History
Although the term specifically was coined by actual dykes on bikes at the first gathering at the 1976 San Francisco Pride parade, it could have been used prior to then, but came into formal use at that time. Dykes and motorcycles have been regularly intertwined in lesbian fiction and the term is sometimes used derogatorily against any woman rider who isn't with a man.
In many countries motorcycles are simply an economical and effective mode of transportation. Cheaper to purchase, maintain and use than a four-wheeled vehicle and more capable of handling narrow or poorly maintained roads, motorcycles are a simply a better option. The United States with its car friendly culture and its wide well-marked and extensive road system is an exception rather than the rule but even in America the motorcycle is used not only as transportation but as means of escapism.
According to Harley-Davidson historians female riders did everything men did from long distance riding to enjoying lazy Sunday afternoon rides with friends.
Read more about this topic: Dykes On Bikes
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)