Uneasy rider
January 16, 2003 - In her life as an academic, Kate Sutherland's identity is relatively transparent. She fulfills certain expectations people have of her role as an instructor, and there is only so much room for ambiguity.
But when she slips into her leathers and pulls on her motorcycle helmet, all of that changes. She's often mistaken for a teenage boy--and she revels in the misconception. It's like putting on a disguise, she says, and the feeling is liberating.
"No one knows where to put me," says the professor of English from University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, B.C. "I like the cloak of invisibility."
While she enjoys being 'invisible' as a rider, what interests Sutherland most as a scholar is that which is most visible in our culture--sexual stereotypes, and images and icons of power--especially as they relate to motorcycle culture.
In a talk Wednesday entitled Riding Bitch: The Uneasy Ride of a Chick on a Bike, part of the University of Alberta English Department's Culture on the Edge visiting speaker series, Sutherland spoke about the contradictory ways in which women are defined in motorcycle culture. (A 'riding bitch,' incidentally, is anyone, male or female, who rides on the rear seat of a bike.)
At times, she says, the culture defines women as subservient, as ornamental trophies paraded on the back of a Harley. In one biker's ritual, especially among Harley riders, women are expected to show their breasts on demand. Sutherland says it happened once to her at a gathering of motorcyclists; she politely declined.
But if a woman has her own bike, says Sutherland, she is often accorded far more respect. "In my own experience, women have been incredibly supportive of my riding," she says.
In order to tease out the implications of woman as an ornament, however, Sutherland examined the history of hood ornaments on mid-twentieth century cars, and nose art on aircraft, both showing bare-breasted female figures evolved from the figureheads of old ships.
Sutherland noted that the ship's figurehead was derived from the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Greek sculpture depicting a very powerful goddess of victory. The figurehead and its descendants, therefore, which remove the legs of the original goddess, are attempts to tame a powerful female sexuality, says Sutherland. And there, in a nutshell, is the complicated relationship between man and machine.
In fact the desire for speed itself, says Sutherland with reference to a prominent theorist on the subject, is really an attempt to reconnect with the mother.
Heady stuff, to say the least. And she admits to being slightly apprehensive when she considered these topics for a new course she is teaching called Motorcycles, Speed and Literature. On day one, she found herself face-to-face with a mostly male class, many of them mature students, "and they all love, love, love riding," she says.
"It's a real contrast with my Indian literature class," she says, "which has all these eggheads who want to read Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses--the pure English major types. (In the motorcycle class) I have these guys who want to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
Perhaps the toughest moment so far, she says, was when the class had to discuss the motorcycle gang initiation ritual of rape.
"What I learned is that, ultimately, the class is very receptive to tough topics," she says. "There might be some resistance initially, but it's a matter of how you approach the subject. If you encourage them to be forthcoming about it and solicit their reaction to the material first, rather than coming in and saying, 'This is how I see it'…then they are not so defensive."
And there is, of course, the added convenience that, for this class, anything is cool by association with motorcycles. Take, for example, a feminist text called The Perfect Rider by a female motorcycle enthusiast and academic. "It's a feminist text, but they all really liked it. They feel, she knows how to work on her own motorcycle, so she's gotta be okay," says Sutherland.
Sutherland's lecture was the first in the Culture on the Edge series. Next week, U of C film studies professor Maurice Yacowar will speak on the television series The Sopranos at noon in HCL-3.
Related link – internal
The U of A Department of English Web site:
http://www.ualberta.ca/~englishd/ENGHOME1.HTM
