Many years ago I had a spin with a mate on a tandem. Me on the front outward... He on the front returning.
At one point he wobbled so badly that I wrenched the back handlebar - thus the front saddle - round and accidentally trapped the front-man's testicle between saddle and thigh. He, quite naturally, yelled and jumped off into the bushes, me and bike following shortly after. The bushes were holly. The experience prickly, didn't sit well in the scheme of things. Now 30 years on I have decided. (bit late there, chum. Ed)
That experience tho not too painful for me left an impression: that the rear rider enjoys an inferior place in the arrangement.
I see men who have done this, made their wives the inferior and non-independent rider. Now who would do such a thing and then further damn the rear-rider with the term stoker (ho jolly ho eh?). That term alone displays the jerk-mentality of the tandem rider. Argue... (not a rational leg to stand on eh?)
Conclusion: tandems are a brutal sexist remnant.
1. That the front-man is deliberately diminishing the rear rider for reasons yet to be examined. (Cheesy male arrogance comes to mind as suggestion No.1)
2. That no woman with self respect would want to sit behind some sweaty, sexist oaf dressed like a clown emblazoned like a poster-board obscuring the countryside ahead.
3. That the need to diminish the rear rider reveals a dire state of affairs in the ethical furniture of the front-man. He needs to be dominant - if only on the bike. A kind of pathology.
I rest my case. Hoping that all decent self respecting women will refuse. Will each get a bike of their own, leaving the sexist remnant male with a ridiculous bicycle to ride alone. The tandem is highly symbolic. It represents the "Little Woman", "er-indoors", the lesser, the inferior & this has to stop.
