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Creating a Trans-Inclusive Bike Shop

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On this episode, John Robinson (he/him), NBDA Board Member and Owner of Johnny Velo Bikes in Columbus, OH, is joined by Stephanie Lenzo (she/her), a cyclist in Columbus, OH, Otto Bohn (he/him), owner of Spoken Bicycles in Middletown, OH, and Dante Escusa (she/her), Service Manager at Roll: Bicycle. Listen in as the panel has an open and honest conversation where they share stories, best practices, and suggestions for bike shops to make transgender customers and employees feel more comfortable in the shop environment.

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Creating a Trans-Inclusive Bike Shop

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, bike, gender, transgender, stephanie, dante, pride, columbus, talking, called, lgbtq, pronouns, bicycle, flag, transition, shop, bikes, feel, therapist, customer

00:10

You are listening to bicycle retail radio, brought to you by the National bicycle Dealers Association. Hi, everyone. This is John Robinson from the National Bike Dealers Association. And I want to thank you for coming here today and listening to a very good podcast I think is going to be informative for you working with transgender people in your shop as employees or customers. We have a great panel here today. Before we get started, I wanted to encourage everyone, we’re kind of like Public Radio. Yes, we do rely on donations and basically in the form of memberships. So if you’re not an NBA member, please consider doing that because that’s how we’re able to put on these podcasts and provide some of the other resources as an organization that help benefit your business. So please go to nbda.org If you’d like to become a member or have questions about memberships, and with that said, what we’re going to go ahead and do here is I will go ahead and introduce our first panelist, Stephanie Lenzo. Stephanie, go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself. Hi there. I’m a Columbus native Columbus, Ohio native, I enjoy biking I bike on trails around here I bike to work, and I met John and his shop a couple years ago and have been visiting him every couple of weeks ever since. Great and Stephanie will prominence you go by? I go by she her. Thank you very much. Next we have Otto I don’t I’ll go ahead and have you introduce yourself. My name is Otto and I own spoken bicycles in Middletown, Ohio. We’ve been open about four and a half years. And we are a full service bike shop that also features a craft beer and cocktail bar in it. And that’s a dream.

02:01

And yeah, I do basically everything from mechanic to salesperson, the bartender. Nice. Lastly, we have Dante scusa. Dante. Yeah, my name is Dante. I’ve been in the bike industry going on about 25 years now, just recently came out last year as a woman, so my pronouns are she her? I’m still kind of early in the process and finding my way. And what do you do at the bike shop? Dante, I’m a service manager. So I’ve been a service manager, probably going on about 12 years now. Great, great client here. So we have a customer, a shop owner, and then an employee, a service manager at local bike shop here. So just introduce myself as well. I’m John Robinson, on the honor of Johnny Bella bytes in Columbus, Ohio. And I’m also a board member and chairperson of the DEI Committee, which is diversity, equity and inclusion. With that, I’m going to go ahead and just kind of open it a little bit here. By the way, my pronouns are key him, what does transgender mean to each one of you? And then what do you think it kind of means to the public and Stephanie week before we talk, you kind of had an interesting thing you point out to me transgenders por un Agito. And we refer to transgender people. So could you give a little explanation of what it means to you transgender, it means to me that I’m happier this way than I was before. Like, I was not very happy with myself as a boy, whether that’s fate or God’s will or whatever. That’s just how it is. Just really just what it means to me is that I’m happier in my own skin now than I was then. Okay, wonderful. Otto. Definitely along those same lines. I mean, what most people probably no of you don’t identify with your assigned gender when you were born. For me personally, I knew when I was four years old, that I wasn’t happy and, or just felt like I was supposed to be a boy. I was in my early 30s, until I finally learned myself email that I was transgender, and I had the strength and everything to find my transition. And I’m so much happier now. Because I’m living as I am, and very comfortable. Great. And Dante you recently transitioned, why don’t you tell us a little bit about that experience for you? That’s pretty unique in the fact that I’m 49. So I’m coming out as what people tend to refer to as a late bloomer, so. But yeah, it’s finally not having to repress all those feelings from the past. This has been going on for my entire life, essentially. So being able to be myself is probably the most liberating thing about being an in house feeling the same feelings that Stephanie and auto felt coming out. Sure. Really

05:00

is liberating. Like, I know people who are like, I didn’t transition when I was 14 years old. So I’m going to be ugly and gross for the rest of my life. You know? Like, it’s not true at all. Like Dante, there are people that have transitioned in their 90s, right, grandpas and grandmas. So like, good for you. It’s absolutely awesome. It’s never too late to be yourself. Right now. Definitely. That’s a very good point, Stephanie. Thank you. How do you, each one of you, I guess, have to deal with people that don’t understand your decisions. I want to use an example, one of the people that I had been talking to recently, that’s a transgender person talked about, they were an avid mountain biker, and they would go out to very rural areas in small towns to mountain bike and beautiful areas. But often those towns might have one place to eat. And as a transgender person, there was a sense of security or safety, for example, that was very heightened for them. Is that something each one of you feel on a daily basis? Or is it not so often? Or not at all? I’m just trying to get people to understand a little bit more of what that’s like. Yes, and no, it really depends on the kind of people that I interact with, and the places I am. Because it’s like, I don’t know, if I want to sound very unique. But there are things about my transition that I just don’t care about, like my voice, for example, like a lot of trans women like to do voice, like what’s called voice training. Like, I just haven’t bothered, because it doesn’t bother me personally. And that tends to, quote unquote, give me away, I guess, and quote, If I’m like, in like a, I don’t want to be like Upper Arlington, or some very rich white and old part of town. Sometimes I will feel a little unsafe, but like around here, around Clintonville in central Columbus, like, it’s a lot. It’s a big difference. It’s like, I don’t want to say night and day like I used to live in if you’re familiar with this place called Pataskala. Essentially, an apple farm and cornfields. My high school was literally in the middle of two cornfield. So it’s not. I didn’t even think about transitioning there, not only because I was ignorant about what it was, but if I wasn’t ignorant about what it was at the time, I like I would get the crap kicked out of me at my high school like because country bumpkins that they just don’t understand. Or then some of them don’t really care, too, you know.

07:53

So it just really depends on the circumstance. Okay. I’ve had discussions my therapist, but for me, a lot of it was just finding safe spaces. So obviously, this is going to be audio and the audience is going to be able to see me but I’m a person of color. So I have that going. As another thing on top of being a transgender woman on top of big, you know, just something for me that I worried about quite a bit. So sure. Things like, like going on vacation. It’s like, does this rest area have a gender neutral bathroom, or just goofy things like that? I don’t know what’s gonna happen. It’s, you know, what, the therapy and just talking about, and it’s still in the back of my head, but it’s always something I have to look out for. Just because of my situation. I’ve gotten used to it. It’s an ongoing process, but I feel like I’m comfortable with it now, especially being around finding friends and supporters. I’m not as skittish as they used to be. Yeah. Do you find people for the most part, are kind of validated or afraid or just curious. It’s weird, because, you know, coming out of the pandemic, being around other people, for a long time, you know, for the last fall of last year, I was basically just seeing customers, or being at home. Finally took a couple vacations, but they’re out of state. So a lot of people don’t know me. So I have kind of this. It’s always called it like my forcefield and annuity because, like Stephanie said, you know, she didn’t want to change your voice. For me. It’s, it’s a weird thing where I like to joke about it. My therapist, and I just giggle every time I say it, but I call myself a 10 foot woman. I look like a woman from 10 feet away. But when you get closer, I can kind of tell people are reading me, but okay, so far, everyone’s been pretty kind. It was surprising to me how people have just not, you know, brought it up or made it a big deal or

09:58

anything like that. So

10:00

You know, you were in my shop recently and you came in and you actually had a she her button? Yes. On your shirt too. That was very helpful. So no one wants to go around with a button having to explain or anything like that. But I’ve known you as a man before you’ve transitioned now to a woman. And so even before we had the call, I said, Okay, guys, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, Oh, I can’t say that, you know, but it’s helpful. So let me ask you a question. And maybe I know, you could answer this for me. What happens if you’re out in public and someone gets your gender wrong? Or your pronouns wrong? What’s the best way to handle that? Personally, you know, I’m very fortunate that I mean, I pass really, no problem. I mean, I can’t say I get misgendered at all anymore, okay. So it’s not something really that I have to deal with myself. I’m six feet tall. When I started transitioning, even before I started hormones, I cut my hair. And basically, people just automatically were like, thought I was a guide. I feel like very fortunate that I don’t really have to deal with that now. You know, there’s always gonna be like, I still don’t like, you know, going into bathrooms or would prefer gender neutral bathrooms. It’s not an issue, but it’s just like, personally, it’s like, you’re just hesitant sometimes. But I know, I’m pretty lucky that, you know, it’s not really a question anymore. For me. I can definitely speak about the bathroom thing. I’ve, I’ve had bad times. I’ve had people not question me inside the bathroom. But I’ve had people like point at me as I come out, okay. It’s just like, oh, just like, oh, that woman’s talking to my manager about how I’m using the women’s restroom that makes me feel wonderful. No, okay. Even in your own workplace, you’re experiencing it from how customers react to you while you’re at work. It doesn’t happen to me anymore. Well, most of the time. So I’ve definitely dress and act like a butch lesbian, because I am one. So it doesn’t really bother me when I get he hemmed. Because I’m most of the time, I’m wearing like a big, puffy coat. And like, I don’t give a crap about my voice. So it’s just like, it’s a coin flip whether someone gets my gender right or wrong. In the past, it definitely used to bother me a lot more. And I would specifically I talked to my my therapist at the time. And she was like, You need to correct people. And I corrected people. And they were like, Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s how you build self confidence to eventually not care anymore. Sure, that’s in my experience, as a business owner, if I have a customer come in, and I think I get a person’s pronouns wrong. And I say, oh, no, I’m sorry. Should I correct myself? Let it go. You should, at least in my opinion, because we’re gonna ask, yeah, there’s a really fine line. Because I feel like if you ask people’s pronouns, people get really weird about it. It specifically says people get really weird about it, they they feel almost offended that you would have, like, all you have to ask, they get really like, I don’t want to use the term butthurt. But they get very upsetting you. I don’t want to say clock people. But if you don’t know someone’s gender, just ask, but be prepared for if they’re a salesperson. Just be prepared for them to be like, How dare you? And I know that doesn’t happen 99% of the time, right? But you know, the 1% of the time it does that can be pretty, like not fun to deal with, if that makes sense. Could you explain for the people listening here to what a syst person is? So, sis and trans are the opposites of each other sis. I’m probably going to get this wrong sis and trans in chemistry, sis means the molecule is all on one side. Trans means it’s half and half. I believe. That’s probably totally wrong. Thanks high school chemistry class. They come from Latin roots, but cisgender means that they are the gender they were assigned at birth. So like for example, my dad, he is not transgender. He is cisgender he was born a boy he’s okay with being a boy. Sure. And I am transgender because I have trans my gender I have changed my gender. I was born a boy and I’m not anymore. Okay. Dante, how do you handle it at work? My therapist is really key in helping me as I’ve been working on keeping my conversations with customers as gender neutral as possible. So like, you know, in the beginning, you know, you caught yourself saying guys that you know, I was terrible that I would always refer to everyone as guys. So now it’s folks are you know, how are you

15:00

Y’all y’all is a popular one. Yes. And when it happens, you know, if I get misgendered, like, the big thing with me and being misgendered, I guess it’s my inner circle, I hold to a different standard than total strangers by their misgendered by a total stranger, I’m not gonna get crazy or anything like that. But if it’s in a situation where I’m able to correct them, or like, you know, for having conversation, or if they’ve met me for the first time, I’ll correct them. And then what I really expect are my closest people, my inner circle, right to get it right, I get disappointed if they misgendered me, I still miss gender myself, half the time nursing, okay. It’s a work in progress. Like my therapist said, I’m basically retraining my thought from years of calling myself one thing. I had out having variants, right having to undo that. I mean, it’s kind of hard to explain, but trying to be really cognizant of all the words coming out of your mouth is quite the feat.

16:02

But I practice when I’m watching TV or something, I’m like, Whoa, they are pretty cool to watch or, you know, it’s just a lot of practicing things. Now, Dante and Steph both of you are employees, you work for people that own other businesses, have they been comfortable in accommodating with you? Depends? Really depends. So my previous job, I worked at Jimmy John’s, we my partner, my then partner who was also trans, the owners were two gay guys. So yes, in that case, yes. That wasn’t my most previous job. But that was my second previous job. I guess. two gay guys. Not two gay guys anymore, apparently. But that’s a whole different conversation. So yeah, I was treated very well, there at least in terms of gender stuff, not in terms of working a job stuff. They scheduled me three hours a week cough cough. It really depends. Like I worked at Kroger. I was treated like, junk, just garbage. One of my co workers trapped me in a corner. Not like literally, but like, we were picking bananas together. And she kinda like moved her cart hit me. So I couldn’t escape. And she was like, Don’t you worry about being a she demon or some completely, like, lunatic? nonsense like that. I was like, What? What are you talking about? It made me deeply uncomfortable, I would get called slurs like a guy in produce would call me man. I’m not going to repeat the slurs. But like I would get called like hard slurs like slurs that. People don’t use for trans people haven’t used those words since like the 80s. So your employer basically didn’t provide you or the other employees with the tools they need to make you feel safe. Now, even the union lead. I have IBS, like really severe IBS, horrible, awful disease. And I would miss work a lot because of it. The Union boss had the audacity to be like, it’s probably the hormones you’re taking. That’s why you have IVs. And I was like, You’re insane. What are you talking about? That’s not how medicine works. It’s a crapshoot. If you get like a local, small business, where the people there are working with each other and they care. Yeah, it can be perfectly fine. If you don’t, then you’re just playing the lottery of all am I going to get treated like a human being? Or am I going to get treated like a third class citizen? Oh, are you had to go through that? That’s okay. I got unemployment because I quit because they completely neglected COVID guidelines as well. So I No hard feelings.

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Dante How about he’ll, first of all, role has been super supportive. Good. When I came out, it’s funny because the way it came out was my GM started putting his pronouns in his email signatures. So sneaky me snuck my pronouns on there. And then it just kind of filtrated through the, through the company as I sent emails out, you know, my GM approached me asked me about it, wanted to show his support, asked me if this was a thing that we are going to if I was going to come out to the company, so one of the things that to be polite to a transgender person is to not out them if you know they’re out. So my manager knew I was out. So he was going to just go ahead and tell everybody I was out. So I made that announcement myself. So and I got personal emails and personal texts from, you know, the owner or CEO, other people in the company. I’m not saying everyone in the company agrees with me, but the outpouring of support. It was nice. It made me feel safe to know that I wasn’t working somewhere that like Stephanie’s question.

20:00

Your situation wasn’t going to be hostile. Especially for for as long as I’ve been doing this, I really didn’t want to leave. But yeah, it turned out great. It’s really nice to be able to go to work and not worry about things like that. I know you’re a business owner. So like myself here, have you had the opportunity to work with other LGBTQ transgender people within your business? Or, you know, I can’t say, I really have since I’ve had spoken open, middle towns, pretty. I mean, it’s not a huge city, but definitely, and more of a red area, but I was able to help start our like, first Pride event in Middletown. Now, we’ve had three or four of the past few years. And, you know, so I’ve been able to be involved with that. And, you know, that’s been really great. And even our little town, you know, surprisingly, has a lot of LGBT, like business owners like in our town, so there’s definitely no support from other people directly around me. Great. Don’t take you hit on something, too. I just had a conversation with one of my LGBTQ employees this weekend. And we were talking about pronouns and things like that. And she had mentioned, because I asked her, What kind of things can I do as a business owner to make people feel more comfortable? And one of the things she suggested was actually putting my pronouns on my emails, and I said, Well, we have a, an area and about area on our website, too. And I said, Well, we could also put them there. And then some of our marketing, and she kind of relate to me that that is a way of removing the stigma a little bit, where it’s just, it’s out there and people understand. Right? More, do you agree? Yeah, it’s like, good stuff mentioned earlier, there’s some people, if you were to ask their pronouns would probably get deeply offended. It could be something just in their belief system, or, you know, a lot of people feel like it’s, it’s just utter nonsense. But for me, seeing someone who is okay with sharing their pronouns shows me that person is, is aware that I may have pronouns that are different from what they might think, just from seeing me, like I said earlier, trying to find safe spaces. If I see someone send me an email, they have their pronouns, and I’m like, okay, that person is at least, you know, I feel like I can be okay around that person, because they’re willing to share pronouns because for some people too, deeply personal thing to be asked what your pronouns are, for some reason, I actually went immediately and updated my pronouns on my email signature and ready updating the website, but I went to ask everyone in my shop, you know, what pronouns they preferred. So I didn’t just want to assume, right, so, yeah, well, I mean, as a business, I mean, something that we do, and again, this goes back to like our downtown pride that we did. You know, we gave businesses stickers and you know, ours is something with it’s the Middletown pride logo, but it’s everybody walk, you know, that’s at the entrance of the door. Right, as you walk in, you see that then, you know, you know, it’s probably a safe space. And for me in my business, again, like going back to bathrooms, I mean, we have gender neutral bathrooms, just those kinds of things that you pick up on, and it makes you feel comfortable. So

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23:46

That’s a good transition because what can business owners do? Like I have a pride flag on my front door or bathroom sign says unisex so want to make our shop open to everyone and make them feel comfortable. Some of the things that my shop does is every June we do a Johnny Velop bikes pride shirt, and we do a different theme. This year. It was Live Loud. And what we decided to do was we sold those shirts, I underwrote the costs, and we donated those funds to clay sculpture Center here in Columbus, which deals with LGBTQ transgenderism. I used to go there actually. Oh, did you really? Stephanie? I even have this just sitting on my floor Kaleidoscope Youth Center little band. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Great. I’m glad you were able to reap some of the benefits from that Kaleidoscope is a phenomenal organization, like really genuinely good. One of the other things that we kind of do too is because of COVID and COVID related stuff is we had our the Clintonville which is kind of a an area of Columbus proper. We had our first clinical

25:00

Ride ride this year, and it was a torrential downpour. And believe it or not, we had about 50 people show up in a term rental downpour, we were all soaked. But we wrote through Clintonville with horns and bells and lights and everything like that. That’s our first Columbus pride ride. And it was interesting to see to when we announced that other shops kind of came out with their own pride rides as well, which I thought was great. Because of the Pride Parade here in Columbus attracts a huge number of people, but it’s been canceled now for two years. One of the nice things about it was at the end of it, everyone was like, we want to do this next year, please make sure you do this next year. And so you know, it’s something a little tradition now that we’ve kind of kicked off looking forward to it. Hey, John, can I ask are you planning to be in the Pride Parade next year? I don’t know if I’m planning to be in the Pride Parade in here’s the reason why, because I think it’s become too commercialized. I have really agree with you there. And they want a $500 donation just dissipate in the parade as a business. Wow. So I would rather give the money to a smaller organization like bioscope I have a gay son, and my family has gone to the Pride Parade. But as far as participating in that, I think it’s just become way too corporate. And I’d rather do something on a more local level, auto, how about yourself, what other kinds of things do you do as a shop owner, other ideas that a shop owner can do that kinda like that, for me, just really creating a, you know, a safe environment for everyone, when they come in, we started doing shirts for our store, that it’s only kindness spoken here. And honest, I mean, it kind of covers all, you know, you know, it could be LGBTQ, but it really covers a whole range of topic, you know, so just really creating an open, providing safe atmosphere for everyone. Pride Month, you know, it’s a good time, you know, you can like participate in events like that, just to kind of show, you know, then, for people to see that you’re part of it. It’s not just for that month that kind of helps cover, you know, the whole year kind of thing. Dante your shop did a pride event today, we participated in a smaller one, I completely forget what we did. Because it was handled above me, let’s say the coffee right or something. So like this store, I personally run the copyright out of Bexley store. So okay, for the entire Pride Month, I called it every ride is a pride ride. So, but that’s on the store level. I know, at the company level, we haven’t really done anything for a couple of years. Hopefully, that is one of my things to try to change. And it’s one of my passions of being in the bike industry this long is working on on that inclusivity that’s been sorely missing, especially doing this for so long. I’ve seen how little the bike scene has really changed in terms of inclusivity and diversity. So but yeah, hopefully moving forward now that everyone’s starting to get out. Now hopefully, we can do more related events in the future. I definitely think putting up pride flags is helpful. It doesn’t have to be just in June, just a rainbow flag and a trans flag. That’s really all you need. And then people are aware that hey, this is almost certainly a safe space. Yeah, sure. We do a rainbow sticker. It’s kind of at the bottom of our door, and I probably should make it full face or something like that. But I have different flags that I bring on. I do a pride flag, but you just mentioned the trans flag too. And could you kind of explain a little bit. So the rainbow flag. Oh God, I don’t even remember my flag history.

29:02

It was originally made ROY G BIV. And then it had like a pink stripe. Now it’s just the rainbow flag that everybody knows about. It’s technically supposed to represent the entire LGBT community. But there are also sub flags like the trans flag, the lesbian flag, the MLM flag, etc, etc. Policy and flag is pink and orange to trans flag is pink, blue, white, blue, pink, I think I might have switched.

29:32

And it’s just stripes. Yeah, it stands for the transgender community. Essentially, it’s just a tower flag. Stephanie, have you referred please before that do different types of pride events or not really actually, like the most I ever got was Kroger’s, like, just wholesale commercial like pinkwashing. So that, like I never really got to do any real events and even at the

30:00

sandwich shop with two gay guys, it was still just not a big deal. So let’s talk a little bit more as a shop owner in the bike industry and Dante you as an employee as well and Steph, you as a customer, because I remember you coming in multiple times, what are some of the issues someone in the bike industry is going to come across with an LGBTQ or trans gender person? It could be bike selection, bike fitting, fitting is a tricky one. You know, like, I remember when you fitted me for my bike. It’s a big bike. I didn’t expect to need a bike that big, you know, still glad that I have it. Even though it’s a giant bike, it is so comfortable to ride, literally as a giant bike stuff. Well, yes, that’s yes. But it’s a big bike. And it’s easy to ride because it was properly sized. Because I remember specifically, we had to go that route because you have very long legs. I do have very long legs. Yes, I am for the record. 511. So I’m a big girl. Otto, have you had any situations? Or do you have any advice? Personally, when I’m working with a customer? I mean, it’s definitely just more, I tried to just make it more about like, what kind of writing Do you want to do? You know, like, more on the writing side, what they’re looking for, to help them like, choose the right bike and all that kind of stuff. I’ve had to consult some guy friends, when I get, you know, the questions for a man about saddles, and how should it? Yeah, that’s the awkward part for me, because, you know, and I kind of consult my, my good close guy friends that to come up with an answer for that, because I can’t speak from experience for different, but people just, you know, assume that, okay, Dante, how about yourself, I’ve been lucky. Being in an industry for so long, I’ve been to all the training for fitting and, you know, talking to people about clothing and stuff. And the big takeaways I took away from a lot of fitting stuff was to keep everything I went to a trek fitting school and the guy described it as you know, talk to him, like a doctor to a patient keep everything very, you know, kind of sciency and cut and dry. So like, when talking to you know, a woman or someone who, who’s looking at a saddle, you know, you always referred to soft tissue or I can’t even remember the name of the, you know, the spot between, you know, that’s like the no man’s land, like we like to call the taint.

32:43

There’s an anatomical term for it that you would use to kind of keep everything kind of sterile. My big beef with you know, I love giant, I used to race through a giant long, long time ago. But my big beef was when they split giant and live up into two separate entities saying, you know, live is when and only what I’ve been changing with my language in the last several years was keeping bikes gender neutral. That’s a bike, you know, you happen to like the color purple, what’s go for the schedule on a purple bike, doesn’t matter what it’s calling if it’s called a live women’s bike or whatever. And it drives me crazy and stuff. The giant Rob hears from me every once in a while. It’s like, why can’t we just go back to just giant bikes? So everyone just like gets on a bike and just rides? I think there might be some women out there that appreciate it. Right? Yeah. And from a sales standpoint, I can understand because I’ve had times where I’ve had guys come in and they just don’t you know, shorter men just sometimes don’t feel comfortable on the men’s version or the giant bike and move over towards a lead bike because it feels better to them. So yeah, and then live has been kind of getting better with I hate to use the term girly, but for a long time, the paint jobs were just every female trope you can think of, you know, leaves flowers, like oh my gosh, come on. Yeah, like it’s like, I wouldn’t fucking bike. Yeah, I do want pink and purple on my bike. Right? But there’s not a pink and purple bike and my size, exhort. It’s yeah, but godforsaken reason.

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I’ve actually had father’s storm out of the store, when I’d have a child, who, for all intents and purposes is a boy from just the way they’re dressed and the way they’re being addressed. Wanting what is you know, considered a quote unquote, girl’s bike. The last conversation I had once was a little boy wanted a green bike and dad was just not having it because green was a girl’s color. And his wife Oh, that’s No, I didn’t know that. Yeah, same here. To me, and, you know, I’ve been an artist for a while, but Mom politely pushed back against dad’s side.

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If that’s the color he wants, colors don’t have any gender. And he kind of stormed out the store. And she looked at me and she goes, I’m correct, right? I’m like, Yeah, last time I checked, blue and yellow didn’t get together and make green. I mean, the colors are genderless kid wants a green bike was get him on a green bike. I did experience that too. I just had that happen to me this weekend with a 12 inch kid’s bike, and the little boy wanted the more girly wine and the grandparent was not having it. Right and wanted an alternative. And I showed her alternative. And the boy kept saying even after he looked at the other, he wanted the other and she was like, Well, no, we’re gonna get this other one. You know, she force? Yeah, boy, yeah, you walk that fine line between, you know, trying to educate people on things like that. But like I said, Before, I just try to keep everything as gender neutral as possible. I’m just here to put you on a bike that makes you happy. If it happens to be the color you love, hey, let’s go for it bikes or bikes. Keep it fun. So I don’t know, if you had any different experiences or nothing, like jumps out at me. I mean, personally, I would think, at least some of the brands that I’ve been working with, you know, a lot of the colors have, at least in the past few years, kind of been more gender neutral. And, you know, really, like, you hear a lot more of like maybe older generations where like, someone would come in, like a bike with a slant top to like, well, that’s a girl spike. And it’s like, not really, I mean, if it’s an older person that they’re like, over the saddle, they need a

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bicycle. So I just tried to, and that’s kind of where it’s, you know, when I talk to customers, it’s like, what kind of riding are going to do what kind of bike do you you know, it’s, it’s more of like, their riding style? And yeah, I mean, I’ve definitely had men asked for step three, because they’re like, I can’t swing my leg over the bike. You know? So just kind of keeping with that. I mean, yeah, those

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just got people on bikes.

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And mid step frames at one time, were considered more feminine. And you’re right, a lot of older people these days are, I can’t get my leg over. And so I want something that’s a little easier to get off and that sort of thing. So I remember I had a guy that was six for wanting to step through, try and find a step through for six for person. It’s not easy. You know? Yeah, no. So that was a really good point as well. Reaching, you know, the top of our hour here. Does anyone else have any suggestions or things they’d like to say? Either to shop owners knowing that, you know, this is going out to the bicycle industry. There’s a lot of shop owners, there is a lot of industry companies, bike manufacturers that listen to our podcasts. Any advice you guys might want to give them, make more sizes of bikes, don’t split up sizes of bikes by gender to bike manufacturers. That is my genuine request. I think it drives me bonkers, okay. It’s not just for transgender people. That’s just everyone. Because what if a really buff, muscular six four guy comes into your shop? There’s like, I’d like the purple bike, please. Like we can’t get that right now. That’s ridiculous. You don’t have to cater to stupid gender stereotypes. That’s dumb. That is my advice

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to the industry, like as a whole. I mean, I think we’ve seen like a lot of like, the bigger companies start to go out and like maybe state, you know, their stance on things and to continue educating their employees and educating everyone, from my personal experience, like the cycling community that I was around when I transitioned was so supportive. I mean, I was racing, then, you know, and it wasn’t a big deal. You know, the one year I was racing in the women’s field, and I took a little break and came back and I was racing in the men’s field, and no one had an issue with it. And everyone, you know, was great. You know, that was my personal experience. And I think that we can make that the experience for other people. If we just continue educating people. I think we’re starting to see that more to Nikah has an other category as well. And that’s for kids sixth grade through 12th grade, I believe are the ages that they have a high Oh, just had their inaugural season. I actually have a transgender sixth grader on the Nike team that I sponsor has had no issues, anything like that, which I think is great. I think it’s becoming more acceptable within the school systems and things like that, too. The other thing I’d say two is if you go back a few years and look at Bicycling magazine, it was all white men, white women, you never had any ethnicities and things like that and

40:00

Right. Bicycling finally got called out for it and came up and said, Hey, we’re gonna represent other classes of people that are cyclists that we have been under serving. And if you look now at a Bicycling magazine, there are photos of African Americans and I don’t know if they’ve done a lot with the LGBTQ people yet or not, but I guess I need to renew my Bicycling magazine as well. To stay on top of that. Dante Have you seen the industry trending to them? It’s getting better. So I’ve actually talked to Molly Cameron, if anyone knows Molly Cameron, came out as a transgender woman several years ago, a long time ago, one of the few transgender women to race UCI cyclocross in the women’s and men’s categories. But there was a lot of pushback when she was racing. So now, she started her organization called Ride dot board that is basically championing transgender rights and, you know, cycling and racing, obviously, because that’s her passion. Was that website again? ride.org. But it’s changing. There’s still, you know, we have all these laws being passed by, you know, boneheaded states, kicking transgender athletes out of competition. And so far, I haven’t seen anything, at least on the cycling side of things of that affecting the cycling scene. Any but I believe we did have nurses saw some of the rise laters Yeah, they passed legislation there, but like, they just had a cyclocross race. But as far as I know, like, those laws are only limited to like Arkansas schools, maybe I don’t know, I’m not really keen on the specifics. But I think it’s like high school sports, you know, you’re only allowed to participate in the gender you were assigned at birth, that sort of thing, which is insane, by the way, completely deranged. And you have the laws in Florida, where a school administrators, if your kid is challenged on their gender, school administrators will inspect their gender, right? They’re allowed. Absolutely. What does that say about Florida School Administrators? It’s a little a little gross, kind of disgusting, revolting, etc, etc. But, yeah, but from a store employee, I guess, as a customer, sometimes, the big takeaway is, you know, transgender people don’t want to be treated differently. They just want to be treated like human beings. I mean, it’s this whole kindness aspect. That’s a very, very good point. You know, if you see a transgender person don’t like make a parade out of it. We just want to be normal human beings. That’s all it is. And, you know, people with their crazy belief systems want to make it out more than something it’s not, you know, like, I have to tell you this, I had a former employee who felt the need that he needed to bring up a person’s sexuality. Every time they came into the shop, right? It’s super awkward. I had I talked to him about this a number of times, and two women came in the shop, and he immediately found out oh, they’re new to the area, blah, blah, blah. He starts going in, and they had not mentioned one thing about their sexuality and preferences, anything like that. Oh, I want to let you know, Columbus is the San Francisco or the Midwest, and it’s very old. No. You

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know who I’m talking about? I say, is it who I think it is? Yes, it is. So Oh, no, that explains a lot. I cringed while he was saying this. And they left. And I went, and I talked to him. And I said, Why do you continue feeling you have to bring up how woke you are or how accepting you are. All they want to do is come in and shop. They don’t want to go into patient about their sexuality. Right. And believe it or not, I got a Facebook message that evening from that couple. And they said that they had felt very uncomfortable with the whole situation. Oh, yeah. And I totally agreed with him. I felt uncomfortable. I watched it unfold. And he had good intentions. He wanted to make them feel comfortable but in bringing it up and pointing it out to them that made them feel uncomfortable. And it’s like you said, you just want to be treated as anyone else. Right? That’s one of the you know, my therapist told me a good barometer to use when when talking. If you feel like you’re going to say something like that is like would it make you feel uncomfortable? If you were to ask yourself that and again, that’s where you know, I’ve been trying to watch

45:00

What I say and try to be more cognizant of how I talk to people and for transgender people, it could be a dangerous situation if you were to just point it out blurt it from the mountaintops with good intentions, that person’s transgender. There’s a lot of violence towards transgender people right now. And it’s, it’s not safe to be pointed out or outed like that in public. So, but yeah, it’s just again, just treating people like people is all Yes.

45:27

Great. Well, thank you. I want to thank every one of you for having the courage and the honesty to come on and talk about making our industry better and understanding transgender people better. It’s been a pleasure, Otto. First time I’ve met you want to come down to your store and have a margarita or something like that as well. Boy, bikes and booze. That’s to my favorite things. Stephanie, from a customer standpoint, I want to thank you for allowing us to have the opportunity to serve you and Dante. I wish you luck in your continued transition. And thank you moving forward. And thank you, everyone. I think this has been a really good conversation. Thank you. Awesome. It was great you thank you for having us. This has been bicycle retail radio by the National bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership, and member benefits, join us@nbda.com

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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year. 

Learn more about the benefits of being a member and join now.

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