#dragyn

"BICYCLE DRAGYN" by long-time female cyclist (and, of course, artist/animator/generally awesome person) Nina Paley.

“I was actually talking to my dear friends and collaborators, they bring so much to this - Bearded Dragyns. I was talking to Shen [Womack-Smith] and how they weren’t coming to MFR this year, and they were very very sorely missed. And I made the decision to not fill their vendor space. Which was a prime vendor space, because they’re going to come back next year. And I didn’t want them to be forgotten, because Shen, of course, created our beautiful, vibrant imagery of the Year of the Mother - our energetic mother that was everywhere there. And I said, ‘What are we going to do next year?’ and - you know - their ‘dragon’, of course, is spelled with a ‘Y,’ and we said “Next year’s going to be the Year of the Dragyn.” And we just threw it out there, and I said ‘Why the heck not?’

And then I had to think about, what does that actually mean? What does it mean? What - what spirit, what qualities, what skills, what energy, does it mean to be a dragon, with the ‘gyn’? G-Y-N, at the end. And if you know the Latin root, of ‘gyn,’ that is ‘woman, wife, mother.’ That is the Latin root of ‘gyn.’ And ‘dragon,’ ‘dragon’ has a lot of fairy tales about it, mythical stories of a dragon - In Europe, the dragon is fierce and evil. And they’re always trying to slay that dragon. But in the Asian cultures, in Japan, China, Vietnam - and actually, in the Americas - the dragon is not an evil being to be slayed, it’s a being that you want to have. Because they protect. They’re fierce, fierce warriors.

So they will hunt you down, but they protect their village. They protect their tribe. They protect their nests, they protect their egg. They protect their young. So while they are very fierce, and sometimes they can look scary, they’re actually formidable warriors that you want on your side, and that you want to embody that spirit of. So it’s that woman-dragon, that is going to be fierce, and a warrior, and it’s gonna fight the battles that we need to fight to create that safe space for the women. How fricken appropriate is that? The Year of the Dragyn, for the fifth year - our fifth anniversary! Five whole years! We are going to build up that culture of being warrior women. Not just in our village - to protect our village. And build our village bigger! We can expand our village. Not just at MFR, The Land - These women’s spaces that are being created, because we’re not the only ones. I think ours is the best, of course, but I might be partial. Yeah. We can all be dragyns.”