Motorcycle clubs can protect their traditions and choose their members. Turning that exclusivity into a veto over other clubs exposes a double standard that deserves scrutiny.
A motorcycle club has good reason to protect its identity. Its colours can represent years of commitment, shared experience and obligations that outsiders do not fully understand. Members are entitled to take that seriously.
The problem begins when protecting that identity becomes deciding who else may organize, wear a different patch or establish a club with different priorities.
An established MC’s traditions govern its own house. They do not, by themselves, justify a veto over another lawful club’s existence.
That distinction is the centre of this editorial. It applies to outlaw clubs, mainstream clubs and the members and supporters who speak as though the wider motorcycle community belongs to them. Nobody receives an exemption because their patch is older, their following is larger or their intentions are described as respectable.
How protocol becomes permission
Protocol can serve a useful purpose. Introductions help people understand who they are dealing with. Clear identities reduce confusion. Experienced members can explain customs that newcomers might otherwise misunderstand. Clubs sharing an event have practical reasons to communicate.
Published advice sometimes goes considerably further. The online Motorcycle Club and Riding Club Education guide “Starting an MC” tells prospective founders to contact the local lead club, submit their plans for approval and accept requested changes. If the proposed MC is rejected outright, it says, “then that’s it, it’s over.” Its reasoning includes avoiding mistaken identities and misunderstandings. That is a concrete example of advice presenting another club’s approval as decisive.
The same website acknowledges that clubs and areas have different rules and describes its information as general guidance rather than the position of a sponsoring MC. It cannot establish a universal mandate for the scene.
There is a reasonable case for seeking advice and building relationships before launching a club. A conversation can reveal a copied name, an unfortunate resemblance or a problem nobody intended to create. Listening costs less than cleaning up an avoidable dispute.
The leap comes when that conversation becomes an application for permission to exist.
An introduction explains who you are. A veto places your future in someone else’s hands. Calling both “respect” conceals the difference.
Nor should practical caution be confused with approval of the arrangement. Riders may take local power relationships seriously because consequences matter. Recognizing that reality does not settle whether the claimed authority is fair.
What a club can protect
A club can set membership expectations within applicable law, protect its identity and decide which relationships it wants. It can expect guests to observe the conditions of a private gathering. Clubs can also make voluntary agreements about joint events or affiliations.
Those arrangements have a defined scope. Agreeing to the conditions of someone’s clubhouse visit does not make that club responsible for your organization’s future. A cooperative relationship should not quietly become permanent supervision.
There is a Canadian legal distinction worth preserving. Justice Canada’s Charterpedia explains that freedom of association includes joining with others and forming associations. It also explains that the Charter generally binds governments, rather than private actors. A disagreement between MCs is therefore not automatically a Charter violation.
The argument here is about the justification for the power being claimed. A club’s age, size or influence does not establish that outsiders have consented to its rulebook. Specific legal rights and obligations require their own basis. Internal protocol cannot simply supply one.
Autonomy also brings responsibilities. Copying an established club’s identity, falsely suggesting an affiliation or disrupting its event can create a legitimate complaint. Those problems deserve specific evidence and a proportionate response.
A distinct club doing things differently presents another situation. Its members might choose a different admission process, motorcycle preference or level of commitment. Established clubs can dislike those choices and decline a relationship. Disagreement alone should not become a prohibition.
The Brampton Motorcycle Association offers a useful example of expectations with a clear purpose: its published riding guidance requires valid licensing and insurance and explains how its group rides operate. It also encourages prospective members to assess whether the association suits them. BMA
That riding association is not a template for an outlaw MC. The point is that an organization can state its own standards without making them everyone else’s entrance requirements.
The hypocrisy comes home
The double standard becomes difficult to defend when a club insists that outsiders cannot understand its way of life, then assumes it understands enough about another group to decide whether that group should exist.
If distinctiveness matters, it must be possible for other people to be distinct.
An established MC may have a demanding prospecting process that its members value deeply. Another club choosing a different process does not erase that experience. Its patch represents its own commitments. Whether those commitments produce a durable organization is something its members must demonstrate.
This criticism reaches beyond the outlaw scene. A mainstream club can also turn preferences into a hierarchy, treating a different motorcycle, membership model or social circle as evidence that someone does not belong. A respectable public image does not excuse the same controlling behaviour.
Supporters need to examine their role, too. Supporting an MC does not appoint someone to police other riders. When a supporter converts a personal opinion into an instruction supposedly backed by a club, the club can inherit a dispute it never considered.
Leadership has a responsibility to make that boundary clear. Members and supporters should know who speaks for the organization, which matters actually require an officer’s attention and when a disagreement is simply someone else’s business.
Otherwise, the hypocrisy can become thicker than high school drama. Screenshots take the place of conversations. Associations become accusations. A rider’s attendance at another event is treated as a loyalty test. Ordinary differences acquire consequences that nobody has properly justified.
None of that is a necessary condition of brotherhood or sisterhood. It is a distraction a club chooses to tolerate.
For members with jobs, families and limited time, the cost is concrete. Hours spent managing a manufactured feud are hours unavailable for riding, maintaining bikes, meeting commitments or enjoying the company that made the club worthwhile.
Officers should be able to explain what interest is being protected before asking members to carry that burden. Embarrassment, jealousy and the wish to be consulted are poor reasons to bring another group’s affairs into the house.
Let clubs prove themselves
A new-club announcement on social media tells us very little about the organization’s future. A logo, a photograph and a declaration of brotherhood cannot show how members will handle money, disagreements, absences or promises that become inconvenient.
Some clubs will develop. Others will dissolve. Founders may discover that their expectations differ or that maintaining an organization demands more than creating one.
That possibility belongs in their planning. It should not be an excuse for another MC to decide the outcome for them.
Where conduct creates a real problem, address the conduct. Where a club simply has different priorities, let its members discover whether those priorities work. There is no obligation to admire the experiment, attend its events or offer an endorsement.
There is also no credible way to claim that a new club failed on its own merits if established groups made undermining it part of their business.
Longevity deserves recognition, but it is a record of survival rather than a deed to the motorcycle community. A club can earn a substantial presence through reliable conduct and worthwhile relationships. That presence gives people reasons to respect it. It should also give the club enough confidence to tolerate organizations it would never choose to join.
The practical standard is straightforward: protect your own identity, keep your own commitments and raise specific concerns with the people responsible. Do not turn a rumour into policy or let a supporter’s argument become the club’s position.
This standard must apply equally to the organizations MUGSHOTMAG promotes. Defending autonomy only when our own side benefits would reproduce the hypocrisy being criticized.
Minding our own business still allows cooperation, advice and action when someone is genuinely harmed. It asks clubs to distinguish those responsibilities from the urge to supervise every patch around them.
MCs will never all want the same things. A healthy scene has room for that difference. Each club should have the opportunity to build something its members believe in, and the responsibility to sustain it. The rest of us have our own houses to look after.
Sources referenced
Sources consulted Oct. 11, 2026.
- Motorcycle Club and Riding Club Education, “Starting an MC”, undated.
- Motorcycle Club and Riding Club Education, Website Introduction .
- Department of Justice Canada, Charterpedia: Section 2(d) — Freedom of association.
- Department of Justice Canada, Charterpedia: Section 32(1) — Application of the Charter.
- Brampton Motorcycle Association, “Your first group ride”, undated.