I mostly ride with men for a number of reasons beyond the scope of this thread but last year when I was in Tahoe, I rode with @valygrl and her sister and some of her women friends. She wanted to keep it Women’s Only and I didn’t get that until we did it.

Testosterone aside, even riding with non aggro men is different from riding with women. Everything the other women did you knew you are physically capable of too, in theory. You know OTOH that men can power through some stuff that you probably can’t. So you know you can’t necessarily just follow and do what they do.

Also, stopping and waiting with women has a different feel. Or at least for me it does: every male friend I ride mtb with is so much better at it than me that I feel badly I’m making them wait. I feel ungainly that I can’t do some skilled thing he can. I feel embarrassed that I’m not more bold about it. But riding with women, I don’t feel most of those things. We just ride and I don’t think about the rest of it.

When I rode in Scotland, I rode two days with this woman mtb guide. She was awesome. At the end of our second day of riding, I was picking her brain for things to do to improve my mtbing. She said, “you know what? Just find a girlfriend with a mtb and ride.”