"Are Boy Points Real?" chronicle article

[Mander]

@beowulf

would refer to the girls as “females” but in that same sentence, would say “boys” instead of “males”.

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.

[Pokerface]

“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.

[Peggy]

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.

[Rel6]

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.

[RAyers]

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?

[mika0116]

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.

[Rel6]

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? ) 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.

[mika0116]

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.

[Mander]

@RAyers

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

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.

[Highflyer1]

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.

[mika0116]

Anecdotally, I used to ride a barn with a TON of Adult Ammys who ranged in skill and competitiveness (in the sense of how competitive they were tongue in cheek allowed to be)…

Male rider was given grace to hand off his horse to a groom and stomp around with a road soda (alcohol) in the golf cart because he stopped out in the Low Adult jumpers complaining to anyone who would listen because it was “such a frustrating loss” . Meanwhile the female rider in the SAME class in our barn who had 1 unlucky rail and was the top 4 faulter was encouraged to “cuddle her horse and come to dinner later once he was cooled out and put away”.

Oh both paid equally for grooms that show - no difference in service contract.

Vom - I don’t ride with the community that tolerated that weird standard anymore

[Jackie_Cochran]

I live in the South, Saddleseat, TWH shows and trail riding and Western trail riding country though some are into Western classes at the shows.

I have heard men who ride these types of horses tell me that men who gallop cross country at speed jumping big and dangerous fences are SISSIES because of the way English riding breeches look on them.

And I look at them, many often do not ride outside of the ring unless it is in a group ride at a walk, they rarely go galloping at all much less cross country over timber, one of the reasons they like riding Western is that they can hold onto the horn of the saddle and use sharp curb bits, they get upset if their horses show any independence at all, they never jump a fence higher than maybe one foot, and they think that male hunter/jumper/eventing riders are sissies. Go figure.

I think that they look down on people who jump because the girls and women who ride over the fences are braver than these men are and they cannot stand that at all.

Men may take over and win over fences in the show ring but a LOT of girls and women are braver than the boys and men (I am not talking about you here RAyers, you are the real thing.) We hunt seat women will get up on horses and do things that most men are, when you really get down to it, are not brave enough to try.

Except for those rare males who are actually brave enough on horseback to jump over 2’.

This is a modern phenomenon. When we women finally liberated ourselves from the side saddle we learned how to be brave because if we were not brave we could not ride the horses. So what if there are men that can ride better than us, there are not enough men like this in the world to support the part of the horse industry that jumps the big fences.

Without girls and women the horse would be extinct in this country. Most American men do not have the guts to actually ride challenging horses (again I am not talking about you RAyers.) Since a lot of cow operations have switched to ATVs to do cattle care even working cowboys are in danger of extinction.

Girls and women saved the American riding horse and a lot of the horseshow culture.

[sportyspicepony]

Regardless of whether the wide, unfounded generalizations about the ways that boys and girls ride differently are true or not… I think a larger question here is, what was the point of this article? Is COTH trying to say that male riders are oppressed somehow and that they needed defending?

I feel like the reason people are mad is not because we think women are inherently worse than men at riding. This article completely fails to acknowledge the existence of gender bias; we know for a fact that men are treated differently and the standards are lower for them than they are for women.

Men are given more opportunities, paid more, and coached more than women are, and studies have shown this to be true in the workplace, in schools, and in sports.

Honestly I feel like this conversation has already happened in most other areas of our lives, but it’s typical for the horse world to be 20 years behind.

[BITSA]

Ashe shouldn’t be allowed to judge; its clear that she’s rooting for boy riders (she admits this), there is no way her scores aren’t influenced by her excitement. And O’Mara needs to learn that emotion doesn’t equate to lack of hard work, resilliance and ability. Yeesh.

[hoopoe]

I though it was very illuminating that in a sea of navy wearing, bay riding females, the presence if a male rider makes them pay attention more. Am I getting that right?

[sportyspicepony]

@2bayboys

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

Exactly. Men are given every opportunity to be set up for success!

Honestly the way they use statistics in this article is kind of heinous as well. “Ten young men won top- 10 ribbons at Medal Finals from 2008-2017, and all but one, Chase Boggio, became professionals. (Boggio is still involved as an amateur.) On the other hand, in that same time period, 72 young women won top-10 ribbons at equitation finals, and only 31 went on to become professionals. So 90 percent of ribbon-winning men went on to become professionals, versus only 43 percent of women.”

9 men vs. 31 women? Should you be comparing these rates as percentages if the sample sizes are SOO wildly uneven?

@Pokerface

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.

They should’ve asked a female rider the same questions they asked him for this article; of course he doesn’t think he has a leg up! Maybe even some of the girls from the Maclay finals would have something to say about how the placings ended up this year and how gender bias could’ve played a role there

I would LOVE to see a real study about judging bias towards men vs. women in the equitation.

[bugsynskeeter1]

Malcolm Gladwell…barf.

[RAyers]

One can do statistics on small sample sizes such as that. I would assume a researcher with a MPH has that capability, as the person in the article.

I’ve published in high impact professional journals using similar sample sizes. While not desirable, it allows observation of a significant affect while data is still being collected. In this case they could go retrospectively back 30-40 years.

[sportyspicepony]

I just don’t really find it convincing toward their point. But I guess that’s neither here nor there in the grander scheme of what I find problematic about this article

[Trekkie]

Ummmm…sexism is the original “ism” and men have had the upper hand for thousands of years. Still true in everything. Better opportunities, better pay, better judgements. If women these days think they are equally judged or rewarded it is an illusion. Yup, we are different then men. Yup, we have to tone down our assertiveness or competitiveness to be accepted. Yup, we really just love the horses. And yup, we can be equally or more badass on horseback than any guy. One day I hope women will realize their power and take over the world.