As someone who enjoyed skateboarding in the 90s, there were very, very, very few women in the scene. There was a skatepark I frequented that would be super packed on the weekends, and I think I only ever saw one or two women in several years time.

Regardless of gender is was an extremely insular scene that was majorly actively hostile to anyone starting out overall. But if you weren’t male, everyone was either gross af trying to hit on you, or they just assumed you were shit and couldn’t be otherwise.

The area I was in, the skate scene also had a large number of Straight Edge folk, who I think were using it as a sort of appeasement tactic, like “Look Police Guy/Parents/School officials, etc, we make sure we’re substance free. We not satanist trying to menaces” but used fucking militant tactics against people in the scene. They were fucking terrifying.

It was so off-putting for me that I completely lost any interest in skateboarding. I didn’t want to be part of a scene that treated people that way.