Reference to “controlling one’s emotions” is a very gendered concept and kind of a buzzword in discussions like this… yes obviously it’s important to keep control of your emotions while riding. When the article posits that many winners are male, and then proposes the idea that winners win because they can control their emotions so well, they’re drawing a line between gender and emotional control, and implying that girls are more emotional than boys. Which is the oldest misogyny trick in the book and not even remotely accurate. That’s why it’s an issue here at least from my perspective
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Oftentimes “emotional” is only attributed to a very narrow definition, i.e. tears. Men don’t usually cry when they don’t get their way, but I’ve absolutely seen men engage in fits of anger under the same circumstances. Usually it manifests itself in more physical/aggressive ways though, not tears, and so it doesn’t get labelled as “emotional”. They may start hitting, or yanking unnecessarily hard, or otherwise trying to intimidate/force the horse into doing something. It’s all a manifestation of emotion. You don’t mention it, but I hope you tell your riders to take a walk when they start engaging in these types of behaviors too. As much as we don’t want emotion in the saddle, at some point it is inevitable - how you deal with it is what matters most.
The most respect I’ve ever had for someone’s horsemanship was a friend of mine who was pulling shoes off a young horse before throwing them out in a field for the winter. The horse was being absolutely rank - yanking his feet out of his hands, striking, backing up, kicking out, swinging his hips over, etc. This fight kept going on for awhile, and although my friend was being as patient as he could, he finally snapped, wound up his arm holding the heavy nippers and aiming to hit this horse as hard as he could. He shouted… and then slammed the nippers into the ground and walked out of the barn. Left the nippers there on the floor and everything. Came back in 20 minutes, patted the horse on the neck and put him away.
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yeah I have to agree here…
the article COULD have talked about self selection and gender norms indoctrinated into the US youth that influence this - how women are generally encouraged to pursue things for other reasons outside of winning/ being the best/ most successful and how male youths AREN’T encouraged to do things “for pleasure without being SUPER good at it”.
Not because boys are “inherently better at controlling emotions, better at athletic pursuits, and naturally more competitive bc MAN”. BLEEEHHHH
my anecdote above about my husband makes me sad - he generally doesn’t feel like something is worth putting time into if he isn’t “able to be” or “naturally” very good at it quickly. Young men in the US aren’t “allowed” (from a sociological perspective) to play baseball / hockey/ do theatre and kinda suck at it. At least not Elder Millennial and older cisgender men overall.
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100% agree. That is why I say emotion has no part in riding. Emotion doesn’t mean tears. It means you let your feelings supersede your thoughts and ability to communicate with the horse, which is no good for riding.
I’m a woman. I have had all the sexist BS put out to me by men, and yes, women too. I worked very hard on not letting emotion control my actions, and it was a huge key to my success
My biggest trainer wins have always been with riders who understand this. My biggest trainer headaches come from people who display their emotions on their sleeves. IE; crying, abuse, etc
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You realize we live in a society where everything we do is entrenched in the patriarchy, right?
Additionally if you’re sitting here saying “aren’t we only discussing equitation” you don’t see the bigger picture and, as a self-described jumper/eventer you shouldn’t be participating in the conversation.
After all, it’s just equitation. /s
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You know “crying” and “tears” isn’t the only emotion, right? We have a guy in this thread talking about getting into physical altercations - that sounds pretty emotional to me. Certainly way more emotional than anything I’ve ever seen from teenage girls at a horseshow.
@emeraldcity I agree, but again, emotions are not just things that lead to tears! Male athletes get angry and throw tantrums all. the. time. and we don’t label that as emotional for some reason. A google for “athletes throwing tantrums” brings up lists that are 99% male. Anger is an emotion. Men are emotional! Personally, I’d rather see someone ride a horse through tears than through anger. One is less harmful to the horse.
1 woman, 24 men: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1186159-the-25-biggest-tantrums-in-sports
2 incidents with a woman, 28 with a man: https://sportscroll.com/30-athletes-who-squandered-the-most-talent/
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You clearly didn’t see my post above
I have been thinking about that this whole conversation. The article was talking about how male riders are better because they have to really want it to stick with it when they are the odd ones out - but what about all the the POC riders who also walk into the barn and see no one who looks like them? The difference here is that for male riders, there is an acknowledgement of that, and even a reward for sticking with it.
But for so many POC riders, that is not the case (I’m thinking specifically of Missy Clark’s article from 2020 where she seemed incredibly hesitant to accept why a non-white rider might feel unwelcome in the hunter/jumper community). Even that recent Plaid Horse article on Augusta was literally titled “She Didn’t Resemble the Rest,” and her mother mentioned how " [a]s a rider of Japanese-American descent, she didn’t resemble the rest—the several hundred riders contesting equitation finals each Fall." Yet can you imagine an article talking about how Luke Jensen didn’t resemble the rest because he was male? It would be absurd.
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This is such a good point…so very true!
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But you can’t discuss any of that as existing outside of society- it doesn’t. The point here is that boys are given preferential treatment by parents/trainers/judges/whoever, consciously or otherwise, which is a reflection/extension of exactly what happens in every other realm of society (this is very well documented in all kinds of research- workplaces, schools, sports, etc etc etc).
The fact that equitation in particular is so wealthy and white is a RESULT of the society in which it exists, not evidence that it should be considered apart from society.
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There are obviously many reasons why racism isn’t given as much consideration as “reverse sexism” in society, but there’s also the problem that women often project their feelings about their own sons/husbands when they see boys “discriminated” against regarding opportunities, versus empathize with other women and help other women rise. I can’t tell you how rage-y it makes me when I hear women complain about The War on Boys in schools (the book was written by a woman), how the emphasis on liberal arts in schools disadvantages boys, and the higher percentages of women enrolling in college and how it’s disadvantaging their sons.
But re: how this applies to equitation? Equitation, even among horse sports, is the most “elite of the elite.” You have to be a junior to ride in an equitation final, with enough time and family support and money to juggle frequent showing with your schooling. To be competitive you pretty much need to ride at one of 5 barns in the entire country. If you ride at one of those 5, it helps to be a working student and favored by the main trainer enough to be able to ride one of the “powerhouse” horses (who is familiar with the ring, is an equitation specialist), and having a particular body type will give you an additional edge. So yes, knowing even the tiniest bit of favoritism may be in the judging and in program support for boys is significant, given how many other factors are at play beyond just being a good rider with a strong competitive psychology.
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I feel like I got my copy early - I kept waiting for the COTH discussion (instead of starting it myself because… girl… that was a joke).
Having followed some of the live commentary here during finals, that discussed whether or not boys got a little more grace for being more overtly, stylistically unconventional, I was disappointed that the article didn’t really touch on that. And yet there were so many more things to be disappointed in by that article that weren’t really sinking in til I read this thread.
I hope COTH follows up, in light of the discussion here. And I really hope the pros quoted respond to the points raised here. Particularly that the system that created the conventions is now claiming to be bored with them.
As a complete aside, I sit through the finals, usually start to finish, in the hopes a kid from a barn or trainer I’ve never heard of, or without a village rolling into the win photo, cracks the top 25. The top 10 is like winning the Powerball but I hope for that, too.
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Oh absolutely! I was discussing crying as a response to kirby, but I stand by my statements in the context of any emotion. I absolutely don’t think there’s any room for taking out your emotions on an animal/another human/whoever, however, we all have emotions and can’t be expected to just not have them because we’re sitting on a horse.
I personally think that learning how to handle those emotions or how to advocate for oneself when riding is an important lesson- even if that means being able to say “I’m not in a space to handle xyz exercise today, can we dial it back to a simpler exercise?” That’s not remotely a wasted lesson in my mind.
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Absolutely, I agree that the majority of what is being judged cannot be seen in a photo of one moment in time.
But what are the boys bringing to the table that is allowing them to come out on top with what is sometimes a less textbook-perfect position over fences than we see from many of the top equitation girls?
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I am talking as a rabid 2nd generation feminist here, from 1969 when I first heard about Women’s Lib.
Right now I consider American men who ride over jumps to be brave, a lot braver than most men.
This attitude comes from being a hippy/freak in the late sixties and seeing the absolute hell those wonderful hippy/freak males went through because of their long hair. Those boys and young men were BRAVE. They were scorned by most of society, they got accused of not being manly, they were attacked by various populations of short haired males and their lives were not peaceful or pleasant. For the record when I met my husband in 1970 his hair was down to his waist. He might have been fat, not that handsome, but I had absolutely to doubt that he was BRAVE.
Do I resent the preference that males get in the hunter-jumper industry? I sure do. However however much I might resent their preference over female riders I know that they are probably braver than most bloviating males that parade their so-called masculinity (including male riders in other types of riding). They are brave enough to wear the clothes that most other males will scorn them for, they are brave enough to risk life and limb by jumping their horses, they are brave enough to risk smashing their balls against the pommel of the saddle,they are brave enough to risk losing to, gasp, a girl, and they have been brave enough to do this for years.
When Littauer started writing his books on equitation most of his riders were men and boys. The show system was set up for males, the rules were set up for males, and it was just generally assumed that no woman would ever be as good a rider as a man. In Santiago, Chile THE major department store had a whole room full of riding clothes (no tack.) The vast majority of the clothes and boots were for men with a little section of breeches for women and girls. In Chile and in Uruguay back then the majority of riders who jumped horses were men or boys.
American girls and women have proven that they are as brave, or braver, than men on horseback. It seems like most men just cannot stand the competition from the women. It is their loss, we women and girls get the fun of jumping while the boys and men remain earthbound.
Because of my MS I can no longer jump (I have very bad front to back balance). However if I miraculously got cured you can bet that, at age 71, I would cheerfully get up on a horse who knows how to jump and cheerfully canter to that 3’6" jump. Oh to fly again!
But I am a woman. We HAVE to be brave to survive in today’s world even though many may freak out on a horse. Hey, at least these females are often brave enough to get up on a horse who jumps and ride over the jumps, something I see fewer and fewer men doing now.
Men brave enough to ride horses that jump are an endangered species. That is why they are coddled.
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Being a long legged, long armed, thin person with no distinctive curves is always an advantage. Even if your leg is a little loose, or your posture is a little rounded, you have so much range to use and apply your aids “correctly” per the standards.
If you’re only 5’4” with breasts, hips, fuller thighs, you’re going to need to be perfect in every way to compensate for your own body. It’s harder to have a perfect following hand. It’s harder to get your leg on the horse in the same manner. The overall picture you present is quite different. I am not saying you can’t be phenomenal, but it’s not going to come as easily.
It’s an advantage to be a teenage male with the typical teenage male physique in an equitation class, if all other factors are equal. But it’s not “boy points.” It’s body type points because they can use their body more easily.
I’d wager tall, lanky young women would show a similar trend of winning disproportionately.
Side note: I’m not defending anything. Im the product of Girl Scouts and a women’s college. But to me, the whole accusation of bias towards men seems odd when there is clearly a preference for a particular body type most often seen in young men.
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Since when was “bravery” (in terms of sticking with riding when others of your sex didn’t) something that was supposed to factor into the scoring of an equitation round. A kid in our barn showed after her family member died and she was gutted. Should she have had 5 points added to her score for bravery that day?
Point blank you are supposed to judge the trip you see and not use a score to send a message of empowerment to a specific sex. There are ways of encouraging more boys to ride if there is a genuine need to do so, but it’s not by giving them extra points for walking into the ring while male.
Coddling someone for their immutable characteristic they can’t control does no one any favors in this context.
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Genuine question: is this really more “correct” (effective, quiet) aids or just more textbook-looking aids? Because I agree that a lanky string bean of a teenage boy can look like “the picture” more easily than a short, stocky woman (speaking as a 5’1 person myself) and make his aids seem more quiet, but obviously that is not the same thing as being the genuinely better rider.
List of winners of the Maclay, FWIW:
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I think that’s a big question with no answer because it depends on the rider. That’s why I put correct in quotes; a tall rider might look better per the standard, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the person is a better rider than someone else.
There are a lot of phenomenal riders who were not successful equitation riders.
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1000% agree. As I said above, being successful in the Big Eq essentially means you need to ride with a tiny handful of barns, and if you don’t go through a very specific “program” you might not have the look (or the horse needed to win), but that doesn’t mean you can’t be one of those riders who can get the best out of many different kinds of horses.
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