08/27/2019
A quietly pernicious, psychologically damaging, and sometimes even physically harmful aspect of the world of competitive riding is what, for lack of a better term, we might call "level shaming." It works like this---
Level shaming begins with an assumption that the higher the level, the more worthy the achievement, whereas the lower the level, the more insignificant the attempt.
Here are a couple of examples---
Let's say that an event rider is safely and confidently riding at the beginner novice level. Someone, however, maybe a friend, or family member, even a coach, perhaps, conveys the hint that the beginner novice level doesn't amount to much.
The rider gets conflicted. She doesn't feel confident about moving up to novice, but she now feels somewhat "ashamed" of "being a chicken," or whatever----
So she moves up, against her better judgement, and maybe gets in trouble, maybe gets herself scared, or the horse scared, maybe even gets hurt.
Or a trail rider has the option of doing a 15 mile ride or, next available level, a 25 mile ride. If he gets level shamed into taking on the 25, before the horse is ready, he may put the horse at risk.
A dressage rider has been competing at the training level. Her friends are moving up to first level, and, in subtle or not so subtle ways, they let her know that they are therefore "better" than she is.
Or the 3 foot 6 inch jumper rider lords it over the 3 foot rider----and so on.
Now the only way that level shaming has any power is if the rider being dissed gives a damn about what others think. But, usually, we are not that indifferent.
Ideally, the way to deal with those who do this to us would be to tell them to go $%^&(* # themselves, and I hope you will.
I find it easier to do at 78 than at 18, or 48, or whatever-8, so I understand how hard it is to not care what others think----
