Izzy Sederbaum is a trans-masculine cyclist and policy scholar who survived a rare cougar attack on a ride outside of Seattle in early 2018. Izzy was hospitalized with severe facial trauma while hateful anti-trans rhetoric filled comment sections of news articles that he had little to no control over. All the hatred pushed Izzy in a direction motivated by love. Today he's working to make cycling more inclusive for people with marginalized identities.
Izzy Sederbaum is a trans-masculine cyclist and policy scholar who survived a rare cougar attack on a ride outside of Seattle in early 2018. Izzy was hospitalized with severe facial trauma while hateful anti-trans rhetoric filled comment sections of news articles that he had little to no control over. All the hatred pushed Izzy in a direction motivated by love. Today he's working to make cycling more inclusive for people with marginalized identities.
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At REI we remain committed to ensuring that the outdoors, the co-op and society at large are accessible and welcoming to all people—including transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming people.
Shelby Stanger:
Hey, this is Shelby. I want to start this episode off by letting you know that this conversation contains strong language and descriptions of traumatic situations. Listener discretion is advised.
Izzy Sederbaum:
That was the first time I was like, Someone would listen to me because I introduced myself as this... I don't even know what to call it, right? It's this jarring story that most people have heard about. And on the one hand, that felt a little icky of tokenizing my experience and my trauma. But on the other hand, I was like, oh, no one's going to listen to me otherwise. I'm just another person in a sea of people who has an opinion. And yes, I realize that once you start talking to me, I've been racing bikes for a really long time and have seen a lot of different iterations of bike racing. But before we can get to that, you actually have to start listening to me.
Shelby Stanger:
That's Izzy Sederbaum. You might have heard about Izzy in the news a few years ago. He was involved in a freak accident that was a huge story in the media. In 2018, Izzy was out biking with a friend in Washington State when they were attacked by a cougar. Izzy survived with serious injuries, but his friend SJ Brooks didn't make it. Recovering from the incident was obviously a challenge, and it didn't help that the story got so much attention. As a trans man, Izzy received a ton of online abuse, along with misunderstanding and speculation. People said that he and SJ didn't belong out there in the first place. What's incredible is that all this hatred has pushed Izzy in a direction motivated by love. Today he's working to make cycling more inclusive for people with marginalized identities. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios Production.
Izzy Sederbaum, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm excited to have you on the show.
Izzy Sederbaum:
Yeah, I'm excited to be here.
Shelby Stanger:
You ride bikes, and so I'm really curious, what does cycling and riding bikes do for you?
Izzy Sederbaum:
I mean, starting from a young age, I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, and it's interesting because it's suburban, but also feels very exurban. And so riding bikes provided a way to get out and expand just the realm of how far you can go. And I used to be able to ride out. My mom would let me ride out to this main road, which would be, I think, round trip, maybe three miles. And that just felt very freeing. And I think that I used it just as a way to explore and figure stuff out. And then I stopped really riding when I got into middle school and high school because I started playing team sports really seriously, and I really love team sports, but they just never had this freeing aspect the way bikes did. Whether I'm riding alone or riding in groups, there's just something that, the only way that I can explain it to people who don't ride is I think it's, for me, the closest thing to achieving mindfulness.
If you ever watch videos on how to meditate, they'll talk about, it's not the idea that you won't have any thoughts, but they'll just float by. And I feel like I'm able to achieve that in a way that I just can't normally. And so it's very helpful for processing things, but it's also very helpful sometimes if you're just sheerly overwhelmed. And so it's always brought joy, and as an adult, it's just continued to be an outlet and just also a way to push myself. I've always been interested in finding that edge, as it were. Like how do I challenge myself, and how do I keep challenging myself, both physically and mentally? And sometimes you fail miserably, but sometimes you don't. And that's extremely gratifying.
Shelby Stanger:
Izzy has always tried to push his own limits on and off the bike. In 2008, he moved across the country to Oregon and soon began studying community development at Portland State University. When he wasn't studying, he worked as a bike mechanic, and he competed on the university's cycling team. During that time, Izzy biked everywhere; to work, to school, to hang with friends, you name it. Then one day, Izzy was biking when he got hit by a car and landed face down in the middle of the street. For many people, that kind of accident would scare them away from cycling. But just four weeks later, Izzy was back on the bike. Hardly anything could keep him away from his sport. Izzy moved to Seattle in 2012 to get his master's degree. In late 2017, he met SJ Brooks, a fellow trans-masculine cyclist. Izzy had been searching for a queer biking community, and he was really glad to find SJ at a time when he was feeling a little isolated. On May 19th, 2018, Izzy and SJ were out biking together on a logging road about 20 miles east of Seattle when something really terrible happened.
Izzy Sederbaum:
We were approached by a cougar. It came from behind us, and we did everything that I had been trained to do, that I knew to do. I'm not a big person, I'm only 5'3, but trying to yell and to throw things that were easily accessible and to get big, and initially it ran off, and I turned to my friend and was just like, are you okay? Because I had been in front of them, so they had been closer to the animal at first. Just to be like, anytime something adrenaline that causes an adrenaline response, you want to be like, are you okay? It might be just like you step off a curb and you almost get hit by a bus, and before you act again, you should probably reset yourself. And in that moment, it came back. And so we continued to try to fend it off.
I, at one point, threw my bike, and I believe it hit it based on seeing my bike a number of months later. That was very bloody. And at that point, it charged me and it grabbed me by the shoulders with its paws, and basically my entire face was in its mouth. And I credit wearing a helmet to saving my life, which is a very morbid PSA to wear helmets. But I do think it really did that. And one thing I do want to set straight is, I don't know what happened because as soon as I was attacked, I lost my vision between my glasses. My glasses were broken, and I can't see without glasses. But also the entire right side of my face was shattered.
And so I basically had one eye without vision correction. And so, I don't know, I have an audio memory of what happened, but I cannot speak... And so who knows? But I really hate that people are like, "Your friend tried to abandon you, and then you abandoned your friend." It's like, no, that's not what happened. I also have training as many years ago, I took wilderness first aid, and the first thing that you're taught is, unless you can go in and fix the situation and you're 100% comfortable doing that, get professional help. And so to be incapacitated and to not be able to see, the first thought I had was get help.
Shelby Stanger:
Izzy grabbed the closest bike and rode three and a half miles until he found some people who helped him call 911. He was instructed not to go back to the scene to try to help his friend SJ. Unfortunately, SJ did not survive the cougar attack. The story of the incident quickly spread, receiving national attention, but the media got a lot wrong, and Izzy started getting hateful, hurtful comments.
Izzy Sederbaum:
One of the biggest surprises I found to surviving a internationally publicized event was the amount of people who, you should never read comments on the internet, but the amount of people who were like, "This happened to you because you are trans and you deserved this, and you shouldn't have been there and you didn't know what you're doing." And the list goes on. And I think that for trans people, but honestly anyone who has a marginalized identity, I think especially black and brown people as well in this country, that there's this idea that we can't be happy. And so coming out of this event, this attack, whatever you want to call it, I was just really naively surprised at the amount of people who said the things that they said. I got everything from unnatural and abomination, all the words. For the most part, my reaction is like-
Shelby Stanger:
F off.
Izzy Sederbaum:
F--k off and die. I don't care. But I think that's what I really took from it is like, oh, you feel this way. You feel like whoever we are, if we're not straight and white and usually men, that we can't be happy. I really felt for a while completely silenced, and I didn't know how to talk about it because it had been so sensationalized. And just to hear even, basically, everything that's on the internet about it is wrong to some degree. And all of the speculation of what went wrong and the people who think they know what happened. The 911 dispatcher, we were given professional directive to not pursue and to not go up the mountain. And that sucks and it's a terrible feeling. But I did what I could do in the moment in hope that getting professional help would, I don't want to say fix the situation, but improve it beyond... you know, it was a worst case scenario.
And that's something that I have to live with and that's my business. And so, going along with the fact that people were like, "You didn't know what you were doing. You deserve this." It's like, you don't know what happened. You have no idea what happens when you call 911. In hindsight, I think having bear spray could have helped, but I also think that, in hindsight, this animal was pretty set. We hit it in the face repeatedly with different objects, and it didn't stop. And so maybe I understand that bear spray is supposed to incapacitate large animals, but at the same time, people also don't realize that when you recreate in the Northwest, you know that there's always a chance of many different things that could happen. And it is the reality. And I don't mean that flippantly, I just mean that this stuff happens. And I don't think that anybody is to blame. And I firmly believe that part of the reason we were blamed is because we were two trans people and because they were black, and we are people who do not traditionally recreate outside or are not seen recreating outside.
I feel like we bonded over the fact that we had a shared identity and we wanted to, although, we looked diametrically different, we were two trans people who wanted to be able to experience joy together in a community that we often could not access. And so it felt like I also want to continue to do my side of the work that they were doing by increasing inclusion and trying to show other people that you have the right to experience joy. And it might be through bikes because I get it through bikes, and so maybe you can too if you are given the tools and the experience, and the ability to come with me and my team, and my community and enjoy bikes, too.
Shelby Stanger:
Izzy went through a horrible, traumatic, life-altering event. Aside from the emotional trauma, there was a major physical impact. Half of his face was crushed, including important facial nerves, and he nearly lost his left ear. But with intense plastic surgery, acupuncture, and trauma focused therapy, Izzy has made an astounding recovery. He's also emerged from the incident determined to continue finding joy in the outdoors. When we come back, we'll hear about Izzy's cycling team, Wild Composite Racing, and his mission to welcome a more diverse group of folks into outdoor spaces.
In May of 2018, Izzy Sederbaum was out biking when he and his friend, SJ Brooks, were attacked by a cougar. SJ, who used they/them pronouns led the Seattle chapter of Friends on Bikes. It's a group focused on creating space for women, trans femme, and non-binary people of color to enjoy biking together. After the accident, Izzy wanted to carry on SJ's legacy and work to make the cycling scene more inclusive. Today, Izzy helps lead Wild Composite Racing, a gender expansive cycling team that mostly races gravel. Gravel is a form of riding that takes place on unpaved roads and trails. It's somewhere in between road cycling and mountain biking.
So tell me about this Wild Composite Racing team.
Izzy Sederbaum:
The idea is that we are, now the terminology I think people are really using is gender expansive. This year, our iteration, we are a mostly trans and non-binary team, although, two of our members are cisgender women, who are working to expand inclusion and inequity within... We, as a team, are most concentrating on the gravel racing scene, although we all race different and ride different disciplines. And so what that means, I mean, I really love this team for a number of reasons. One is that we don't have the money or the wherewithal to have a team of 30. And so it's really about the community building. And so we have partnered with other teams and other groups like The Black Foxes, Native Women Ride, and I feel like we are this coalition that we show up in these spaces, and it's just not only, representation matters, and so we are visually trans, and visually black, and visually indigenous and women and non-binary people.
But, also, there is strength in numbers. If you build it, they will come mentality is not enough in equity and inclusion. No space is going to be perfectly safe, obviously, but creating a type of space where people feel safe being there. And part of it is going to places like Oklahoma or Arkansas that have historically been unfriendly at best and violent at worst. So we work, among other things, we work with race directors to help bring people in, but also be like, okay, well, at the worst case situation, you have someone who is being virulently racist or virulently transphobic. What are you, as a race director, going to do? And so luckily, knock on wood, that has not ever happened in any of the races we have attended. Although, I'm sure microaggressions and stuff like that, obviously, are still happening. But it's the two sides of the same coin of increasing visual representation and also working to actually make the spaces more inviting.
And there's been pushback, there's always comments. Anytime a race is like, we're going to earmark 30% of participants to do this. And there's always the middle-aged white man who gets angry because he's like, "Well, what about me?" And it's like, Well, it's always been about you, but my goal and my co-directors' goal is to bring people in who, maybe they've never raced before. They're just curious, oh, maybe racing, maybe I'll like racing. And we're all coming. Yes, we have people who end up on podiums, but we also, we're all coming from a place of like, oh, I like racing because I like to push myself and I like to push my community members who also want to be pushed too to see, oh, can I ride a little faster? Can I ride a little further? Can I ride starting at an egregiously early time in the morning?
Shelby Stanger:
An egregiously early time in the morning, I love that.
Izzy Sederbaum:
It's rough when you have to start a race at five in the morning, four in the morning. Some of the bike packing races start at four. I'm like, nope, not for me.
Shelby Stanger:
I love the name, Wild Composite. Obviously, there's the word Wild in it, but it's just a great name. Your role is Team Dad. Team Grandpa.
Izzy Sederbaum:
Yeah, so I'm the co-director and the Team Dad, and part of that comes from, I'm the person who is logistically going to probably figure out what flights you should be on and make sure that you're at the start line and have cookies with you. I will say my love of cookies hilariously comes, I don't remember if it was a podcast or what I was reading, but Allen Lim, who's one of the founders of Scratch Labs, I guess it was around the time that they started making cookie mix. They were like, "If you look at what goes into making a chocolate chip cookie versus you look at an off-the-shelf energy bar, there's less sugar and no things you can't pronounce coming out of a homemade chocolate chip cookie."
And he's like, "If you look at the nutrition profile in terms of carbs, it's very similar, and you can control how much sugar you put into a cookie." And I was like, okay, sold. I don't need to spend $2.50 cents each on a bar, I'm just going to start bringing cookies. But it just became this, I've always loved chocolate chip cookies, I don't know, but it just became this thing of like, Oh, here's an easily accessible... I can make, I buy them food. I know what's in them, and people are very tickled when you're in a race and you just pull a full cookie out of your feed bag. People often find it very amusing as it is.
Shelby Stanger:
It's way cooler than pulling out a goo.
Izzy Sederbaum:
Yeah. I mean, I'll pull out cookies. I've had potatoes, I've had chicken tenders, which is a really good one when it's cold because it's salty. Again, and I'm not an elite racer and I'm really only pushing myself. I'm a pretty mid-pack/the lower 30% of finishers. But I think that if we also tell people you can just eat real food. You don't have to spend a lot of money. You can buy a bag of potatoes and you can roast the shit out of them and some salt and oil, and that'll power you through 100 miles pretty well.
Shelby Stanger:
If you want to try one of Izzy's chocolate chip cookies, look for Wild Composite Racing at some of the nation's biggest gravel race events. They've been at The Mid South in Oklahoma, Grinduro in California, and Gravel Worlds in Nebraska. By racing, sharing his story, and building awareness for his team, Izzy hopes to get more people outside.
What's your mission over the next five or so years, and how do you think or how would you hope the world changes because of the work you're doing? This is a big loaded question.
Izzy Sederbaum:
No, it's a loaded question... Well, it's always hard because I feel like I want to be full of joy and full of happy, but there's also, we're in this time where we're seeing policy that's being put out there that's virulently anti-trans or just very traditional in gender roles, and a lot of people are falling prey to the narrative. The newest thing is that puberty blockers and gender-affirming care has no science behind it, which is actually not true. There's, I forget how many articles since the 70s. And so the people who don't have an opinion and are getting sucked into this narrative that is just not true and it's baseless and it's another type of moral panic. And so right now, my focus is trying to be like, no, you're getting duped into people who are trying to legislate the existence of trans people away.
They're trying to be like, well, if we can make it so hard, maybe they won't exist, which is, that's not how it works. We will always exist. And so on the more serious note, I wish people could think critically or listen to trans people who are like, "We're not groomers, we're not child abusers." There is science, there is psychology behind all of this. And also, we deserve autonomy, and that's my sadder and more serious right here, right now, focus.
I think more happily and more joyously is just I want more people on bikes. I want more trans people, and more black and brown people, and more women and more older people, and more disabled people to realize that they deserve access to the outdoors. Even from, if you want to look at it from a dollars and cents perspective that the outdoor industry and racing, whether it's bike racing or running racing, or whatever it is, that the more you open yourself up and the more inclusive you are to new types of riders, the more you are going to get people to come to your events and the more people want to buy your stuff.
And the more that you introduce people to, and I'm not saying I don't want to look at it in that model, but when I talk to brands every so often, I'm like, well, if we just want to look at it in terms of people purchasing your shit, if you actually work toward this goal, you're going to get new customers. But for me, it's more about riding 100 miles on gravel's not for everybody, and that's fine, but maybe it's just riding your bike in your neighborhood or maybe it's doing a 5K, but regardless of what you're doing, I just want to get people out there. We're also in this age where everything's on Instagram, and I feel like people think that if I'm not doing epic shit, then what's the point? And it's like, oh, you don't actually have to do epic shit to do epic shit, right?
I think that if you are starting from no experience and you get yourself out there and you just get out the door, that's pretty epic. And if you try a race for the first time, that's pretty epic. We need more people who are actually connecting to the outdoors and realizing that sometimes even just walking in a park is really lovely and will actually improve your mental health. And so I think long range, regardless of whether in five years I'm still running a cycling team, it's just, I want to aid people in getting outdoors. And getting outdoors in a way where they don't feel like they have to edit themselves, or code switch, or assimilate to what has always been the outdoor person. You don't have to have all the gear, and you don't have to be eating the right space food and doing the right, all these things to be an outdoor person. I think that if you recreate responsibly and get out, that's the best thing.
Shelby Stanger:
I really admire Izzy's relationship with biking and getting outside. He's experienced so much trauma on his bike, but the outdoors have also been an incredible source of healing for him. Izzy, thank you so much for talking with me and for sharing your story with such vulnerability. We really appreciate the work you're doing to make the outdoors more accessible and inclusive for everyone. We did this interview back in December of 2022, and a lot has happened since then. Here's a message from Izzy in light of the recent events.
Izzy Sederbaum:
As of April, 2023, legislators in more than 40 states have introduced nearly 500 anti-trans bills. Missouri's Attorney General put forward an emergency rule that effectively bans gender-affirming care, not only for children, but also for adults. This is not about protecting children. These bills are based in fearmongering and debunked science. My life and the lives of my community members who have transitioned are infinitely happier and healthier. If you take only one thing from this podcast, let it be this. Listen to trans people. Let us have the autonomy to make our own decisions with help from our doctors, not the government. Let us keep our right to joy.
Shelby Stanger:
We want to dedicate this episode to the memory of SJ Brooks. Please check out Friends on Bikes at friendsonbikes.com and see if there's a local chapter you can get involved with. If you'd like to donate to Wild Composite Racing, you can do so at ko-fi.com/wildcompositeracing. That's k-o-f-i.com/wildcompositeracing. And be sure to look out for the team on Instagram @Wild.Composite.Racing. Keep an eye out for Izzy's new film called The Right to Joy, on REI's YouTube channel. You can also find Izzy on Instagram at obvi_duh. That's O-B-V-I underscore D-U-H.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow this show, rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.