cishet dudes who just moved from another town, but it doesn’t take long for that to change. You see a new dude a couple times in a row, you start saying hi. Maybe you even introduce yourself. Maybe you end up skating some weird wallie downtown at 11pm some night, just because you were both tired of the meet-up spot. Thing is, this process happens organically among bros. For non-bros, it doesn’t, really. I could write a graduate thesis on why, but suffice to say, it’s worth making a special effort to accelerate the process. For someone who feels like an outsider, having just one of the cool bros dap them up when they arrive can make all the difference. Arriving with one of the cool bros is even better, so trade numbers and text people when you’re going out. Include them in small talk, skate missions, and post-session trips to the bar. If you have social capital within core skateboarding, this is a fan-fucking-tastic way to use it.
- Make space. The number one complaint I hear from my nontraditional skate pals is that no one lets them go. As someone who is accustomed to taking my turn whenever I damn well want to, this used to baffle me. “Just get in there,” I’d say. “You have just as much right to a turn as anyone else here.” But it isn’t that simple, of course. How do any of us know, at a crowded skatepark, when it is our turn to go? We don’t, really. It’s barely organized chaos, governed by a bunch of unwritten rules. Most of us just learn to carve out space in the maelstrom. But if you didn’t grow up in this crazy environment, or if you’ve spent most of your time skating alone to avoid assholes, you’re not going to have the confidence to just jump in. Those of us who can read those unwritten rules can also recognize when someone is struggling with them. Instead of exploiting their uncertainty to take another try, which is what usually happens, and what leads to the complaint above, try telling them it’s their turn. “All you!” is very easy to say if you see someone looking hesitant.
- Do your best with the pronouns. Lots of trans people skate now, but you don’t need to ask every single person what their preferred pronoun is. If and when you’re made aware of it, however, try to stick to it. It’s a very small effort for you to make, but one that means everything to a trans person. If you forget, which I do all the damn time, just apologize and use the correct one. Making that minuscule amount of effort is a concrete way of demonstrating you believe their identity is valid. By the same token, intentionally misgendering someone, or being the type of mouth breather who thinks it’s funny to wonder aloud what gender someone is, is extremely shitty.
- Don’t be shitty, even when no one’s watching. The patriarchy depends on boys’ clubs to function, so cancel your membership in 2019. In the company of your bros, there’s a lot of shit you can say that wouldn’t fly in front of the people you’re saying it about. Shit, there’s an entire (bad) genre of comedy based on this. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Even if the woman whose bust you’re commenting on never hears those comments, you’re reinforcing for yourself and all the other men in your group that it’s okay to view women as mere sexual objects. You’re strengthening the unspoken social agreements that allow actual discrimination to happen, even if it isn’t happening at that very moment. I realize that this kind of banter is a bonding thing, and that there’s tremendous pressure to participate, but there are better ways to bond.
- Don’t stare. Humans are really good at tracking the gaze of other humans. It’s how babies learn to talk and shit. They see what their parents are looking at, and they associate the words they’re hearing with it. So we all know when we’re being looked at. Something I hear from a lot of my women and queer skate friends is that they don’t go to a place because they “get looks.” We all look at each other when we skate, and we should keep doing it to avoid crashing in to one another, but I think we also know what kind of looks they’re talking about. Staring, pointing, murmuring, and all that. For women, add ogling to the list. Don’t do it! It’s fine to notice that someone looks a bit different, but that only takes about a nanosecond to do. You can go back to using your eyes for skating and being aware of your surroundings, not making people feel like the object of unwanted attention. If “we’re all just skaters,” there’s nothing to stare at, right?
- Call shit out if you can. This one is pretty self explanatory. Maybe you do all the good stuff on this list and don’t do any of the bad stuff. That’s sick, and if so, your name is probably Ryan Lay. But you definitely know some dudes who aren’t quite there yet. Sadly, like “social justice warrior,” “call out culture” is another phrase that’s been co-opted by shitheads to deride people who are politely asking them not to be shitheads anymore. But let’s be clear, calling someone out for xenophobia is not impinging on their freedom, it’s asking them to respect the freedom of others. And no reasonable human expects you to “cancel” your friends for not being woke enough or whatever. In fact, I don’t even expect you to pipe up when you’re with the bros. I understand that being the one dude in your tiny redneck town that protests when people say “faggot” will probably make them all accuse you of being one, and make your life unnecessarily miserable. But you can stick around and set an example. You can find subtle ways to make your stance on social issues in skateboarding clear.
- Stick up for women and LGBTQ+ skaters. This is kind of covered above, but I think it also deserves its own entry. Because patriarchy has established itself as the norm, people who protest against it are often written off as delusional. Or just straight up ignored. On the other side of that same coin, people who do horrible things to women and queer people often get a pass. Dudes don’t say shit to other dudes because they don’t want to “make it weird.” But being sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. is very, very weird. If you have the social capital to side with women and LGBTQ+ people when they raise these issues IRL, great, but even if it’s just on Instagram, do what you can.
And last but not least:
- If you’re not a straight, cisgender skate bro, send this to one!
Happy New Year! Let’s make it the best, most inclusive one yet.
