Funny you should ask.
No. A lot of people--men, plus women who don't ride--assume that women experience sexual pleasure from the movement of the horse. Horsewomen in general are VERY frank about sex, but in all my years of riding I have never heard one woman say she got sexual pleasure from riding. More women complain about being hurt down there, and horsewomen's forums have lengthy discussions about how to avoid pain and what to wear to avoid getting torn up.
Women get a lot of pleasure from riding, but it's not sexual pleasure.
You are absolutely correct. I had a horse from the time I was 12 till about 17 and then again later on when I was older and married. When I was a teen I didn’t even own a saddle, I rode bareback (not me, the horse) and there was no sexual pleasure. The pleasure was the wind in my face and the freedom.
Virtually everything in our culture has to turn into something sexual. In all my years of riding I never had heard of such a thing until recently. I suppose anything can happen but I think a lot of this stuff is garbage perpetrated by our 15 year old boy culture. I’m not surprised that a lot of men buy into it. I’m more surprised that more and more women seem to be buying into this stuff.
Oh, and btw, any study that relies on a “researcher” asking someone questions can always be suspect. It’s not exactly hard science (no pun intended).
Maybe they're doing it wrong.
Honestly I didn’t assume it gave sexual pleasure. My comment was more in line with your impression that horsewomen tend to be frank about sex. I would argue that they also tend to enjoy it. A correlation between favored activities, if you will.
My comment was also based on anecdotal experience I had in college. Once my suite mates and I sat around going through our freshman “Face Book” - a book that listed all the incoming freshman including their picture, home town, favorite activities, etc., and we started noting a direct one-to-one correlation between the women that we knew (or thought we knew) liked “doing it” and that listed “horseback riding” as a favorite pastime. The correlation was un-freaking-believable.
Of course I don’t engage in such adolescent thought now - I have grown up. I just accidentally came across this thread, you know ;)