Toronto's rival naked bike rides roll out their feud
A long-running queer and trans ride sets off this afternoon alongside the original, with a different set of rules
Toronto’s World Naked Bike Ride takes to the streets Saturday, June 13, as it has every June since 2004. This year a second clothing-optional ride sets off across town at the same hour, and its organizer says the two events stand for opposite things.
The original ride departs from Coronation Park, part of an international protest movement against oil dependence and a celebration of body freedom that organizers say reaches more than 80 cities. A competing ride leaves from Allan Gardens, organized for queer, transgender, and feminist participants by the activist Abuzar Chaudhary. In an interview with TorontoToday, Chaudhary described the relationship between the two events bluntly: “This is very much in opposition.”
Chaudhary, a transgender woman, told the outlet she helped organize the Toronto ride in its first year but stopped participating and launched her own version in 2022, after the event stopped feeling safe to her and other members of the LGBTQ+ community. She said she experienced harassment and inappropriate touching at past rides, and argued that a leaderless event cannot remove people who make women and trans riders uncomfortable. Her ride, by contrast, sets explicit conduct rules and prioritizes racialized, queer, and trans participants. She framed her aim in stark terms, saying she wants the original ride replaced. In a separate interview with NOW Toronto, she estimated that at least 20 people from her own circle had stopped riding.
Gene Dare, who has organized the original ride since 2008, denied Chaudhary’s harassment allegation when reached by TorontoToday and defended the event as open to everyone. He said a second ride “just creates confusion,” and that Chaudhary’s version “doesn’t hold the values of the World Naked Bike Ride,” though when pressed he did not name a specific value at odds. Dare said he was aware of one sexual assault during the ride’s history, roughly eight years ago in Kensington Market, which he reported to police, along with two occasions when he asked aroused participants to step aside. “It’s not a sexual ride and we make sure we enforce that,” he told the outlet.
The dispute sits on a fault line familiar across organized nudism: whether a deliberately leaderless, everyone-welcome model can protect vulnerable participants, or whether safety requires named organizers empowered to set rules and remove people. Chaudhary’s ride has run in some form since 2022, often under the QTCASE and Body Pride banners, with the same anti-colonial, body-politics framing and the same Allan Gardens staging. Both rides begin Saturday afternoon. 🪐
