Bike Lust: Harleys, Women, and American Society [Hardcover]

Barbara Joans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2001

Bike Lust roars straight into the world of women bikers and offers us a ride. In this adventure story that is also an insider’s study of an American subculture, Barbara Joans enters as a passenger on the back of a bike, but soon learns to ride her own. As an anthropologist she untangles the rules, rituals, and rites of passage of the biker culture. As a new member of that culture, she struggles to overcome fear, physical weakness, and a tendency to shoot her mouth off—a tendency that very nearly gets her killed.
    Bike Lust travels a landscape of contradictions. Outlaws still chase freedom on the highway, but so do thousands of riders of all classes, races, and colors. Joans introduces us to the women who ride the rear—the biker chick, the calendar slut straddling the hot engine, the back-seat Betty at the latest rally, or the underage groupie at the local run. But she also gives us the first close look at women who ride in their own right, on their own bikes, as well as a new understanding of changing world of male bikers. These are ordinary women’s lives made extraordinary, adding a dimension of courage to the sport not experienced by males, risking life and limb for a glimpse of the very edge of existence. This community of riders exists as a primal tribute to humanity's lust for freedom.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's hard to be in love when your friends don't quite approve. That's the fix in which anthropologist Joans (director of the Merritt Museum of Anthropology at Merritt College, in California) finds herself in this mix of memoir, anthropological study and apologia for the love of "hogs." The apologia is weakest: "Harley riders, as a group, are racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and misogynistic," she admits, but so is "most of America." The anthropology here is accessible, despite occasional academic terminology; for example, she divides bikers into seven overlapping groups of men: Old Timers, One Percenters (outlaws), Ten Percenters, Old Bikers, New Bikers, Rich Urban Bikers, and Occasional Bikers." The two major female categories (passengers and riders) further subdivide: Biker Chick, Lady Passenger, Passionate Passenger; and Lady Biker, Woman Biker, Woman Rider. But Joans's passion for the Harley and its riders is evident in affectionate, respectful profiles and interviews. Joans, who rides a Harley-Davidson Low Rider, is most engaging as a memoirist. Her accounts of bikers training their kids to ride and a wedding attended by 3,000 bikers with "the bride and groom, leather-dressed to kill" successfully convey "the glory and godawfulness of riding the wind." Photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"Move over, Robert Pirsig and Hunter Thompson! Women are bikers, too, and Barbara Joans is one of them. Bike Lust shatters myths and introduces us to a new generation of ‘gender traitor’ bikers, many of whom are wives, mothers, lesbians, feminists, and anti-feminists. Barbara Joans has found her tribe and she loves them."—Phyllis Chesler, cofounder of the National Women’s Health Network and author of Women and Madness

"Joans takes the reader inside the minds and hearts of an emergent, important, and underreported American subculture."—Allucquere Rosanne Stone, author of The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1st edition (September 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 029917350X
• ISBN-13: 978-0299173500
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,374,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Lackluster Book, November 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Bike Lust: Harleys, Women, and American Society (Hardcover)

Don't be fooled by the title of this dull book. It offers neither "lust" nor insight into what is a very interesting subject---women Harley riders. We may speculate about why someone would write such a book, possibly to exercize the author's ego or to fullfill some requirment to "publish or perish". But why would anyone read this one?

I bought the book with high hopes because I'm interested in the subject: women who ride big motorcycles. The book is really a cheap exploitation of people's interest in a "trendy" subject. The only real insights are those the author quotes from other books on the subject. The endless interviews with members of Harley-Davidson clubs are tedious and cover no new ground. Most strange is the author's glib treatment of the racism and antisemitism of some riders, as displayed by wearing of swastikas and making racist comments. Her analysis only goes so deep as to state that since most of "working class" white America is racist, why shouldn't Harley riders be? This is both an insult to working class Americans as well as to the reader's intelligence. I hope that this kind of crude apologism for racism is not widespread in anthropology, the discipline in which the author has her degree. Given the shallow analysis in the book, the author's gimmicky claim to be a rider herself is suspect and I wondered after reading it if she got most of her information from biker magazines.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you read only one book on motorcycling . . ., May 13, 2002

By 

Jamie Mays (Clark Street after sundown) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bike Lust: Harleys, Women, and American Society (Paperback)

...this shouldn't be it. As a woman, I agree that someone ought to write a book about this subject, but Joans hasn't done it justice. She admits speaking with only one "Biker Chick" (author's caps) and nevertheless produces a whole slew of generalizations--based on what? Observation without interview doesn't make anthropology. Many premises are established (shakily) and then contradicted only pages later. Apparently she "interviewed" a bunch of her friends, threw together some poorly supported conclusions and wound up with this book. The scholarship is too poor to make it an academic work, and there aren't enough good stories to make it a general interest work. Save your money, or read The Perfect Vehicle instead.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative and enjoyable read, April 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bike Lust: Harleys, Women, and American Society (Paperback)

This was an informative and enjoyable book, especially for the targeted audience. As an earlier reviewer wrote, it is not a scholarly treatise with data, so if you're an academic looking for such, you'll be disappointed. But for the motorcyclist and passenger, especially the Harley owner, it's a good read. Basically, the female author offers her opinions on Harley owners and passengers, based on her fairly recent involvement in the lifestyle. She categorizes and describes both male and female enthusiasts. Being female, and since females constitute most of the passengers and are such statistical outliers as riders, the author spends most of her time on female related issues. Her anecdotes, and those of the females she interviewed, of their riding experiences are both informative and entertaining. As a fairly recent Harley owner, I really benefitted from her insights, and I recommend the book to all my riding friends, especially the females.