A special post just for the Warbler: Hazel Findlay FA

Territory's getting bigger where I live, clinker!

Earlier this month, Belgian climber Anak Verhoeven became the second woman to climb 5.15a with her ascent of Sweet Neuf at Pierrot Beach in France. Moreover, the 21 year old is the first woman to make a 5.15a first ascent.

“For decades, women have been taking climbing to new levels. I am honored to stand among those women,” Hayes told Rock and Ice after her ascent of La Rambla [read the full interview here]. “We will see more women pushing the boundaries of climbing in all of the genres.”

That day, it appears, is already here.

mostly about feminist claims that women are capable of doing anything men can do as well as they can do it,

True equality btw the sexes,

Are you saying indirectly that you believe females cannot climb at the same level as men?

In 1885, a young woman sent the editor of her hometown newspaper a brilliant response to a letter by a patronizing chauvinist, which the paper had published under the title “What Girls Are Good For.” The woman, known today as Nellie Bly, so impressed the editor that she was hired at the paper and went on to become a trailblazing journalist, circumventing the globe in 75 days with only a duffle bag and risking her life to write a seminal exposé of asylum abuse, which forever changed legal protections for the mentally ill. But Bly’s courage says as much about her triumphant character as it does about the tragedies of her culture — she is celebrated as a hero in large part because she defied and transcended the limiting gender norms of the Victorian era, which reserved courageous and adventurous feats for men, while raising women to be diffident, perfect, and perfectly pretty instead.