Dear everybody,
We are proud and excited to announce that the WBMA (Women’s Bike Messenger Association) will now be known as the *BMA (Star Bike Messenger Association).
The idea for the WBMA came about in 2015 during the group ride between Sydney and Melbourne for the Cycle Messenger World Championships. Our intention was to create a group to push for gender equality within the industry and to connect the global community of messengers who aren’t cisgender men.
The loosely structured, nonhierarchical organization grew over the next few years to create a forum for its members to seek support, vent, and connect with each other. Our meetings and events at championship races, videos and promotional material, event sponsorships, and activism increased visibility of primarily cis women in the messenger community and sparked important conversations.
As we’ve grown, it has quickly become apparent that there is work to be done in order to include all of those who are under-represented in a cis male dominated field and community. While we had implied an inclusion of folks who aren’t cis women, we see a need to make the spaces we are creating explicitly welcoming to those who are the most marginalized. This name change is the first, concrete step towards this, which we feel is long overdue.
Our decision to change the name was reached through several discussions at events and a vote in a majority of members both felt a name change was necessary and indicated a preference for *BMA. We wanted this change to be both deliberate and explicit. This is a radical break from the WBMA, which carries with it the responsibility to follow through with further tangible action.
The * in the *BMA represents everyone who is under-represented in a cis male dominated field. It deliberately doesn’t center women, cisgender or otherwise, it doesn’t put one gender first. It is adaptable, egalitarian and elegant. It doesn’t allow for assumptions and it demands a question which we are prepared to answer.
Over the next few months, expect more from us. We are going through the process of registering as a legal nonprofit and are reviewing our mandate and guidelines. In this time of change, we would like to formally invite any and all trans, non-binary, agender, genderqueer folks and all those who had kept their distance to due to the previous name to get involved.