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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 11, 2018 - 07:36pm PT
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I don't see the orchestral bias findings proving any generalizations about women in climbing or music regarding presumed or expected parity in performance with men, it just shows that we can do better in terms of removing bias where expectation is concerned.
I.e., removing glass ceilings is helpful, but it won't necessarily make us equal. Equal opportunity, not presumption of equal performance upon removal of limited or low expectation. We should encourage everyone to be at their best, however that shakes out.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 11, 2018 - 08:31pm PT
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I think you misunderstood the example from orchestra players, who are supposed to perform at a high level as musicians, not just at a technically high level. Men who were excellent musicians and responsible for auditioning the candidates were biased enough not to recognize an excellent performance because of that bias: the bias being that women couldn't perform at those high levels.
They were wrong.
However, judging performance can be loaded with cognitive bias. In the Rock 'n' Roll case you particular taste in music can bias you. Who are you to say what "Rock 'n' Roll" is, anyway? Same in climbing, which you quickly modified your criteria on once mere execution of moves was shown to be a gap closing quickly between gals and guys.
I believe your gambit then was "adventure" climbing, that guys were bolder than gals, and more likely to push the envelope in creating new climbs.
If the complex issues of performance, and especially the mental aspects of performance, were explained by a single factor, say the amount of testosterone in your blood, then I certainly missed that data. Most studies that I know find that too much testosterone inhibits mental performance.
If I apply that to you in this (and other like) threads that might explain a lot; lay off the vitamin-T warbler! Such a simple explanation.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 11, 2018 - 09:14pm PT
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Uh, oh, put your beer goggles on for this …
Kevin said:
To simplify, Feminists claim that if men weren’t such dicks, the numbers would be equal. I believe it’s biology in both regards, related to higher testosterone levels in men, and the evidence, so far in human evolution, supports that. I ask for examples that prove the claimed equal performance and enter the condescending ad hominem attacks, tangents and smoke and mirrors.
It’s pretty damn funny really
I tend to agree with that short passage, Kevin. I see it happening to you all the time, and I don't think it's that funny. You do draw a lot of attention to yourself, and you bring it up/respond a lot.
Your opponents may disagree with you on specific points, or even fundamentally: nothing wrong with that at the outset. But it goes further. I think what you are experiencing is endemic to an argumentative mode typified by polarization in our culture at large. Knee-jerk, emotional, defense of position or opinion based on ego (and importantly, at the root of it, caring, with a heavy dose of misdirected tunnel vision and oversimplification baked into the cake). In this particular case, those who want the most for women and minorities can often succumb to a lack of objectivity when it comes to digesting your opinion and perspective, Kevin, to the point where criticality coming from you is interpreted as wholesale resistance to fair play on your part.
Nuance is too often overlooked. It starts reading to me like: You are either with us or against us. For me that's dangerous. I can and do support the general vector of feminism, I think there is still work to be done, but sometimes see fault in its execution at one turn or another, such as things you often allude to, Kevin, and a few times I've been reflexively attacked as a sexist, misogynist, or racist, usually by people that don't read thoroughly enough, and succumb to cherry picking individual statements of mine and abusing context. Which is to say they don't understand me at all, because they are not doing the work of reading the totality of my position in regards to individual statements I've made within these long streams of discussion.
You, Kevin, on the other hand maybe not so much, everyone knows you are a brute! Ha ha.
Many people like arguing and they like winning. Exchange, understanding, and productive discussion require hard work. Taking sides is easier. It relieves one from withholding judgment and doing the work of penetrating deeply into a topic. Most don't have that much time or don't want to commit it. They think they already know where they stand, and succumb to the temptation of oversimplification, more for the sake of economy of time, as far as I can see. I like music, and I like problem solving. And you know, I like women and what they bring to artistic expression, which is why I entered this particular conversation. I don't feel the need to stand strongly against people's opinions or to defend my own. I always suspect that with time, I'm likely to change or amend my position, at least with regard to details, so why bang around against the shell of another person's portrayal of their particular intellect in support of it?
You and Ed, in general, understand each other pretty well. I say that with the caveat that there can always be improvement. And it's a good debate!
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Mar 12, 2018 - 08:53am PT
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F*#k the testosterone c*#k rock symbolism and bulging crotches...That disappeared in the 70's... Punk pushes the boundaries of chaos releasing the inner savage ....That's who we really are...That said , whatever happened to Helen Ready...?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Mar 12, 2018 - 09:12am PT
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DMT...The missing bulging crotch should have been your first clue it was a lady...Were you not looking...?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 12, 2018 - 10:27am PT
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I really don't think Warbler needs any backup to fuel his fire,
And really, Scout's honor, I'm mostly here for the offerings such as the ones Marlow just queued up from PJ Harvey, but since you all insist, here goes:
From Malcolm Potts & Thomas Hayden's Sex and War, pages 25, 26, 27:
But then circumstances changed, and commercial whaling all but eliminated great whales precisely because they had to surface in order to breathe air – the same trait went from being highly adaptive, to neutral, to wildly maladaptive, solely because the great whale's environment changed.
We propose that, like the lungs of a whale, the human male predisposition to violence, teen aggression, and war are, in essence, an evolutionary hangover. The impulses behind the behavior must once have given a reproductive advantage to those who express them – and in some cases may still. But culture and conditions have changed while the genes have not, and many of our Stone Age impulses are decidedly undesirable in an Information Age man. The simple fact is that biology has painted us into a behavioral corner, and it's up to us to find a way back out of it. That's where we have the advantage over Wales – they can't stop breathing, but humans could choose to stop fighting wars. ^^^
I find this interesting in the context of rock 'n roll music, because Pete Townshend, to paraphrase him in one of the interviews I've seen, described his guitar playing as an artistic, expressive act of (destructive?) violence and rebellion.
*I'd love to source the actual quote.
We recognize instincts in other animals, as when a cat or a dog cares for its young, but the word instinct is rather too mechanical to capture the subtlety of human behavior. EO Wilson calls the behavioral frameworks we have inherited *predispositions*, a term we have already used. Sometimes, a single gene can control these tendencies or proclivities. It has been shown for example that the lack of a particular gene in a mouse (and possibly a person) produces a self-destructive fearlessness. Mice lacking the gene run about in the open and climb on prominent objects exposing themselves to cats and other predators instead of hiding. However, most behaviors, such as our desire for sex or our ability to hate our neighbors, depend on complex, shifting interactions between large sets of genes and are influenced by the environment around us. ^^^
"Lack of a particular gene … produces a self-destructive fearlessness"???
Alex Honnold, Peter Croft, anyone? I know, I know. How very shallow of me. Couldn't resist. They are but noble gods to us, of course.
Jane Goodall observed that male chimpanzees make mistakes and fall out of trees twice as often as female chimpanzees, and that all the falls over ten meters involved males. Human accident statistics also show that young men are twice as likely as young women to break a leg or an arm. Obviously, culture plays an important role (a little girl who is taught to stay at home is unlikely to be run over in the road), but the chimpanzee data does suggest that the predisposition of men to take more risks than women probably also has a biological basis Guys are natural risktakers. Free soloing, risky FA behavior, necky trad climbing & super alpinism, anyone?
Not that women can't learn, adapt and excel at such endeavors, but they may not be the most naturally inclined toward them. The best rebuttal I can provide for Warbler's argument is that we shouldn't predisposition ourselves to limit them from doing so by saying they can't, or they aren't suited to it. Let them have at it and have their fun too. Let their resume speak as climbers, not their gender. But it's hard not to expect they probably won't cleave to such behavior with as much zeal across the board, as will men. Big, ballsy, potentially gene deficient manly men. And Catherine Freer, along with other outliers.
I don't think trad climbing per se, is such a limiter. I see that more as an artistic expression than one of sheer risk-taking. Plenty of women excel therein.
I really can't venture to comment on shredding the gnar on blues guitar and the like. Even if Pete Townshend says it's partly an act of aggression and rebellion, I think women have plenty of reason for expressing those feelings in the context of art.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Mar 12, 2018 - 10:54am PT
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I am sure Steph Davis is a higher degree risk taker than 99,9% of the world's male climbers. You find more freaks of nature among males than among women, but you can't construct a credible one point "male only adventure and risk taking, female comfort and safety" rap...
That's a point the Warbler is missing in his rap... His motivaton is strange... a strange attractor from his childhood?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 12, 2018 - 11:12am PT
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I agree, Kevin,
Catherine Freer and Steph Davis are likely outliers and anomalies.
But along the lines of blind auditions for orchestras, the less we label it (anomaly), the more likely we are to see what they can do as individuals and as a group. True, it's hard to withhold expectation based on the evidence, but it can be productive nonetheless to tone down those expectations of limitation. I'm guessing that's the point of those who rail against you, if they really looked into it. It's a subtlety. This isn't binary, and neither is your position. And I doubt you miss it, all on your own.
I will never understand why some women want so badly to be just like men, and why those same women often resent the very men they strive to emulate. ^^^
That's just the price we (not just men) all pay for holding them down: now, holding them down (patriarchy) is a popular narrative, whether it's true or not varies widely.
Check the movie about artificial intelligence called Ex Machina: a guy makes an artificial woman, keeps her in a glass box for the sake of testing her viability as a sentient being, she deceives her tester (leveraging her feminine wiles) and stabs her maker to get out into the sunshine. F*#k man, I would too!
[edit]
*Ha ha, posted the same quote as Marlow and at the same time! But for different reasons, and I like Marlow's usage as well.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Mar 12, 2018 - 11:12am PT
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I will never understand why some women want so badly to be just like men
One more strange attractor ... speaking of women in general terms.
Do you think PJ Harvey and Steph Davis want to be men?
At least not to my knowledge...
Steph Davis is no more of an anomaly than Buhl and Bonatti... They are all three of them freaks of nature, yes...
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Mar 12, 2018 - 12:06pm PT
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Then, drop the generalities and tell me about one concrete woman and her points of view.
You continuously jump up the ladder of inference in a categorical dance to fit your one point rap... That's rather boring, just like Largo on the Mind thread... Though Largo's one general "first and third person perspective" point I find more valid than your one point (men adventure/risk, women comfort/safety)...
I agree that feminisme can end up as ideology and political correctness far removed from what is actually going on... but that's only possible when speaking from the top of the ladder... just like you often do...
Maybe you're searching polemical play?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 12, 2018 - 12:15pm PT
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Anybody remember Thelma and Louise?
From Wikipedia:
Thelma & Louise is a 1991 American road film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Callie Khouri. It stars Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise, two friends who embark on a road trip with unforeseen consequences. Numerous critics and writers have remarked on the strong feminist overtones of Thelma & Louise. Film critic B. Ruby Rich praises the film as an uncompromising validation of women's experiences,[11] while Kenneth Turan calls it a "neo-feminist road movie".[12] In her essay "The Daughters of Thelma and Louise", Jessica Enevold argues that the movie constitutes "an attack on conventional patterns of chauvinist male behavior toward females". In addition, it "exposes the traditional stereotyping of male–female relationships" while rescripting the typical gender roles of the road movie genre. ^^^
Man, when I saw that film, as a rock climber, a lifer, which is to say essentially a social outcast within the context of my own American society from the 70s through the 90s, I felt more kinship with those two female characters than most men with whom I competed in the marketplace. Not because of my feminine side or any such stuff, but because they represented the survival of the artist, of the societal OTHER.
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Concerning the grunge rock group Hole, from Wikipedia:
Hole is an American alternative rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1989 by singer and guitarist Courtney Love and lead guitarist Eric Erlandson. The band had a revolving line-up of bassists and drummers, their most prolific being drummer Patty Schemel, and bassists Kristen Pfaff(d. 1994) and Melissa Auf der Maur. ^^^
Okay, it was a joint effort between a woman and a man, (Love and Erlandson) but she definitely fronted the group, and it definitely looks more like a collaboration with mostly women and one guy, so we can't say it was creatively a guy with just a woman offered up as vocal windowdressing.
Hole has been noted for being one of the most commercially successful female-fronted rock bands of all time, selling over three million records in the United States alone[2] and having a far-reaching influence on contemporary female artists. Music and feminist scholars have also recognized the band as the most high-profile musical group of the 1990s to discuss feminist issues in their songs, due to Love's aggressive and violent lyrical content, which often addressed themes of body image, abuse, and sexual exploitation.[3]
In the months preceding the band's full formation, Love and Erlandson would write and record in the evenings at a rehearsal space in Hollywood, loaned to them by the Red Hot Chili Peppers;[13] during the day, Love worked as a stripper to support the band and purchase amplifiers and their backline for live shows.[14]
And then the creative core of the group becomes two women and the man:
Love and Erlandson began writing new material for a second Hole album in 1992, in the midst of Love's pregnancy with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Love's desire to take the band in a more melodic and controlled rock format led bassist Emery to leave the band,[31] and drummer Caroline Rue followed. In an advertisement to find a new bass player, Love wrote: "[I want] someone who can play ok, and stand in front of 30,000 people, take off her shirt and have 'f*#k you' written on her tits. If you're not afraid of me and you're not afraid to f*#king say it, send a letter. No more pussies, no more fake girls, I want a whore from hell."[32] In April 1992, drummer Patty Schemel was recruited after an audition in Los Angeles, but the band spent the remainder of the year without a bassist; Love, Schemel, and Erlandson began to write material together in the interim.[26]
Hole went on to become the most commercially successful female-fronted grunge band in history, selling over 3 million records in the United States between 1991 and 2010.[2][134][135] In spite of Love's often polarizing reputation in the media, Hole received consistent critical praise for their output, and was often noted for the predominant feminist commentary found in Love's lyrics, which scholars have credited as "articulating a third-wave feminist consciousness".[136] Love's subversive onstage persona and public image coincided with the band's songs, which expressed "pain, sorrow, and anger, but [an] underlying message of survival, particularly survival in the face of overwhelming circumstances."[137] Music journalist Maria Raha expressed a similar sentiment in regard to the band's significance to third-wave feminism, stating, "Whether you love Courtney [Love] or hate her, Hole was the highest-profile female-fronted band of the '90s to openly and directly sing about feminism."[138]
While Rolling Stone compared the effect of Love's marriage to Cobain on the band to that of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, they noted that "Love's confrontational stage presence, as well as her gut-wrenching vocals and powerful punk-pop songcraft, made her an alternative-rock star in her own right."[139] Author Nick Wise made a similar comparison in discussion of the band's public image, stating, "Not since Yoko Ono's marriage to John Lennon has a woman's personal life and exploits within the rock arena been so analyzed and dissected."[140] The band has been cited as a major influence on several contemporary artists, including indie singer-songwriter Scout Niblett,[141] Brody Dalle (of The Distillers and Spinnerette),[142] Sky Ferreira,[143] Lana Del Rey,[144] Tove Lo,[145]Tegan and Sara,[146] and the British rock band Nine Black Alps.[147] The band ranked at #77 of VH1's 100 Greatest Hard Rock Artists.[148]
You know, maybe because I'm a guy, it's a bit of a land grab.
But as a dedicated climber who gave it everything he had in the face of what could then have been essentially considered a culture largely averse to that lifestyle, I relate to some of this sh#t women have been through in a big way. I can't exactly say I feel Courtney Love's pain, but I empathize with it, inasmuch as any struggling artist objects to the background of their struggle and their arising, whether it be economic, gender, cultural, or racially based.
And I think all of this Struggle, with a capital S, comes through very strongly in her music. It's communicated. It's felt. And For me, there's a recognition.
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Read one of my favorite authors, a feminist and a magical realist, Jeanette Winterson, in her work of literary criticism: Art Objects.
Not objects as in things, but objects as in disapproval or disagreement with the status quo. I may pull from that later ...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 12, 2018 - 12:34pm PT
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Kev said:
I don’t approach this debate or any other polemically or with any vitriol, Roy, until my opponents continue to refuse to back up their (bs) position, or resort to name calling and ad hominem attacks. That’s when respect dwindles and sarcasm is appropriate. And entertaining, frankly. At least for me. And in this, I will stand by you, my friend, untethered to whatever is held in the content of my perspectives and observations.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 12, 2018 - 12:47pm PT
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Jesus f*#k!
Pardon my fransh ...
Let's see what Steph Davis has to say.
This is one of the most soulful, penetrating examples of personal exposure I've ever seen:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Mar 12, 2018 - 12:48pm PT
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Buhl and Bonatti are hardly anomalies in the broad spectrum and history of daring male climbers, Mar. Steph, on the other hand, is one of the only women I’ve ever heard of to solo somewhat regularly near her limit, a realm inhabited by lots of male climbers btw.
...one of the only... women...
... lots of male climbers...
^^^^
Comment:
One of a few women, yes...
Lots of male climbers... No... a few of the male climbers... but for sure more male climbers than female climbers.
And I also think that the % of limit pushers among male climbers is higher than the % of limit pushers among female climbers...
The point about there being more freaks of nature among men than among women, I think that point is valid.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Mar 12, 2018 - 01:08pm PT
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The point is that in men it isn’t (nearly as) freakish - it’s more natural
I would rather say that among men it is seen more frequently. It's natural to Steph. As solo climbing seemed natural to Catherine Destivelle in the Alps.
From the video - Steph after the death of her husband and some months of not flying:
I was afraid
I opened my arms and
pushed off
The air filled my wings
and it was all there:
Freedom... wonder... pain...
mystery... magic... joy...
I want it all, I choose it all
I choose to fly
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 12, 2018 - 01:22pm PT
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Okay, I've learned her voice is not for everyone. (Ha ha, having tested this recently)
But it's just this small woman, her modest fingerpicking skills, her emotive talent, and her powerful commitment to her ideals.
If you can watch the whole thing, as I have several times, just look at the responses on the faces of those in the audience.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
[Click to View YouTube Video]
I do not think it is a stretch to say there are parallels between Joan Baez and Steph Davis.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Mar 12, 2018 - 01:45pm PT
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It would be interesting to test her testosterone levels
Once again rather stereotypical and reductionist, don't you think?
Not that stereotypical thinking isn't allowed... and not that there couldn't be a connection to hormones...
Nothing else of interest?
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