Cedar Wrights Faux Pas

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Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 7, 2017 - 08:54am PT
Her whole premise is that men-specifically white men- are holding women back by being overtly sexist.

It's a played out third wave feminist argument. Climbers just happen to be the new demographic being trolled with such hysterical nonsense


You're being rather dismissive ("hysterical nonsense"), stating a conclusion without providing any evidence ("it's a played out.. argument").

One can look for example at the "decorum" of the Congress where it is apparently acceptable for a white male member to shout out that the president is a liar during the state of the union speech on national television, but women members (what few there are) are told to cease their questioning during hearings ("and still she persisted").
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
Jul 7, 2017 - 08:56am PT
I don't know any women who would take Cedar's comments as sexist. He was cracking a joke. Men don't choose women for their clothes, end of story.

I knew my wife for years until I got up the nerve to ask her out. Now here I am getting ready to celebrate 25 years of marriage in a month from today.

Marriage takes a lot of work. A lot of compromise. The first few years are easy, but then you get on each other's nerves and stuff. If you just sit back and think about how lucky you are to be with this certain woman, all other women just fade in comparison. You build up strong bonds after 25 years.

I've only been married once. I know people who are on their 4th marriage. I can understand getting it wrong once, but 4 times? Someone has issues.

I utterly and completely love my wife. If she wore tight shorts, I would laugh. We are too old for that.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 7, 2017 - 09:20am PT
My argument is with feminists, like yourself and Erin Monahan, who believe that the only reason female climbers can't climb everything any male climber can, and more, is because they've been oppressed for eternity by our heteropatriarchal, cismale dominated society.

I can't speak for Monahan, but that is not what my contention is, but then you can't understand why I would argue with you about something that you believe to be obviously true. I'm saying it's not so obvious.

It kind of like that famous evaluation by a Supreme Court judge of what pornography is. You know it when you see it.

1964, when Justice Potter Stewart used that criteria, was 18 years before the first woman justice was appointed to the court, an appointment 61 years after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. What took so long?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 7, 2017 - 09:54am PT
lack of testosterone?
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Jul 7, 2017 - 11:58am PT
There is at least one irony and double-standard about discussing the clothing choices of women as a prerequisite for taking them seriously as climbers.



This is not even considering the lycra years.

Mark Force

Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
Jul 7, 2017 - 12:06pm PT
Cragar

climber
MSLA - MT
Jul 7, 2017 - 12:34pm PT
Political Corrrrrrectness drives me nuts.

^^ so true...

...and rhymes with...

Wrangler butts drive me nuts!
blahblah

Gym climber
Boulder
Jul 7, 2017 - 12:51pm PT

1964, when Justice Potter Stewart used that criteria, was 18 years before the first woman justice was appointed to the court, an appointment 61 years after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. What took so long?

Now two of the most recent three SCOTUS justices have been women, and by all accounts even ol' Trump's got a few on his short list of nominees. (And trust me when I say there is absolutely no shortage of women at every level in the practice of law. There are pay gaps and gaps in things like the number of women partners at large prestigious law firms, but much (and maybe all) of the discrepancy is simply the hit many women take by having children.)

But I'm a little worried about the seemingly near non-existence of women in high-end physics.

I see that only two of 198 physics Nobel prize winners were women. The first was over 100 years ago, the second was over 50 years ago. I suppose those numbers are too small for meaningful statistical analysis, but it seems like the success of women in physics has always been very low and may now be regressing to something like zero.

Maybe it has to do with how "physics" is defined? Is it possible that white men (and I suppose a few token Asian men, who don't act any different from the white men) have defined physics in such a way so that they always win? What if physics were defined to include more storytelling, or personal relationships, or otherwise were made more inclusive?



Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 7, 2017 - 07:21pm PT
But I'm a little worried about the seemingly near non-existence of women in high-end physics.

I am too, and more than a little worried. And I've worked a lot of my career and especially as a manager, in trying to find ways to increase the numbers of women in physics.

Interestingly, when one considers a skill to be "intrinsic" it invites all sorts of strange justifications for judging who has it and who doesn't, and even in a field like physics (which is many fields) there is a tendency to hire people who "look like you."

But it isn't just physics, Warbler's biological "explanation" for why men are "elite" climbers and women aren't has to do with a vague connection he makes between male hormones and climbing performance. But he has no explanation about how these things are connected, to his simple view it is "obvious." It's pretty far from obvious.

That women receive less resources in the academy then the men who are colleagues was demonstrated at MIT (of all places) by a scientific survey which developed a metric. When presented to the president of that institution he realized that there was, in fact, a real measurable bias putting the women at a disadvantage. MIT has implemented policies to rectify that bias.

He also opined that while he thought initially that there was some fact and some fancy regarding the women faculty's claims, he later said that he was wrong, and there was more fact than fancy, publicly.

This behavior is ubiquitous in our culture.

The largest number of Supremes came from just three law schools, Harvard, Yale and Columbia.
Harvard Law School first admitted women in 1950, Yale in 1919, and Columbia 1927.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 7, 2017 - 10:30pm PT
from the report (first page):
"As you will see in this review, the effects of Te use in athletes can improve their physical strength, stature, and possibly performance. Much research has proven the effects of Te doping on an individual, whether they are an athlete or not; although, these benefits do not ensure success in certain sports."


"The extent is unclear as to how Te affects coordination, reaction, intelligence, manipulation and spontaneity, adaptation, and injury prevention."
Mighty Hiker

climber
Outside the Asylum
Jul 7, 2017 - 10:55pm PT
In the world of physics, they recently discovered something named Xi-cc++. A sort of particle thingie. Can you blame sensible people for avoiding this?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 7, 2017 - 11:02pm PT
a combination of two charm quarks and an up quark: (ccu), there should also be the isospin partner (ccd) which has charge=+1

there could also be a isospin singlet: (ccs) also charge +1,
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 8, 2017 - 01:10am PT
I know you're fixated on the testosterone thing, Warbler, there isn't a lot of evidence that it enhances climbing performance. You're an old man, you can surely score a prescription from your doc and see.

But this is a distraction from the OP link, unless you are asserting that women can't be taken seriously because you think they can never be biologically equivalent to men (which is true), an equivalence you assert is necessary for them to compete "seriously" with men in climbing.

Women already do compete seriously with men in climbing, and without the testosterone.

And for that alone they should be taken seriously, whatever their appearance.
Vlad Pricker

Mountain climber
The cliffs of insanitty
Jul 8, 2017 - 03:34am PT
This has got to be one of the most entertaining threads I have read in a while. A bit of a waste of time, as many threads are, that is why I read them (I do not get TV reception). But the topic is, eh, topical? I have never witnessed sexism in climbing, but then what do I know. I am sure it exists, per some of the posts.

I like the post by the person who said to read The Naked Ape.

I only clicked on (clickbait? as somebody mentioned?) this thread because I wondered what (now I know, who) Cedar Wright was or is. Never heard of the dude before, nor this Erin person. I must definitely be out of the loop and not on the scene.

As far as clothes are concerned, every climber should be obliged to wear white painter pants.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 8, 2017 - 09:31am PT
more T -> more bulk -> less strength to weight ratio
is at least a possibility too

I use a hang board to train specific muscles, both strength and endurance

I find generally that my total body mass is more an issue than increased strength, that is, my performance is tied to body weight. This is not a surprise, it is widely experienced in climbing. At my age the training conditioning coupled with weight reduction will show improvements in climbing. My finding is that it is easier to shed 5 lbs of weight than to increase strength "5 lbs"

I don't do T, not sure if it would help or hurt.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 8, 2017 - 09:47am PT
the emphasis on risk taking as an attribute is interesting and certainly whether or not it is "good" or "bad" debatable.

In climbing, and especially "natural climbing" (aka "trad climbing", etc) it is usually a much lauded trait, that is, until the consequences of "boldness" often attributed to risk taking, results in career ending injuries. Our reaction, as climbers, is usually that the injured climber couldn't pull it off.

As a culture we seem to regard "risk taking" of the type Shackleton undertook as acceptable (and even "heroic") because when things went wrong he managed to save his entire crew. This is positively recognized in management and held up as an example of good crisis management.

However, when I look at it, Shackleton could have easily avoided the crisis by not continuing when all the information that he had indicated that his expedition would not be successful, and would encounter dangerous conditions. He decide to risk his crew, and the financial resources committed to the expedition and continue. He took a risk. But one that was avoidable, and I would argue should have been avoided.

If managers are rewarded for their ability to recover from crises, they look for crises to recover from. Managers are seldom rewarded for planning to avoid crises.

This is certainly an observation from a particular cultural point-of-view, as are your's on climbing. You wish to reduce it to the absolute certainty of biology, but it is a foolish task, as climbing is not defined in an absolute manner, as much as you would like to make it so. Climbing is yet another cultural construction.

That's pretty simple.
blahblah

Gym climber
Boulder
Jul 8, 2017 - 10:03am PT
For an illustration on T and sports performance, consider the strange case of Caster Semenya.
She's a hermaphrodite with natural T levels similar to men.
With her high T, she was the fastest "female" runner in the world.
The sports authorities made her take drugs to lower her T; she slowed down.
Then the authorities let her compete with her natural T; she sped back up.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3740682/Should-runner-allowed-win-gold-woman-Tipped-win-800m-no-ovaries-nearly-testosterone-man-sparked-huge-ethical-debate.html

Climbing is an interesting sport as there are different styles, and just being small and light may be such an advantage that the best women will be the best overall climbers.

But in things that require straight-up explosive strength (think of a dyno competition)--the difference in male and female performance is and will always be vast.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 8, 2017 - 10:21am PT
You make my case, Warbler, most non-climbers reading your discussion of climbing types would not have any idea what the distinctions are.

They are a set of categories which are largely abstract and depend on the history of climbing technology and its use. There is no broad agreement on them in the climbing community. There is nothing at all fundamental about them.

The video of the baboons climbing the rock cliff might be a good example of "natural climbing." Given that the baboons were practicing it to provide protection from predators, male and female baboons practiced "natural climbing" at a level sufficient to provide that protection for both, even given the fact of very large sexual dimorphism in that species, and the fact that the females had to tend to their young who were learning how to climb, and those too young to climb (the males didn't help).

You could critique the climbing technique of the male and female baboons, discern the different routes they took, assess their difficulty, attribute whatever metric of "extreme baboon climbing," include perceived "risk taking" and all that.

In the end, they all got to the top, and in so doing, accomplished their goal of a place that protected them from predation. Certainly it makes no sense in baboons for males to be so much more "fit" to climb that were there a significant difference in the survivability of males and females that all the females would eventually succumb to their "inferior" adaptation to climbing; no new baboons could be produced without the females.

"The spirit of climbing" is what you make it to be, nothing more, nothing less. The baboons probably wouldn't care.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 8, 2017 - 10:42am PT
aside from weight, I find the next important element is technique

the next after that is "route finding" or "route reading"

once I have a base level of strength and am free from injury, those other aspects play a much larger role in my climbing ability

accumulated injury also limit what technique I can apply, and that determines how I read a route...

strength certainly helps, but I can only get so strong.

taking all these things together is the difference between "training" and "working out"
GDavis

Social climber
SOL CAL
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 8, 2017 - 10:59am PT
You two need to just go out and get a cup of coffee and hash this out.
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