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"Are Boy Points Real?" chronicle article

Are ‘Boy Points’ Real? The Chronicle of the Horse : Vol.85, No.17 (mydigitalpublication.com)

This deserves its own thread. Some of the quotes are quite enlightening. (By enlightening I mean blatantly sexist.)

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Wow, that was pretty gross. The blatant admission from Sue Ashe, a judge of these finals, that she thinks boys rider better than girls and the comment by T.J. O’Mara about having to temper how you teach teenage girls because they get emotional really stood out.

I’d say thanks for sharing but I also sort of wish I hadn’t read that :face_vomiting:

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Wow that was…distinctly unpleasant to read. I’m not a big fan of the eq to begin with but this is pretty blatantly saying the quiet part out loud. And a huge reminder about how out of touch many aspects of the sport are with reality…and with 2022. I feel gross now.

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I haven’t read the article yet but it’s a known thing that when men enter a woman dominated field, they often progress faster and get privileges.

Think of schools where (at least in the past) teachers trended female, principles trended male. Ballet. Etc

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@Rel6
I stated this elsewhere, but when I read T.J. O’Mara’s quote about the difference in teaching girls vs boys:

“I think when you’re dealing with teenage girls [you have to be careful when you] push to the boundaries or else they’re going to get a little emotional.”

I got "a little emotional’ :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: reading this article.

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I agree with some of what was said above, but I did think there was something in the article’s analysis of the percentage of boys competing versus in the top ten. I think it does make some sense that the ones that compete at this level have stayed in the sport because they are very very good at it so it skews the numbers a bit. Many of the less good ones may have moved onto other sports that are considered more “masculine”.

I write all of this with the disclosure that I am not a hunter rider so I’m just looking at it sort of analytically versus having real world experience competing in this arena…

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The guy has sisters. I hope they called him up and called him out.

It is both true that the boys who remain in the sport are probably self-selecting because they’ve been successful which means they’re probably skilled, and true that implicit biases contribute in many ways to white guys being treated as being better than they are. And it’s a rare white guy who’s going to acknowledge that.

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And is it possible that these skilled male riders have attained their skill because they have been treated more favorably along the way?

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Sexist. It stuck out to me that several quotes, including Dotoli, would refer to the girls as “females” but in that same sentence, would say “boys” instead of “males”.

'Nuff said.

Men - and even boys - are taken more seriously than women and girls, including in hobbies. Which trickles into everything from who notices them and what opportunities are given to them.

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Kirby takes a deep breath and puts on her flame suit… THESE ARE JUST MY PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS
I have taught men, women, boys and girls. Hands down, the easiest to teach at the beginning, are boys. They tend to have less physical fear than the other 3 groups. Many are all ready involved on other contact sports (and riding is a contact sport, lol) so have less fear of falling, etc. However, it can be harder to keep them interested; it needs to be more challenging, perhaps a bit…scarier? They tend to be more interested in jumpers

Girls who get the bug stay in it for the long haul, they just love the dang horses. Young women are not taught to be as physically assertive. And they do tend to let emotion rule sometimes. But they seem to have more stick to it in them. One of the toughest kids I have ever taught is a beautiful 90lb waif of a girl. Nothing will stop her

Adult women have more physical fear, even the ones who are getting back into it after a many years hiatus. We have kids, jobs, and a life, so there is always a little niggling “what if I get hurt?” in the back of their minds. We have to be coached a little more carefully, but I find it the most rewarding, because any decent coach can take a talented 15 year old boy or girl to a final, but not everybody can get a nervous 50+ year old mom of 3 to feel comfortable fox hunting for the first time, or to win her first 3’ hunter class, or jump a 1.0m class double clear

Adult men are the trickiest for me. They have some of the adult fear, but they often are so accustomed to being the “boss” that they will butt heads with you. They may not have been coached at anything for a long time, so it can be tricky to get them to accept that I may know a bit more about this stuff than they do

Again, these are all generalizations, but ithey’ve been pretty consistent for me over the last 40 years

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:face_with_symbols_over_mouth: ARRGH This is perhaps my biggest pet peeve (ok, maybe more than a peeve). Nothing makes me see red faster.

I deal with a lot of people in the military, and it’s so so common there (amongst other subtle - and not so subtle - sexism). People don’t think twice about talking about “men” and the “females” in the same breath.

Once I brought it up to an officer who repeatedly did that, and asked him why he didn’t just call them “women”. I kid you not, he said “I can’t say that! I can’t call them that. Saying ‘woman’ [I swear he nearly choked on the word] is too powerful.”

I just… say that again. This time, slower.

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“Boy Points” are real in just about every aspect of life, but not in the horse world? Talk about heads in the sand.

The part where TJ mentions how Luke Jensen’s recent win, and how Luke is more “Workman like” and doesn’t have as much “Style”, I’m sorry, is this NOT equitation? To my mind, style is a huge part of equitation. While he gave a lovely ride, I doubt that a “female” with similar posture would have topped that class.

That article was cringe-worthy, but not surprising.

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Trying to paraphrase something I wrote on one of the medal finals threads. IMHO boys get away with having less classic equitation than girls do, whether it’s slumpy shoulders or more motion in their body or a looser lower leg.

I also think that the boys who stick with it tend to be better or more into it or something. So there’s some self selection going on. This is why there are proportionally more males at the higher, as opposed to lower, levels of pretty much any English discipline. But that’s not the whole story in eq, as I already stated above.

The first time I heard the term “ penis points” was from a male West Coast BNT.

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I go back and forth on this a little bit. When I think of a classically stylish equitation rider, I think Lillie Keenan. I do think men get away with things in their posture women don’t, but I also do think workmanlike women riders have been rewarded in the past few years.

I think of a Tori Colvin as the epitome of incredible riding that trends more workmanlike than stylish. I would say that about Augusta a bit too. Again, incredible riders who I would give a lot to ride like, but if I had to pick workmanlike vs stylish for either I’d pick workmanlike. But personally, I think even the way we use the term stylish is becoming a bit outdated in the equitation, because to me it conjures up a specific body type made up of long, lithe lines.

That said, I think you take a workmanlike female rider and a workmanlike male rider with the exact same caliber course - and my guess is the male rider is placing higher.

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Hmmmm. I’m a boy. I’ve been doing this sport for 54 years. Did the juniors (Hunters and Jumpers). Did the A/O jumpers. Never won an equitation class ever. And yet I can still ride against some of the best in the world in my discipline. And I get my ass kicked by plenty of girls too.

I stayed in the sport because I had “brothers” who did this sport. We broke our own horses to go compete.

I think the article is spot on as to why the distribution of guys is the way it is.

I think there is a lack of competitiveness and aggression in girls at that age that tends to self select girls out because they lack the drive that can come from boys competing against each other or aggressively driving themselves to improve just as in other sports. Now flip that around where I’ve seen competitive women skiers, jockeys, track and field, tennis, even graduate school, who take that aggressive mindset into horses and they crush it. Maybe it has nothing to do with gender but exposure to high intensity competitive environments?

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Article reveals some pretty gross concepts - that aren’t a surprise to anyone (or shouldn’t be).

Self selection of male riders is very real. Self selection for almost any sport, hobby, job in men is very real. Anthropologically there are reasons for this concept. Happy to link studies.

Anecdotally, I am married to a man - an excellent surfer (hs team, college team, considered pro for big wave and thankfully parents talked him out of it before I came around). He literally says the reason why he surfed well into his mid late 20s competitively was because “he was really f*cking good at it”. When asked if he would have continued to surf even casually if he wasn’t as good his response is “no… why would I do that? I would focus my time and energy on things that I see success in… I didn’t get a good foundation in high level math during my pre university education, so I am not an Electrical Engineer, I like and am way better at more metrics driven work, so I work in Technical Product Marketing”

I’ve also worked in male dominated fields my whole decade + career. Those who are not excellent, tend to leave the firms and pivot into something else - likely due to centuries of social conditioning and gender expectations…

Social conditioning on the other side of the coin I think leads more women continue to participate in activities (work, hobbies, sports) because it brings them “learning, joy, mental strength, expression, etc. etc. etc.”.

There will always be those the break the above “molds” - we all know some very competitive women (myself included, but not with horses, career and professional success is my competitive addiction) and some “not so competitive / ambitious men”. I am merely talking about why the statistics of the article exist.

Entirely possible that men who find success in riding are given special opportunities that women don’t have access to. I cannot comment on that and it may be another real thing.

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I strongly disagree.

I think that if you are a kid or a teenager, you have to really, really, really want to do something or be really good at it to continue to do it when you feel like the odd one out. So it makes sense that the boys that stay in the sport are committed riders who are excelling, because they generally are the odd one out in a hunter/jumper barn. If you don’t really love something, and aren’t winning, and feel like the odd one out in that environment, why would you keep doing it?

For girls, there isn’t that feeling, which I think makes it easier for girls to keep riding who enjoy it, but aren’t incredibly driven or passionate about it (or even who aren’t incredibly successful). It isn’t that girls in general are less competitive at that age (that is a joke, right? :laughing:) it is that the sport doesn’t weed out all but the most devoted the way it does for the boys, because a girl can walk into most hunter/jumper barns and most of her peers are also girls.

And if girls were self selecting out, wouldn’t we see far more boys in the sport and less girls? The whole point is that boys are self selecting out, where as girls are not.

I do think outwardly displaying competitiveness and aggression is seen as less socially acceptable in girls than boys (although that is changing), but I do not think that means they are actually less aggressive or competitive.

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I think there’s room for the concept of the direction of the self selection!

You bring up a great point that women are NOT self selecting OUT - myself included, I have no desire to ever jump over 1.10 in a course. Jury is out on USDF medals, haha

I think you are both saying the same thing, just approached from different sides…

The reason for it not being male dominated is social conditioning. Putting on heteronormative hat here - in the US … male HJ / english tack riders aren’t seen by the population (normies who don’t like horses) to fit the bill of “ideal man”. The sport is LARGELY considered effeminate the the normie US population. There’s a reason why the horse girl trope is seen as a man-repeller… ick.

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I think it has to be pointed out that girls are often socially punished for being fiercely/overtly competitive in a way boys are not. Obviously this is only anecdotal, but I was plenty competitive growing up. Sometime around high school though, “determined” started being described as “stubborn” or “bull-headed”. “Tenacity” began to be labeled as “combative”. “Focused” became “stuck-up”. “Confidence” became “arrogance”. Etc. I found myself making very conscious decisions to temper my competitive nature to avoid negative social consequences.

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I think as a very general rule, girls/women are discouraged from being too competitive. A man who is aggressively ambitious or competitive is admired, a woman with the same qualities is a b*tch. It happens pretty universally, from Hillary Clinton on down.

Boys are encouraged to win and girls are encouraged to be good sports whose horses are their best friends.

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