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cat t.
climber
california
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Sep 15, 2017 - 11:27am PT
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I agree, nah000, your tome was great. Thanks for taking the time to write that so cogently!
They open up tiny new compartments where they can be
stored and dealt with accordingly. People who suffer no
such losses don't have those slots. It's as though the
pain and agony of death chisels away at our grey matter -
creating everlasting homes for themselves. eKat, thanks for this. I like the way you framed it.
Roy, I was in the middle of writing a response to what you talked about with Lisa, but I've got to go hang flyers for a class I'm teaching--will say more later!
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 15, 2017 - 12:51pm PT
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kingtut
Women do not wear jockstraps ....
Also, women have a different consciousness then men both due to biological and another that they do not feel they need to lead in general.
They lead when the men fall apart.
Their natural inclination is to follow.
But when then men become pussies they start to lead.
Most of the men leaders in the world are st00pid pussies now.
Just see how st000pid pussies like Kim wrong-un are who've never fought yet threatens everyone.
All it takes is one guy to come up to this clown and clock him .....
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 15, 2017 - 01:51pm PT
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She's too busy to come onto Supertopo.
I've read her book. Between the two of us, it didn't come up that there was a short passage in the book suitable for something like this thread.
Warbler mentioned it might be interesting to hear her take, so I asked her about it. I took some notes.
My point was, if I'm going to forward along the thoughts that she is offering for you to read, I want to get it right. She'll proof it for me.
But thanks for your concern!
vvv [edit]: [Nice chatting with you too, Jeb. Get stuffed.]
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 15, 2017 - 08:57pm PT
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I think that I just read that consciousness is a (partial at least) function of biology!
Fiction, musta been!
Mikey and Wiki sez, biology is a function of consciousness(and not partially but spontaneously)
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 15, 2017 - 09:08pm PT
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I know, right? See how I am?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 15, 2017 - 09:23pm PT
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^^^ so are blaming it on biology or consciousness🤠
Edit; or maybe Tarbuster?? but that would definitely strike a vote for consciousness 😌
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 15, 2017 - 09:34pm PT
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And as I look at my notes, and ponder the way ahead, I'm starting to see Jeb may have been onto something.
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cat t.
climber
california
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Sep 15, 2017 - 09:55pm PT
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I think the danger is not of accidental condescension but rather of mangling the point (or more specifically, losing tone and context) through a game of telephone?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 15, 2017 - 09:56pm PT
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Christ,
Got arthritis in my thumbs now, and keeping Lisa's feet flush with foot rubs has gone down stream.
Plus, we've got voles in the backyard too, and I need to go pinch some rocks between my bird and index finger, and do some plugging.
Maybe I'll just scan the chicken scratch from my tête-à-tête with the anointed one, and flee the building???
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 15, 2017 - 10:08pm PT
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Okay, how 'bout a little transparent stalling?
Ahem. You know, Supergirl, um I mean The Bunny, Lisa, the woman that is 9/10 of what I am these days ... She and I did take a good look at those McEnroe YouTube files and reviewed my broadcast of her position on these things.
Now more than ever, she's thinking McEnroe just got set up. She done gave the double thumbs up to everything I said she said, and says Warbler is pretty well spot on.
And she thought Maria's exit portrait was one of the most touching thinks she'd ever seen.
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cat t.
climber
california
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Sep 15, 2017 - 10:09pm PT
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I'll be honest, I know sh#t all about tennis, but when I actually read McEnroe's interview transcript, it sounded like a silly publicity stunt/headline-creation. I imagine if it hadn't been hyped all over Twitter and over-reported, no one would have cared what he said.
So I check her on rockclimbing. There is no handicap for age or gender. Men and women climb the same climbs with the same ratings. She says she strives to take ego out of it. If someone posits that men and women are hitting the same marks in climbing, and notes that a woman just recently hit the 5.15a benchmark and you correct that, noting that Sharma hit that some decade or two back, she thinks that's fine. So, speaking objectively about records and about comparing men and women, she's backing you up, Kevin. As long as it's not done to belittle, so perhaps to Cat 's point, tone matters.
I think the point, as so nicely highlighted by nah000, is that Kevin's tone is the sticking point of the whole debate.
nah000 said:
because let’s be clear, while the greater cultural conversation [as Tarbuster has pointed out] may involve some radicals who deny there are average differences between the sexes, despite TW’s best efforts to control the words of those who are debating with him, that has not been the issue debated by anybody i’ve seen on this board. and:
that doesn’t change the danger in the words that he sometimes uses, no matter how benign he tries to make them when he gets cornered.
because regardless of whether that is his intent or not, his words are, at times, words of control. they, intentionally or not, define what women [and men], as categories are and what they are and are not capable of.
It is not truly a discussion of "performance of top female athletes." If that were the conversation, we'd be making very different points, I think. For example, we'd acknowledge that the gender gap is narrower in climbing than other sports, and inquire why. We might discuss the fact that even in an era when women were actively prevented from working, owning property, or traveling independently, there were still women who became groundbreaking mountaineers, and think about how the attractions of mountains are equally compelling to humans of many athletic abilities. We might even discuss potential interesting differences in the flow of movement by male and female climbers who've done La Rambla. Maybe there are truly interesting observations to be made about how men and women move, and why men and women are both so intensely attracted to the wild of mountains, perhaps for both different and overlapping reasons.
These are not the questions that have been discussed, not really. The questions and answers posed by certain posters in this thread have truly been, as nah000 said, purely words of control.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 15, 2017 - 10:20pm PT
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^^^
Lynn did touch on some of the above, Cat.
But you nailed some good stuff, independent of anything we discussed.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 15, 2017 - 10:40pm PT
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I'm going to go lay down soon. Get up at the Magic hour, do a little Tonglen, try my hand at some of that Sufic in-breath out-breath reversal practice, maybe toss in some alternate nostril breathing for good measure, then dictate my notes into a Word doc, get down to business … then forward the spruced-up tract to Lynn, and watch some Wimbledon reruns mixed in with some more concerted grinding through David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest (that’s Kennedy, McNamara, and Johnson, the press, and all the generals repeating the French mistakes in Vietnam, after having cleaned out all of the China experts, while tossing in a little hubris of their own), until I hear back from her.
Maybe see what else gets slung down here for another half hour ... You know, lurk.
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cat t.
climber
california
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Sep 15, 2017 - 11:09pm PT
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Its good that you're climbing again cat t. I dunno why, but its good.
Thanks, DMT. I think it's good too.
Story time (intended to be at least partially related to these questions of why women climb as they do):
My friend Maria was an incredibly competitive person. She climbed harder than anyone we knew (including the men). She was extremely passionate about everything she did, which I loved about her. She was an endless source of encouragement and inspiration. She pushed herself really hard, but sometimes she'd get so lost in the "try-hard" that she seemed to forget how to like the things she loved. It was always interesting to watch the cycle: she'd train too hard, get really strong, question whether she even liked climbing at all, go to the Sierra for a couple weeks, and come back worse at gym climbing but a million times more in love with climbing (and the whole world). I found it sort of confusing, but mostly just endearing, because I've never been competitive about sport at all. I was never an athlete; my enjoyment of the outdoors has always been, cheesy as it sounds, more of the spiritual sort. We complemented each other well, I think--we mutually inspired each other to try hard, but also always remembered to lose ourselves in the joy of finding adorable tiny succulents growing out of glittering granite.
I remember her coming back from a sport climbing trip (I can no longer remember where it was, unfortunately) with stories of "mega crusher women who all climbed 5.13." She sounded as though she'd visited some mythical Amazonian land. She bemoaned the low standards of the women in our region--why did we so rarely see two women climbing together? Why were the vast majority of our gym companions dudes? Why didn't we know more strong women? What is wrong with all the wimpy women here?
I too wished to be one of these Amazonian crushers, but couldn't help but tease a bit, with "Maria, by your metric I am one of these weak women, and you still like me!"
This gave her a moment of pause. "You just try so hard, though. You'll whip off of something and get right back on and try it again. But all these other women, it's like they are too scared to even try."
"Maybe it doesn't matter if we know women climbing 5.13," I insisted. "Maybe what we should really be encouraging in other women is independence. Who cares if they're mega-crushers, if they're super excited to get out and lead 5.8s--if they're really excited to plan things themselves and take the reins?"
She leaned forward, eyes wide, and murmured, "I never thought about it that way," as though I'd proclaimed some amazing epiphany. (This was a Maria-behavior I saw frequently, whenever I shared a viewpoint that differed from her own. It's the only expression that comes to mind when I remember her.)
The week before she died, in the last conversation we had, she gave me the best compliment I've ever received. She exclaimed (she rarely just spoke; she usually exclaimed) that she finally understood me. She recalled a whole host of conversations like the one about the Crusher Ladies, conversations I'd long forgotten, in which she thought I "just seemed so okay with the way things were," that I "wasn't always trying to be optimize everything, but just to enjoy what I had." She told me that she thought she really understood how it was I felt that way, and that she was embracing that attitude, and that she was excited see how it felt to live with such a perspective. I thought it was hilarious (because I am super neurotic; it's only in comparison to Maria that I would seem chill or peaceful), but I was also overjoyed--she sounded so happy, and I was delightfully overwhelmed to hear that our rambling life-conversations had meant as much to her as they had to me.
TL;DR: People are motivated to climb for different reasons, but we can all learn something cool from those different perspectives.
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nah000
climber
now/here
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Sep 16, 2017 - 12:02am PT
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TW: thanks for that last longer post. it's both thought provoking in its directness and helps me understand some of where you're coming from and how/why we can in some ways see things so similarly [we really do disagree very little on the "facts"] yet still see the need to communicate similar or even the same "facts" so differently. regardless, it's def making me contemplate, so thanks for that.
cat: deep thanks for that last post. it's one of the most beautiful things i've read on st in a long time... it's not often i shed a few tears over someone i never met... but i did reading your piece.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 16, 2017 - 05:41am PT
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Cripes!
Dodged that bullet altogether then; good to know.
I will say, Jeb, that your poke entailing the risks I am running of committing a little manslating (when forwarding Hill's take from a conversation) did freshen me up a bit, and inspired cause for pause. And by the time Warbler chimed in, I had a pretty good cathartic laugh.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 16, 2017 - 06:25am PT
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Cat said:
She pushed herself really hard, but sometimes she'd get so lost in the "try-hard" that she seemed to forget how to like the things she loved. It was always interesting to watch the cycle: she'd train too hard, get really strong, question whether she even liked climbing at all ... See, Cat, that right there illustrates how Maria probably would've driven me nuts, and why you and I get along swimmingly. Her approach, and that same from others I've known, of whatever gender, leaves a bit of an oily spiritual residue on my palate. I equate it with avarice.
For me it's about artfully traversing the terrain, working with the subtleties of the landscape, abiding the natural constraints of mind, body, and medium, as opposed to forging ahead in a take no prisoners, Sherman's March style of engagement with the stone.
"Maybe what we should really be encouraging in other women is independence. Who cares if they're mega-crushers, if they're super excited to get out and lead 5.8s--if they're really excited to plan things themselves and take the reins?" Bingo!
Back in the bad old days, I had a protégé, an intimate companion, Helga, who had been a diver and a gymnast in her youth. That young woman took to climbing like a duck to water, going from 5.6 in June of 1987 to following Coyne Crack, 5.12a, at Indian Creek, in autumn of the same year.
For the most part, during that first summer, I did the leading. One afternoon we were roping up at the base of On the Lamb, and as I was putting the rack together, she grabbed it from me and said, "Give me that thing. If I wanted a guide, I would hire one!"
This comment was completely disarming, leaving me in a puddle of giggles, and with the brilliance and beauty of it, she was on her way to independence. Her daughter Claire now climbs, and will be visiting Lisa and I, here in Nederland, tomorrow.
(because I am super neurotic; it's only in comparison to Maria that I would seem chill or peaceful) Too funny. Self-knowledge through relational awareness. Ain't friendship a wonderful thing!
.............................
Helga, Coyne Crack, on-sight, no falls, fall of 1987:
(And yes, boys, she laybacked the fingers crux. So did I!)
(And had I been holding her rope, there would have been a healthier bit of slack in it during that second shot ... Just sayin'. Cuz I know that's coming.)
Helga's daughter, Claire, a few years ago, Needles of California, and Big Bear, or maybe Holcomb Valley:
From Claire's high school graduation announcement:
 I will be taking a gap year before heading off to University
of Colorado Boulder to study Astrophysics.
I will spend most of next year in Yosemite, contributing to
the park, meeting new people and rock climbing.
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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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Sep 16, 2017 - 09:07am PT
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Interesting stuff here, and nicely said, DMT. My feelings exactly. I think so many of our difficulties come from competition. I know my wife has struggled in her competitiveness with me. I'm a bigger, better, stronger climber, and that still bothers her at times, even after being together for 30 years. I don't really care that I'm better, although I do get antsy sometimes when I know I could lead a given pitch more quickly. But that's on me. I honestly celebrate her accomplishments, and she does the same for me. She's got my back and has saved my bacon many times.
One of the "Three Treasures" of Lao Tse is "never striving to be first." That old Chinese goat had a point. While many wonderful and impressive things have been accomplished because of competition, peace of mind isn't one of them. Early on, I realized there was ALWAYS going to be someone better, smarter, stronger, faster, better looking, so clinging too much to ideas of competition became rather silly. Maybe if I had more talent...?
And, now, of course, most of the girlz out-climb me! And that's cool. This demographic shift in climbing has been amazing to see and really great for all the straight males out there who hope to have a climbing spouse/partner. Much better odds these days.
I see this competition bug eating away at a female climber I now. She is very competitive by nature, having won a full-ride scholarship to college as a runner. But her boyfriend, a young man I introduced to climbing, happens to be one of the most naturally gifted athletes I've ever known. He gets better so quickly at everything he tries. I loaned him a copy of Born to Run, a great book about ultra-running. Within two years he placed in the top ten in a couple of 50 milers! We love him, but we "hate" him, if you know what I mean. It' like that young woman, Helga, whom Tarbuster posted about. Here's proof life isn't fair: "[S]he took to climbing like a duck to water, going from 5.6 in June of 1987 to following Coyne Crack, 5.12a, in Indian Creek that fall." Gah! The young woman I'm talking about, however, gets super upset when she can't perform at some imagined level of climbing. It galls her that her boyfriend seems to float problems that she must struggle with. I just hope she can learn to love the sport, the process, whatever climb she's on rather than constantly compare herself to not only her boyfriend, but all the super hot climbers that play across the internets.
Joseph Campbell once pointed something out about the difference between men and women, and I think it holds some water: Women, by force of biology, have been given a REALLY important ability: They carry and give birth to children. Totally amazing and miraculous. Men? To find something even close to as important, we do stupid stuff like go to war, play football, climb cliffs, jump off cliffs, race cars, etc. We need the wisdom and grounding of women to pull us back from the edge sometimes. Of course, woman can do and enjoy all those crazy things, too, but it seems to me that to focus on who is better at what sport is, as DMT pointed, pointless. Yeah, some men can bench press over 600 pounds. So? Let's see him give birth to twins! Cain't do it? What a pussy.
My wife and I are going out on our tandem trike today to hear some music at Millpond--a shared effort towards a common goal. Sounds perfect to me.
BAd
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cat t.
climber
california
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Sep 16, 2017 - 01:43pm PT
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Thanks for the return story, DMT! This was wonderful:
Before you know it something magical happens. Its stops being 'the old dog inviting the new kid along' to 'the new kid calling Pops to ask if he wants to go climbing next weekend. She has plans and she's pursuing them. We've always likened it to 'taking the reigns' too. Beginning to steer their own course, make their own decisions, to be an adult climber in the waking world. Not to look like one, they ARE one.
DMT also wrote:
If you set aside the competitive urge then warbler's ideas shouldn't have any meaning whatsoever. None.
To argue otherwise is to accept the competition. One does not have to ever compete, not with herself, not with others, to be a climber. She merely needs to climb.
DMT, I do understand your point. Yes, we live in a sufficiently progressive society that if I were truly high-minded I could just tune out the critics and realize there is no need to prove oneself to haters. But statements like the following,
If these feminist women would accept their biological limitations in athletics like most of their sisters do, their enjoyment of the activity, and their confidence level wouldn't be tainted by the fact they'll never consistently outdo the best men.
are so clearly intended to "put women in their place," that I feel compelled to point out the huge disservice such words do to men and women alike. Similar arguments have been used so many times throughout history to oppress various groups. I think most posters would be appalled if someone said "Women should just accept that they are not qualified for stressful or important work, like being a doctor or starting a company. If they just realized that they are far too sensitive for such work, they could embrace true happiness and confidence by realizing that they'll never be able to work as well as men!"
And really, even if it were not a social issue, is "well, if you want to be happy, just don't expect anything of yourself!" the kind of advice we should be giving to ANYONE??
BAd talked about competitiveness between male/female partners:
I know my wife has struggled in her competitiveness with me. I'm a bigger, better, stronger climber, and that still bothers her at times, even after being together for 30 years. I don't really care that I'm better, although I do get antsy sometimes when I know I could lead a given pitch more quickly. Personally, any competitiveness that I feel toward my partner (an excellent mountain biker/skier who is not naturally inclined toward climbing) is actually rooted in worrying that I am just so slow that I will drive him crazy. It feels a bit frustrating when I have to give it my all just to keep up with his "casual" pace. I suppose it hurts my pride to know that he rides and skis with me because he loves my company in spite of the fact that I will never go a pace that he finds challenging.
I could see how it would be overwhelming for a woman (or a man!!) whose partner is better at every activity they do together. If that were true in my relationship, I would probably struggle with a sense of "what the hell am I good for, then?" I am very content to have a partner who excels at a different set of activities but is driven by similar motivations. He is happy to plan the ski trips (while I still unexpectedly topple over skinning up the tiniest of hills) and I am happy to lead him up long, easy rock routes.
But there's a huge, huge difference between saying, "it's not worth beating yourself up about it if your husband climbs harder than you" and saying, "you will never climb as well as men, so stop deluding yourself into thinking you could be good."
Edit:
Also, thanks nah000; I appreciate your response. I find it frightening to share such tales, because I don't want anyone to judge her based on a single anecdote from me. It is strange to realize that when the real person no longer exists, our unreliable accounts of them become the only reality. I hope I have not portrayed her as some caricature of competitiveness; she was a complex person, and I really admired that she possessed both exceedingly strong convictions and an eager willingness to understand the views of others.
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