Women and bicycles

Madam, – Having read Seán Mac Connell’s frightfully misogynistic Irishman’s Diary (April 28th), I would like to suggest that…

Madam, – Having read Seán Mac Connell’s frightfully misogynistic Irishman’s Diary (April 28th), I would like to suggest that Mr MacConnell is the one who knows nothing about women or bicycles, not Patrick Kavanagh.

Mr Mac Connell’s piece is insulting and harks back to a time in which women were considered liabilities in Ireland. If Mr Mac Connell wishes to avoid being hit by bicycles, I suggest he look both ways on the road, as we are instructed to do from infancy, and wake up to the Ireland in which he now lives. We are no longer a country that can support open sexism in a national newspaper and if Mr Mac Connell is upset by this, I suggest he goes back to the time of his comrade Kavanagh and leave the rest of us to live our lives.

While he may be “getting too long in the tooth, short in the leg and grey in the head to be dealing with young ones on bikes”, I am too sick of misogyny and ill-informed opinions to be reading the banal thoughts of a sexist while enjoying my daily newspaper. – Yours, etc,

BRIDGET FITZSIMONS,

Oakley Road,

Ranelagh, Dublin 6.

Madam, – I’m sure many readers were nodding in agreement on reading Seán Mac Connell’s Irishman’s Diary on April 28th. It is only a matter of time before a pedestrian is even more seriously injured than he was, by an errant cyclist.

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Perhaps some of the “Don’ts” for cyclists in the Rules of the Road could be displayed at the bike stations – particularly “Don’t ever cycle against the flow of traffic on one-way streets”.

In the meantime, we had better always look both ways when crossing one-way streets – to be sure to be sure! – Yours, etc,

HILARY CARR,

Dale Road,

Stillorgan,

Co Dublin.

Madam, – Was it editorial irony that From the Archives, 1906 (Opinion, April 28th), describing protest by women for the right to vote, coincided with An Irishman’s Diary, 2010, protesting about a woman’s right to ride a bicycle?

The more things change . . . – Yours, etc,

MÍCHEÁL de SIÚN,

The Coombe,

Dublin 8.