
Finland’s Hobbyhorse Girls - well_i_never
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/world/europe/finland-hobbyhorse-girls.html
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pjc50
So as an occasional (male) rider of real horses, there's something I've always
wondered about: how did the recreation become so gendered?

Up until about the middle of the 20th century there was still utilitarian and
military horse riding. Men would learn to ride. Now it seems to be culturally
associated almost entirely with young upper-middle-class girls or middle-aged
women. Is this the result of toy marketing (My Little Pony from the 80s
onwards), or high society, or something else?

What interests me about this Finnish subculture is that it's perfectly cloned
the "horse culture", just without any actual horses. It's very close to a
cargo cult. Possibly Finland is too cold to have a regular horse culture?

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rusk
My facile observation for the day: I think horse riding is less enjoyable for
men due to differences of anatomy.

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pakastin
Have you ever ridden one?

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rconti
Not parent poster, but ONCE, and ONLY once, haha.

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BurningCycles
Well, it's kids playing make-believe, and in a physically active way, I'm all
for it.

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modzu
“If someone says we are playing, it strips away everything we made, it strips
away the reality,” said Ms. Aarniomaki.

it looks like playing to me as well, and not sure why the community would see
that as a problem. even professional sports players know they are playing a
game. an interesting and unusual perspective for sure.

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radiorental
I wonder if something was lost in translation, if that read " it strips away
the illusion" then the component of pretending in this type of play makes
sense.

I guess much in the same sense that people would probably not be amused if you
ran around a Comic Con telling everyone this is just make believe.

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distances
> I wonder if something was lost in translation, if that read " it strips away
> the illusion" then the component of pretending in this type of play makes
> sense.

Yes something was lost. In Finnish there are different words for children's
make-believe plays ("leikkiä") and sports/adult games ("pelata"). Your example
of comic-con is spot on, I think.

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FakeComments
Given your comment about the two words in Finnish, I think the comment about
comic cons has it backwards:

> “If someone says we are playing, it strips away everything we made, it
> strips away the reality,” said Ms. Aarniomaki.

She’s objecting to being compared to comics instead of soccer, hence “the
reality” being stripped — you’re accusing what they view as akin to gymnastics
as being mere fantasy.

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distances
I'm not sure if I got you right -- a comic convention wouldn't be called with
the make-believe word. That would be intentionally belittling if adults (or
teenagers, for that matter) are attending. It's used only for small children's
plays.

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le-mark
My kids have these stick horses, a relative got them for a Christmas gift some
years ago. They never play with them. The stick is long and counter balances
the head so you have to sort of squeeze your legs together to actually ride
the thing. Looks like these horses have shorter sticks, and are balanced so
they're rideable in a much more natural way.

It certainly never occurred to me this simple refinement could make an
annoying experience into something a kid could actually enjoy.

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blarg1
Sometimes I wonder if I'm just getting old and no longer get things, or if the
world is just getting crazier.

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dalbasal
Kids have always played wierd make-believe games.

Sometimes it starts getting more formalized and attracts slightly older kids.
People usually think it's weird, then they get used to it. ...like dungeons
and dragons.

Skeptical articles lean into the knee-jerk reaction that "something must be
broken with society."

Ultimately, lots of stuff is wierd if you approach it from a judgemental
outsider's perspective. Wtf is golf all about, for example?

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wavefunction
Or Quidditch leagues.

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mensetmanusman
If you don’t have 10 year old girls; this may seem strange, but it is the most
normal thing you could imagine.

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mzs
My daughter went through a mermaid phase, there was even a TV show, just
youthful play and imagination.

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oska
This is simply fantastic.

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gmueckl
Then there is also this:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_horse_polo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_horse_polo)

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thanatropism
We went to the mall this weekend and literally saw adults carrying large
hammers from the movie "Thor". Presumably Marvel's Thor features in the new
movie too?

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newnewpdro
This article makes me feel so old; enough time has passed for hobby horse
riding to grow into some kind of competitive sport.

At least it's better than parents turning their adolescent daughters into
sexualized dolls on the children's beauty pageant circuit.

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rv-de
Given basic anatomy and mechanics - could there be a hidden incentive of the
coming of age kind? Puberty is confusing and a lot about discovering new
aspects of life ...

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ptaipale
I didn't know stickhorses were a thing here in Finland until I went to a
harness race event with some relatives who are enthusiasts. I was
flabbergasted that the first event of the race evening was a stickhorse start,
with dozens of young kids (mostly girls) lining up on the trot course. (This
was about 10 years ago).

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superwayne
There is also a virtual equivalent to hobby horsing called "virtual stables".

A virtual horse is just a webpage for a fictional horse. There are usually
pictures of the horse that hobbyists find on the internet/buy on
forums/illustrate themselves [1]. The horse obviously also has a name and
usually a description of its personality. Horses sometimes age "in real time"
but most stables seemed to have a somewhat arbitrary aging rate (e.g. the
horse would turn 4 within a few weeks of its "creation", but after that age
normally). Horses can also be registered in a database called "Virtual
horseback-riders society" [2]. You can use the "Virtual horseback-riders
society" to advertise your competitions. A horse/horseback-rider can usually
participate in any competition by just signing up (by sending an email to the
organizer) and the winner is randomly picked. Another way to interact with
other stables is by "taking care" of somebody else's horse - meaning you write
a story in a guestbook about what you "did" with the horse, e.g. "I took
Cupcake for a walk in the forest. Cupcake was in a bad mood and really
reluctant to leave the stable, but cheered up when it saw a patch of grass".
You can always create a new horse (obviously, you just create a new webpage),
but to be in with the cool kids, you "buy" horses from other hobbyists. The
"best" horses are ones that have a long family tree that has been documented
in the Virtual horseback-riders society database. There is no currency, there
are "selling topics" in the forums, where you try to provide compelling
arguments as to why you should get the horse.

The forums were pretty active 10-15 years ago and most hobbyists were girls in
their early teens. The community is much less active and older now. However,
the community is more tech-savvy than back in the day - people have their own
domains and use a database to track their horses (back in the day, most pages
were static sites hosted on Freewebs). Some stables have been running for 15
years, the most iconic one being Ionic [3], a stable with around 800 horses.

There is probably something to be said about virtual stables dying out as the
Internet has become more centralized. Virtual stables also introduced a lot of
young girls to coding and for example, the owner of Ionic works in IT now.

[1]
[http://www.seppele.piirroshevoset.com/hevonen.php?id=298](http://www.seppele.piirroshevoset.com/hevonen.php?id=298)

[2] [http://www.virtuaalihevoset.net/](http://www.virtuaalihevoset.net/)

[3] [http://www.hevosmaailma.net/Ionic/](http://www.hevosmaailma.net/Ionic/)

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Kiro
Is this exclusively a Finnish thing? I'm unable to find anything about virtual
stables like this outside of the links you've posted.

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superwayne
No, the hobby originated in the US but it seems to be more popular in Europe.
I'm only familiar with the Finnish community, but I was able to find a German
horse registry:
[http://www.moorwiesen.de/register/?&lang=en](http://www.moorwiesen.de/register/?&lang=en)

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pnathan
How very strange! Rock on, you strange ones, you crazy diamonds.

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ktpsns
It makes me sad that this is a "celebration of girlhood" but boys are not even
mentioned in this article. Why can't boys also practice hobbyhorse training?

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daliusd
It seems boys can, they simply don't. It seems for some reason it became girly
thing in Finland (like fake eye lashes, maybe) and boys avoid it.

Citation from another article:

""" There doesn’t seem to be that many boys riding hobbyhorses?

Alisa: I think it’s quite sad, actually. It feels like boys aren’t allowed to
do this thing that is considered to be a girly thing. At the same time, I
think it also means we have a strong sense of feminism in this community. It’s
a place for girls to do what they want. But the boys we do have are very much
welcomed and included. """

[http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/36050/1/h...](http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/36050/1/hobbyhorse-
finlands-bizarre-stick-riding-craze)

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belorn
I have a hard time imagine a area where boys would be allowed to have a
similar community with that skewed gender ratios. The common assumption is
that any gender segregation is caused by the minority being discriminated
against.

If competitive hobbyhorse riding officially became a sport here in Sweden it
would have to follow some recent laws dictating affirmative action within the
sport organization. A minimum of 40% men and women. No exceptions.

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whenchamenia
So if 40% of boys were not interested, it would be denied to girls? That seems
noble in intent, but draconian in application.

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icebraining
From what I can tell from a short search, it seems it's 40% of the board of
the organization, not 40% of the members.

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belorn
That is right, but the political discussion around it involved more than just
the board. The idea is that the organizations need to become more welcoming
and as a start the government want that the boards get a minimum of 40% men
and women.

Recent survey show that two national organizations that manage a major sport
has failed to comply. Ice hockey and horse riding. 80% men in one, 80% women
in the other.

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collyw
How did this page ended up on HN? It seems quite irrelevant.

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Cthulhu_
If you don't like it, just downvote it instead of trying to appeal to a higher
power. It's a democracy, not your personal curated news list.

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dfxm12
How do you downvote a submission?

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whenchamenia
By moving on with your day.

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Kiro
No, you get the downvote button once you have 500 karma.

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pjc50
I have 45000 karma and still can't downvote submissions, only flag them.

