Women and men don’t ride the same way and don’t learn riding the same way.
Riding is riddled with never-ending examples of tradeoffs. Where there’s a quality or an advantage created, there’s always a fault and disadvantage to be paid. This applies to both the person riding as it does to the motorbike ridden.
Most sports bring athletic inequalities into evidence based mainly on physical prowess. Contrastingly, the performance of riding is a duet between rider and machine, where an operator doesn’t need to be stronger than another in order to be better. In fact, it is said that riding is ’50% mental’, which can arguably greatly compensate for sexist, racist, and ageist discrimination. It’s true that little can compensate for genetics, and it remains a favourite complaint and excuse for many – no matter how hard you practise, you can’t get taller/shorter.
Living things are highly influenced by hormones. Though some activities can somewhat mask this, riding does not, and both the learning process and the resulting execution are sensitive to these very hormones. They incite certain tendencies. Looking at testosterone, women have less than men, and respectively within each gender, some individuals have more testosterone than others. Higher quantities are said to elevate risk-taking, diminish empathy, encourage aggression, etc.
When one is less empathetic, there’s slightly less concern for the state of the bike, triggering more aggressive inputs, whose repercussions can be both good and bad. This doesn’t eliminate caring and love for the bike, but can get as distinguishable as maternal love compared to paternal love.
Women have more to deal with – the greater quantities of estrogen, progesterone, with some testosterone mixed in, and then cope with adrenaline too, whilst men have a simpler task of balancing testosterone and adrenaline. Common sense and survival makes it preferential for women to dose less of an adrenaline hit, satisfying them to be less risky – assuring survival of our species. With less risk comes a slower learning curve, and with the different combinations of hormone levels comes a somewhat less linear learning curve. It’s not all negative. Women do have a propensity for multitasking, which helps with the many simultaneous commands needed at times, but does make extended focus more difficult.
In no way whatsoever does this mean that one is better than the other. Circumstances make us publicly see success as results. Well, I can attest to knowing and having ridden with women who could ride circles around men.
Considering most women weren’t encouraged to ride and were never invited to try, nor really pushed to talk about riding, it makes the entire activity totally foreign and expectations unknown. Most women’s modesty caused them a feeling of incapability bordering on stupidity the first time they threw a leg over a bike. Breaking the mindset of capability isn’t easy, despite people saying “if he can do it, so can you!” Some women have had a/their father or brother shoehorn them into the sport, but for those who’ve taken it up of their own free will, there’s a courage few of us will ever fully be able to understand and completely appreciate.
If you understand these huge differences, it is here that you (as a man) need to overcome the temptation of ‘rescuing the maiden’ or helping the ‘damsel in distress’. Having a penis isn’t synonymous with having a Master’s in Education – and even with such a degree, your unsolicited tutelage is not welcome. Encourage, understand, listen, respect, help pick up the bike (hopefully only in the case of off-road), but be man enough to only instruct/explain if specifically asked to do so, or if asked how you do it. Anything more is subversively counterproductive and will only make it more difficult for women. Imagine how hard it would be if roles were reversed.
These differences need understanding, and doing so is crucial to protecting and encouraging our motorcycling family.
You ride? That’s what matters.
Writer:
Peter ‘Safety Bear’ Bokor