Why "She"?

Ashtonator said:

If you're a straight man (which most riders are), you dont wanna refer to something you 'ride' as he.
Female riders usually use he for their bikes.
But with the 50+ genders coming, you can call it a Xer or Zer. Its 2017 lol

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Ethereal said:

Bit off the topic but kind of on point.

Had a Harley dude thinking he was bad *** at coffee shop looked me up and down in my gear and say "You sure dont ride a chrome vibrator" I looked him strait in the eye and said to him "To each their own but I not ride vibrators". His buddy and the barista had a good LOL.

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it’s nevertheless been historically ingrained in nautical language and lore for many centuries. One prosaic explanation is that the gender of the Latin word for “ship” — Navis — is feminine. But people generally agree on the more romantic notion of the ‘ship as a she’ phenomenon: that it stems from the tradition of boat-owners, typically and historically male, naming their vessels after significant women in their lives — wives, sweethearts, mothers. Similarly, and more broadly, ships were once dedicated to goddesses, and later also to mortal women of national or historic significance, thereby bestowing a benevolent feminine spirit on the vessels that would carry seafarers across treacherous oceans. Figureheads on the prows of ships were often depictions of such female namesakes, denoting the name of the ship for a largely illiterate maritime population. This practice dated from the early 18th century, before which superstition had it that the presence of women aboard sailing vessels — whether in human or representative form — was an omen of bad luck. The practice of naming boats and ships after women continues today, although certainly not exclusively, as does the habit of feminizing our sailing vessels.

Like ships, but with declining frequency, countries have historically assumed a female form in historical and literary contexts — especially when the author or speaker seeks to personify that country for rhetorical or poetic effect. The New York Times in February 1917 quoted the then editor of The Economist, Hartley Withers, discussing a nation contemplating war: “If America with all her treasure of gold comes into the war against Germany she will be of incalculable help to her allies, regardless of anything she may do as a fighting force. If she stays out, as now, with broken relations with Germany, she will be an equally potent support to us. America’s wealth and financial aid mean everything to the Allies.” National personifications of countries in female forms have been extremely popular over the years, especially in the context of wartime propaganda and patriotism: Brittania, Germania, Mother Russia, Marianne (for France), and Italia Turrita are but a few examples. However, male symbols of nations are not uncommon; John Bull (for the UK) and Uncle Sam (representing the U.S. government) are two notable exceptions to the female country rule. To personify a country in the female form, both linguistically and symbolically, is now something of an anachronism. But despite our gender-blind naming of diseases, hurricanes, storms and other forces of nature, we still bestow on our planetary home and the very core of our existence names of the ultimate symbols of life-giving femininity: Mother Earth and Mother Nature.

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Bagman said:

They were probably laughing at your bad English.

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Joe Bass said:

Damn strait they were ��

sent from my Purple LGG4 on the GTAM app

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Uncle Sam (representing the U.S. government)

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