i. “A Boy’s Thing”

The core category of this grounded theory is centred on the social practice, construction, and regulation of cycling as “A Boy’s Thing”. Based on data collected and analysed in the development of this grounded theory, cycling amongst Irish adolescents – particularly cycling to secondary school – is widely considered to be a social practice that is normal for boys to engage in and socially deviant for girls. In a variety of contexts across Ireland, the visible, everyday practitioners of cycling among adolescents are boys. However, it is not only, as Central Statistics Office (2016) data shows, a social practice that is primarily performed by boys. It is also a gender norm for boys to cycle. In this way, cycling is “A Boy’s Thing”: a practice both of and for boys.

For many participants, akin to the findings of Bonham and Wilson (2012), cycling in primary school was not considered so rigidly gendered a practice. Instead, it was – as some participants described – “natural” for girls and boys to engage in cycling. Participants described a marked shift in their cycling engagement in the transition between primary and secondary school, specifically referring to a gendering process in which those who are identified as male are orientated (or coerced) toward certain masculine practices such as sports, and, likewise, those who are identified as female are “pushed” toward particular – and different(iating) – feminine practices, such as doing one’s hair and make-up in the morning. Cycling itself is one of these gendered practices, a practice that is primarily carried out by groups of boys and is considered, as one participant described, as “just their nature”. Being a teenage girl, then, is defined in a negative relation to being a teenage boy; namely, whereas boys are defined by what they do (cycle), girls are defined by what they don’t do relative to boys:

I think it’s like a thing for boys to cycle, like. Like, I think it’s just a thing for girls not to and for boys to.

Alongside this reification of cycling as a boy’s thing, participants alluded to the ongoing social construction process that maintains cycling as “A Boy’s Thing”, demonstrating how its naturalness in second-level education is actively produced:

Everyone’s always saying it’s for boys.

It is part of adolescent boyhood in Ireland, then, to engage in – and indeed hang out and meet up through – cycling, particularly with (male) friends. Cycling as a girl, on the other hand, constitutes a transgression of the gender norm that cycling is “A Boy’s Thing”; as a result, cycling as a girl is a deviant social practice that comes with negative social consequences for the practitioner (i.e., gender regulation) and a sense that they are transgressing the norm. As one participant described, as a girl, one feels social pressure to not cycle and to walk instead. As a boy, on the other hand, “They all, like, do it together. Like, you always see boys cycling in groups.” Indeed, female participants who did engage in cycling to school felt the need to account for and excuse their deviance. Furthermore, since cycling as a means of travelling to secondary school is primarily practiced by teenage boys, and much of this cycling may be amongst other boys cycling, cycling as a girl constitutes a particularly high-visibility form of deviance since one would likely, similar to the findings of Frater and Kingham (2018; 2020), travel solo rather than as part of a group, often within view of other individual and groups of students travelling to school (perhaps in gender normal ways, such as by walking).

In this theoretical interpretation of the cycling gender gap amongst Irish second-level students, we argue that cycling as “A Boy’s Thing” – a social practice of boys and a social practice for boys – is socially constructed, regulated and reproduced through prevailing social configurations of practice relating to (adolescent forms of) masculinity and femininity – or gender – in Ireland and through social processes of gender regulation. As the core category of this grounded theory, the subsequent categories we will present and illustrate with reference to focus groups with female and male secondary school students relate to how cycling is continually reproduced as “A Boy’s Thing”.

ii. Exemplifying Masculinity

With “A Boy’s Thing”, we show how cycling among adolescents in Ireland is socially interpreted and coded as a practice that is normal for adolescent boys and deviant for adolescent girls in Ireland. With the category of exemplifying masculinity, we seek to impart how various idealised masculine characteristics for adolescents in Ireland – namely, athleticism, audacity, and indifference – are exemplified through cycling itself, but particularly by cycling in a particular style. These performances of masculinity through cycling socially reproduce cycling as “A Boy’s Thing”. However, although primarily practiced by teenage boys, they can be practiced by others aspiring toward and identifying with masculinity as a social configuration of practice, including teenage girls.

First, through cycling – at all, or in a particularly physically demanding way – teenage boys (and in some cases teenage girls) exemplify an idealised masculine characteristic of athleticism: the quality of having athletic ability and physical fitness. This pattern builds on existing work evidencing how cycling may be associated with “physical prowess” amongst men (Steinbach et al., 2011, p1127). In focus groups, cycling was widely perceived by girls in particular as something requiring athleticism to engage in, rather than being a relatively modest form of physical activity. Although many of the male participants did not engage in cycling as a sport or as a form of physical conditioning per se, there was no shame – and perhaps even some pride – for those who used it as a public means for cultivating athleticism. For teenage girls to engage in cycling, however, judgement may ensue, perhaps in part due to exemplifying the masculine trait of athleticism for a practice that is socially coded as “A Boy’s Thing”. One male participant described how teenage girls are consistently subject to judgement for their behaviour to a greater degree than teenage boys and may be subject to “body-shaming” if engaging in cycling. In particular, he points out that girls may be perceived to be cycling as a means of losing weight, which may incur social stigma. However, interestingly, he also mentioned how a girl cycling can come across as a girl trying to “show up a guy”. This indicates that stigma may not only occur due to body-shaming but also because a teenage girl cycling can be perceived by boys as a threat to their masculinity – a practice that emasculates them and undermines cycling as “A Boy’s Thing”:

Guys might go on a cycle to get fit but when a girl goes on a cycle, people will tend to associate that with the girls trying to lose weight. So, the girl is trying to, like, show up a guy and…that’s not r…(participant cuts off mid-word).

Indeed, one female participant who cycles to secondary school daily described how she used to cycle to primary school and engage in physical competition with boys. Unlike her present cycling experiences where she is subject to negative backlash, cycling then was normal and even a matter of pride. In this instance, athleticism as a quality and practice does not yet appear to be reified as a signifier for masculinity and one can see this participant actively “showing up” her male classmates:

I’d race them – (puts hand on heart) […] we’d race them to the end of the primary school – it would only be, like, 15 metres. And, um…I mean, most of the time I’d win because, you know, they’re slow coaches thinking they look great (fellow participant gives amused nod) on their really super-duper bikes.

In contrast, another female participant cycles to secondary school daily and appeared to be concerned with failing to live up to the masculine ideal of athleticism amongst others cycling – especially teenage boys – by being embarrassed if she fails to “keep pace” with others. Engaging in cycling as a girl, then, may involve a pressure to compensate for not being a boy by matching the speed of any boy cycling and therefore show how one can meet the criteria of masculine athleticism for engaging in “A Boy’s Thing”. Indeed, many female participants commented on the speed that some boys may travel when cycling to school referring to boys “flying up” the road and “going really fast”. In a sense, one may feel as a teenage girl the need to prove one is worthy to engage in “A Boy’s Thing” by doing it in the same manner as boys; in this case, by matching the physical speed of other teenagers cycling:

I don’t know if this is just me because I’m a very competitive person, especially since we’re right beside a boy’s school, I’m cycling up alongside other students and I’m (smiles)….it’s probably just me but I always feel like if I’m going too slow, I feel really embarrassed, so I, like, try to keep pace with other people which ends up, like, pushing myself too far.

Second, cycling is used by adolescent boys (and, less frequently, girls) as means of exemplifying the masculine characteristic of audacity: the willingness to take bold risks. This pattern is suggested in Steinbach et al. (2011) amongst adult male participants in relation to the “thrill” and “risk” of cycling in London, but also by accounts of the bold assertiveness required for cycling in similar contexts by Egan (2021), Green, Steinbach and Datta (2020), and Larsen (2014). For some boys in this study, being a teenage boy was synonymous with engaging in acts of audacity/risk-taking and a requirement for social acceptance, and means of building social status, amongst boy-centric groups:

I think guys need to be more risk-taking to fit in. A group of guys might take risks just to look good to each other. And that might be a thing with cycling. If it’s on a busy road, more guys might do it because it’s taking a risk, if it’s very, very busy. Like, it’s not a huge risk, it’s the tiniest risk possible, but it is a risk. And then not using a helmet – the exact same. But, I think risk-taking in guys is just…(shakes head) like…it just almost has to be done.

From this perspective, audacity is a mandatory performance of masculinity. It is a means of proving one’s masculinity, or, as one participant describes, a means of competition and “one-upping” other boys, rather than being an unsanctioned voluntary matter. Cycling in a way that is safety-conscious, then, would render one open to social stigma as a boy cycling.

Overall, the most conspicuous demonstrations of audacity involve performing wheelies, travelling at high speed, and cycling without holding the handlebars. These acts can be interpreted as a highly publicised performance of the masculine characteristic of audacity; a form of social peacocking that demonstrates one’s masculinity to one’s peers within a social group and outside of it. During one focus group, multiple female participants discussed the public performance of audacity and how they are often timed by boys to impress girls:

Participant 1: Do you ever see, like, when boys do it like when a girl’s walking down the road?

Participant 2: Yeah!

Participant 1: They always just do a wheeley in front of a girl.

Participant 3: To show off.

Participant 1: Just to show off, yeah.

Participant 3: Thinking they’re mad.

In the majority of cases, audacity appears to be a collective rather than individual practice of masculinity involving groups of teenage boys. Some participants described such groups engaging in practices and displays of audacity – particularly ignoring the rules of the road – as “Hell’s Angels”, drawing an analogy with the practices of the macho motorcycling club, widely viewed as an embodiment of masculinity. More broadly, the phenomena of audacity as a collective practice of masculinity through cycling has also arguably been indicated by media in relation to daring youth cycling cultures in London (King, 2017), which details thrill-seeking practices such as playing “chicken” with motorists and pulling wheelies between vehicles in traffic. Additionally, the work of Fincham (2006) with cycle messengers in the UK depicts the audacity practiced by fellow messengers. Fincham details one incident in which a fellow messenger he was accompanying travelled at high speed through the city centre to the office, without slowing down or stopping for lights. Fincham was compelled to leave this messenger to proceed ahead, such was the speed and perceived risk-taking involved. However, he wondered whether this was an incident of the messenger “showing off” their “risky” riding style or just the way this rider engaged in cycling as a messenger. Simultaneously, Fincham felt somewhat embarrassed that he failed to emulate such a riding style – something which resonates with earlier account from one participant in this study regarding the social pressure to be audacious as an adolescent boy.

Third, whereas audacity refers to the practice of active risk-taking, indifference is another masculine social practice which reifies cycling as “A Boy’s Thing”. This involves the active practice of “not caring” or not showing concern, particularly in relation to matters of danger and toward any indicators of a (socially and officially prescribed) safety-conscious or responsible form of cycling; a pattern that also emerged in the study of Balkmar (2018), who imparted the “careless” behaviour of racing male cyclists in Sweden. There are various ways in which indifference is exemplified in the practice of cycling, one of which is the non-wearing of helmets, illustrated by the frequent sight reported by many girls in the focus groups of boys cycling to school with their helmets appended to the cycle handlebars. As one male participant described, “I’ve just never really been the type to wear a helmet.” On the other hand, other male participants who did (or, rather, were forced to) wear helmets were acutely aware of how wearing a helmet was a transgression of the masculine ideal of indifference to danger, with some describing their intuitive knowledge of this deviance presenting as embarrassment and a sense of being the “odd one out”.

Beyond non-use of helmets, indifference toward complying with the rules of the road – and the perceived risks that non-compliance may entail – appeared to be a noticeable pattern across the focus group participant accounts. The most notable form of this practice of indifference involved cycling as part of a boy-centric or all-boy group in a horizontal, as opposed to single-file or two-abreast, formation on the road or indeed on the pavement. One female participant complained about the indifference demonstrated by such “clans of boys” for other public space users by “taking up the whole road or taking up the whole footpath”. Indeed, it was clear in discussion with male participants that the rules of the road and matters of safety were not necessarily a performance of indifference but were, in many cases, a matter of indifference. As this male participant demonstrates, the rules of the road and cycling in a mainstream, responsible fashion is not a foremost concern or consideration for him when cycling:

It wouldn’t be something you’d just…nobody would sort of bring it up – mostly because you don’t think about it. You don’t think about it that way because you’re not…it’s not really the focus of the conversation you have or something like that.

This stands in sharp relief with one female participant’s expression of concern for compliant and knowledgeable cycling:

I think you need to be really well informed and know exactly what to do if you’re going to have the confidence to cycle on the road. Like I would wanna know exactly what to do in every situation before I…cycled on the road, just to be…sure.

Importantly, our framing of the non-use helmets and breaking the rules of the road as practices of indifference is not a claim that such practices are in fact dangerous or contrary to cycling safety (indeed, breaking the rules can be a means of self-preservation – see Aldred, 2016 and Egan, 2022). Rather, in the data analysed for this study, incidents of indifference often involved a resistance to the enactment of what appear to be socially constructed as the practices of safe or responsible cycling in an Irish context.

iii. Incompatible femininity

Incompatible femininity refers to the social practices required to achieve successful performances of femininity that are experienced as incompatible with the social practice of cycling in Ireland. These practices – modesty, beauty, continence, and caution – revolve around idealised feminine characteristics that render cycling in its present form incompatible with the achievement of such practices. In many respects, these phenomena of femininity can be contrasted with the highly compatible aspects of masculinity that can be exemplified through one’s style of cycling and, indeed, simply through the practice of cycling itself in an Irish context. Importantly, many of the female participants in this study described how, in transgressing these ideals of femininity in practice, they became acutely uncomfortable, “awkward”, “self-conscious”, and/or embarrassed. In contrast, when conforming or achieving these ideals in practice, they felt relatively comfortable. Their degree of comfort, self-consciousness, and embarrassment, then, seemed to be dictated to a great degree by the extent to which they conformed with, and played out, these components of femininity in everyday life. As a result, these gender phenomena, much like those of masculinity, can be critically understood as regulatory gender norms that affect control in one’s experience of public embodiment.

First, participants struggled to engage in cycling whilst simultaneously practicing modesty: the practice of covering up or concealing one’s sexualised physical features as a teenage girl; a concern and pattern also raised in the studies of Russell et al. (2021) and Ravensbergen (2020). In particular, practicing modesty was made exceedingly difficult for many participants if cycling on the basis of many girls’ school uniform – a skirt. When wearing a skirt cycling there was a perceived risk of the skirt blowing up, particularly during windy conditions but also in motion cycling, thereby revealing one’s exposed lower body to public passers-by, and maybe even fellow students or peers on the way to school. One female participant, who wears tights or cycling shorts to cover her lower body all year round, described her experience of regularly cycling to school in a skirt:

…you’re always kind of thinking – especially when there’s a lot of wind – like, you don’t want your skirt to go up, if you know what I mean, like…especially like going up a hill (uncomfortable laugh) when you have to, like, stand up kind of when you’re cycling as well. It’s the most awkward thing ever, you feel like everyone is just staring at you, you know…

As one participant described: “it’s physically impossible to cycle in one of these skirts without like showing…d’ya know”, or, as another confided, when cycling in a skirt “You never know what someone can see”. Nevertheless, a concern with the practice of modesty was not necessarily specific to the use of skirts. Indeed, participants also mentioned concerns about immodestly exposing oneself to others through the use of alternative clothing when cycling into school – “the cars passing would be looking at you in leggings” – or even trousers if these were an option in the school – “they’re a bit low waisted…so they kinda fall down a lot (laughs)”. Furthermore, when mounting a bike with a high crossbar, one participant referred to the exposure required to manoeuvre her leg over the crossbar to mount the bike, which exposes one’s lower limbs and body in public, leading to self-consciousness. Irrespective of clothing, the practice of modesty for some was challenged simply by the position in which one cycles, for example, having to stand up when cycling up a hill.

Second, participants described how beauty – the practice of cultivating and maintaining a particularly feminine physical appearance or, as many referred to, “looking good” as a teenage girl – was largely incompatible with cycling. This is in accord with existing studies indicating that maintaining a feminine image was a barrier to cycling (Frater and Kingham, 2018; Steinbach et al., 2011), including through wearing a skirt as part of the school uniform (Frater and Kingham, 2020; Hopkins and Mandic, 2017). One particularly salient pattern among female participants in this respect was the difficulty of maintaining “presentable” hair and appearance during and following cycling. For example, many participants were made by their parents to wear helmets when cycling and, as a result, would often end up with unkempt and self-described messy “helmet hair” due to the pressure of the helmet, the difficulty of fitting one’s hair into the helmet but also potentially the proliferation of sweat the helmet can induce. Indeed, wearing a helmet itself was seen as major transgression of acceptable feminine appearance (as well as a transgression of performing the masculine trait of indifference and audacity) with many participants, similar to the findings of Russell et al. (2021), describing how they would feel “ugly” if using one whilst cycling. As one participant commented: “when you wear the helmet it just doesn’t look good at all […] when you take it off it’s even worse.” Others would cycle to school without a helmet but, because of wind and/or rain, their originally styled, generally long hair would become un-styled and “wild”; as one participant described:

I straighten my hair (points). If it rains, my hair’s gonna go mad, like. It’s not a glamorous way to school but you’re not in school to look good either.

Aside from helmet use and exposing one’s hair to the elements, wearing a skirt was widely practiced as an element of achieving a threshold standard of femininity that presented difficulties for cycling. The skirt – already detailed in relation to its challenges in practicing modesty when cycling – could be imposed as a mandatory standard of feminine dress in some schools in the form of an institutional rule that “All girls must wear skirts” most or all of the time. However, there were many participants who attended schools where trousers were an option alongside the skirt. Despite the availability of this option, many felt uncomfortable or “awkward” wearing trousers, as trousers were associated with boys and a “masculine look”, compounded by the fact that, in many schools, not many girls would take up the trouser option. One participant bluntly described the social equivalent of wearing trousers as a girl: “It’s like a boy wearing a skirt”. Another participant in the same focus group detailed how, despite having the option to wear trousers, skirts were more conforming with an ideal form of dress for girls in the school.

In addition to the fear of exposure when cycling in a skirt and the practice of modesty, participants raised two particular issues: first, cycling in a skirt could be experienced as dangerous due to the perceived risk of the skirt getting caught in the chain or wheel of a bicycle or being in the way of the pedals; second, in trying to practice the feminine ideal of beauty by wearing the skirt in school irrespective of uniform policy, female students had the extra burden relative to some teenage boys of having to carry a change of clothes – and having to change clothes – as part of their cycling journey. As a result, some participants concluded: “it’s probably too much hassle to come in not wearing a skirt, because you’d have to change”.

Third, alongside regulating the exposure of one’s sexualised body parts to others and regulating one’s appearance to ensure it conforms with threshold standards of femininity, cycling was largely imparted as a practice that was incompatible with continence: the practice of regulating one’s natural bodily processes – in this case, the excretion of sweat and the accompanying body odour produced when undertaking physical activity. Put simply, based on this focus group research, perspiring as a teenage girl is taboo; it is a violation of the gender practice of continence – regulating the excretion of one’s body. Many female participants claimed that wearing heavy school bags, having to travel long distances, and encountering hills on a cycle deterred them from cycling to school. At first glance, this could be interpreted, for example, as a lack of perceived physical fitness amongst female participants relative to males. However, when interrogated, it became clear that many teenage girls were deeply concerned with exerting themselves to a degree that would stimulate perspiration. Descriptions of even the notion of cycling to school and sweating evoked widespread disgust, with some participants describing the idea of coming into school sweaty as “horrible”, “rank”, “disgusting”, and “unclean”, thereby echoing the perspectives of women in the study Ravensbergen (2020) and Russell et al. (2021) in relation to sweating when cycling. As a result, if cycling required a level of physical intensity as an activity by itself or due to exacerbating factors such as weight, distance, incline, or other factors that would contribute to a process of perspiration, this would mean that the teenage girl in question would be transgressing the gender practice and norm of continence through sweating. One participant, who regularly cycles to school, describes the challenge and experience of cycling and sweating as a teenage girl, in particular how it feels to transgress a feminine norm of continence irrespective of other’s judgement:

I know for myself, I’m only ever conscious of how I look when I’m cycling if I do wind up working up a sweat and I kind of, like, just don’t look your best coming off the bike […] it’s not even that other people will say anything…you’re just embarrassed because you yourself don’t feel that you look your best coming off the bike.

However, it is clear there is a perception that one will be judged, unlike a boy, for perspiring as a girl. In this instance, one participant describes how exerting oneself as a girl transgresses the feminine ideal of continence, as well as beauty, and – unlike boys – how conforming with this norm is policed by other people:

there’s an expectation – there is an expectation – for girls to ‘look good’ all the time, be “presentable” and, like, boys can kind of rock up to school and be smelly and sweaty and whatever and, you know, they’re being boys, they cycle to school, they have fun with their friends. Like, if you smell as a girl…“BO (tuts), like, you better…you’d want to take care of that (shakes head)”. There’s not the same standard held for both of us.

Although it did not emerge over the course of data collection, Ravensbergen (2020) points out how menstruation is also a concern for women cycling; in this respect, avoiding “leaking” (p11) while cycling or avoiding cycling altogether while menstruating could be an additional component of the practice of continence as a teenage girl that may be challenging to achieve in the practice of cycling.

Fourth, the last practice of an incompatible femininity in relation to cycling for girls is one that starkly contrasts with the masculine ideals of audacity and indifference: the practice of caution. Much like modesty, beauty, and continence – practices that one could describe broadly as practices of self-regulation – caution is characterised by a highly constrained approach to engaging with potentially dangerous activities and could be seen in part as a constraint on practices itself, unlike the predominantly positive and relatively unconstrained practices of masculinity. Whereas boys enacting masculinity take and ignore risks, girls enacting femininity appear to avoid and mitigate them. This practice of femininity has indeed been discussed at length in the cycling literature in relation to the notion of risk-aversion (e.g., Ravensbergen, Buliung and Laliberté, 2019). Minor concerns regarding the practice of caution related to fears of bike theft and lack of spaces to park one’s bicycle safely. Additionally, numerous female participants voiced a concern with losing balance and falling off one’s bike, particularly when wearing a heavy school bag that could destabilise them. It could be argued, additionally, that teenage girls who wear skirts and have long hair face greater risks of falling or crashing when cycling due to the impediments these materials of femininity present (e.g., blocked vision, keeping one’s skirt from blowing up or getting caught in pedals). Nevertheless, it was clear from focus groups that teenage girls were nearly unanimously concerned with the dangers of cycling on the road when sharing space with drivers. Cycling on the pavement, on other the hand, was in many cases not considered an option due to the scarcity of space, the danger one may pose to walkers and backlash from pedestrians who may tell a cyclist to “get on the road”. One participant described the scenario of where to cycle on the basis of practicing caution:

when you’re on a bike you don’t want to be cycling on the road cos, like, there’s like cars an all…but then when you’re on a path you don’t wanna, like, cycle into anyone, because that could hurt, like, both of yis.

In particular, female participants were fearful of cycling on the road without a robust working knowledge of the rules of the road: a matter of indifference for most of the teenage boys involved in this study. In this way, the practice of cycling on the road to school was, for many female participants, an unrealistic option since they perceived the need for training to cycle in the “proper” or “right” way on the road in order to engage in cycling in a safe and confident manner. As one participant put it: “if you put me out…onto that road…on a bicycle…I’m telling you I’d be dead in ten minutes. I don’t know to cycle on a road!”. Various aspects of cycling on roads in the “right” manner were cited, such as correctly using yellow box junctions, engaging with roundabouts, using hand signals, and knowing “where to go on the road”.

However, many participants were not necessarily only fearful of endangering themselves through non-compliance with the rules of the road. In fact, multiple participants cited disregarding and endangering driver behaviour toward cyclists as a unique concern they would have if they engaged in cycling due to a widespread perception among drivers that cyclists are a “nuisance”. “Knowing how” to cycle, then, extended beyond knowing and complying with the rules of the road. Additionally, it related to knowing how to deal with disregarding and endangering driver behaviour as a cyclist:

If I was on a bike lane, I would feel so much more…like, I’d feel more comfortable…but, it’s like…I don’t know how to cycle on the road. Like, I wouldn’t know how to deal with it if…some car came too close to me […] Like, I don’t know if I’d just freak out.

iv. Gender regulation

Having discussed the gender norms and practices with respect to the social practice of cycling, with the final category of this theory – gender regulation – we refer to a process by which conformity with these gender norms and practices of masculinity and femininity are regulated. This regulation of gender involves informal and formal disciplinary sanctions that regulate gendered bodies to comply with gender norms. We will illustrate three main patterns of gender regulation that maintain and reproduce cycling as “A Boy’s Thing”: cycling as a girl, “responsible” cycling, and dressing like a boy.

First, female participants involved in this study overwhelmingly provided personal examples of being subject to gender regulation for cycling as a girl. Indeed, when talking about cycling as a girl, some were even subject to regulation in the focus group situation with other female participants engaging in laughter and mild ridicule. For the most part, female participants recounted experiences and fears of being “looked” and “stared at”, being the subject of socially stigmatising gossip (“talked about”), being ridiculed (“laughed at”), and being “heckled” and intimidated primarily by groups of teenage boys for engaging in “A Boy’s Thing”. Such a pattern of disciplining teenage girls and women for engaging in cycling fits with those imparted by Ravensbergen (2020) and Russell et al. (2021); for example, Ravensbergen (2020, p13) reported how “some girls may avoid the bike out of fear they will be called a ‘tom boy’”. Although regulation was often subtle, frequently involving “odd looks” for engaging in cycling as a girl, more conspicuously humiliating practices were common.

Some comments made by groups of teenage boys for girls engaging in cycling had a particularly gendered and sexualised nature. For example, one participant was maliciously labelled as a homosexual – “a dyke on a bike” – for engaging in the practice of cycling. In the school that this participant attended, fellow participants revealed that this was a common slur used by groups of boys for sanctioning girls who engage in cycling. This instance clearly indicates a form of gender regulation that is distinctly heteronormative (i.e., based on a dominant framework of normatively heterosexual gender relations) with cycling being a form of deviance among girls. Likewise, another female participant who cycled in the presence of her boyfriend was labelled a “man” for being able to cycle – another common slur in this context. Accordingly, this instance once again indicates that cycling as a girl may be a transgression of heterosexual gender relations and heteronormative gender performances in which girls conform with gender norms of femininity and boys conform with gender norms of masculinity. Evidently, both incidents indicate what one cannot successfully be if one engages in cycling: a heterosexual “girl”. As one participant eloquently described cycling as a practice in this context: “it’s more for like…leaving to the boys than…a girl.”

Goading was another pattern of gender regulation for cycling as a girl. For example, some female participants recalled groups of teenagers prompting them to engage in fast cycling – and perhaps exemplify masculinity – while on the bike such as “Go on ninety!” Indeed, in one instance, a participant was literally challenged to a race having overtaken a group of boys. Nevertheless, much intimidation and ridicule by groups of boys for cycling as a girl was more about the production of any noise at all rather than saying something in particular. One female participant recalled a particularly sinister instance of intimidation that involved being chased out of public space accompanied by indiscriminate shouts when cycling home from school by a group of older teenage boys cycling. Having cycled home as quickly as possible to escape from the harassers, this participant was traumatised and confused by the experience. The remnant of the experience was an exacerbated sense of vulnerability when cycling:

I just broke down and I started crying and I was telling my parents and I just didn’t know what to do about it and […] yeah, I didn’t really feel safe afterwards.

Indeed, some female participants were even forbidden from cycling on the basis of the possibility of being socially sanctioned, albeit in a less severe way, by being “made fun of” for cycling as a girl:

My mom…she’s, like, really honest…and she said…she actually told me that people would make fun of me if they (on the cusp of laughing)…if they saw me cycling!

While cycling was a deviant practice for a teenage girl, cycling – for both those who identified as boys and as girls in this project – was regulated as “A Boy’s Thing” and in line with the performance of masculinity beyond simply who cycles; namely, how one cycles was also regulated as a means of exemplifying masculinity. In this respect, any attempt to cycle in a way that displayed “responsibility” or “caution” was subject to severe regulation for transgressing cycling as a performance of masculine indifference and audacity. Many male and female participants recounted incidents of being sanctioned for wearing a helmet in particular. As one male participant recounted “I used to unhook my helmet and put it on the handlebars” as he approached the school in order not to be “seen in the helmet”. Another male participant was asked about what happens when he wears a helmet and described how he would be subject to “slagging”, “looking” but also “slapping” from his male and female peers that he would cycle with. Indeed, many of the female participants were acutely aware that cycling in a helmet, irrespective of sex, was a transgression of how one should cycle:

Like, if someone…even if a fella was, like….seen wearing a helmet, they’d be made a show of, like. People would be like “Why are they wearing a helmet?” and all that and, like, “helmets are, like, stupid” and all, like…

However, for girls, helmets present a double burden: they conflict with the feminine practice of beauty and continence but are subject to gender regulation on the basis of transgressing cycling in the “proper” masculine way. In this way, one may feel “ugly” wearing a helmet as a girl, while also being “mocked for being safe”.

Lastly, gender regulation took place in relation to the practice of wearing trousers. For a sizeable proportion of female participants, skirts are a mandatory component of their school uniform. In this respect, girls are formally regulated to dress in a way that is designated as feminine whereas for all male participants, trousers were mandatory. A clear distinction is made, then, between being a girl and being a boy and this is reflected in the formal regulations of what one wears to school. However, many female participants were in fact permitted to wear trousers to and in school as their uniform. Nevertheless, in these circumstances, informal gender regulations made wearing trousers a “costly” option. In one respect, wearing trousers would constitute “dressing like a boy” because boys wore trousers. Consequently, many female participants described how they would be “stared at” particularly by boys if they opted for this uniform choice since it would constitute deviance from dressing like a girl – namely, in a skirt. In another respect, whilst formally an option, some participants revealed that there could be subtle regulations and penalties for wearing a skirt in their school. First, they would have to purchase two uniforms; second, they could only wear trousers at certain times of the year; and third, the principal could express subtle disapproval for a student opting for trousers despite it being a formal option in the school. As one participant described in relation to the principal’s preference for girls wearing the skirt rather than trousers: “She mightn’t say it, but…we all know she does!!”