If the world was truly a rational place, men would ride sidesaddle.

The quip flips a long-standing gendered convention—women riding sidesaddle—into a satirical thought experiment. By imagining men as the ones constrained by an impractical, restrictive riding style, Brown highlights how many “rational” social arrangements are in fact historical accidents that have been normalized through power and habit. The line functions as feminist irony: it suggests that what gets labeled sensible or proper often reflects who has had the authority to define norms, not what is actually efficient, safe, or fair. Its punch comes from using a concrete bodily practice to expose the arbitrariness of broader gender expectations.