[slab_happy]

I've always found odd the disparity between men and women in 1 and 2. I used to imagine it was something to do with women being inherently less adventurous, but now I don't think that's true.

I've wondered if there's a thing that the hardest-climbing women still feel the need to focus on proving themselves by repeating routes put up by guys.

(And there's the historical phenomenon where routes suddenly get downgraded as soon as a woman does them. Which seems to be diminishing, but still lingers on.)

And when women do do really hard first ascents, they often don't get repeated for ages, or get quasi-sidelined. Think of how long it took for the Nose to be repeated -- or Meltdown, especially relative to other super-hard cracks. You just get the "small fingers" line, and then the strongest male climbers are weirdly unwilling to test themselves against it.

On the Enormocast, one Yosemite climber of Lynn Hill's generation (blanking on the name atm) suggested it was because, after Lynn freed the Nose, if you went and repeated it, well, you were only being "as good as a girl". And if you went and tried to repeat it and failed -- you're "not even as good as a girl"!

Apparently Carlo Traversi's been suggesting privately that he thinks Meltdown might be 5.14d, which would mean that it was the first trad route of that grade. Now he's proved it's not a "small fingers" thing, it'll be interesting to see if anyone else is willing to have a go.

So, yeah. I wonder if all that -- the sidelining, the reluctance to repeat -- might tend to deter the top women from doing hard first ascents, versus "proving" their ability through repeats. Women are still mentally playing on other people's terms, rather than setting our own.

Hopefully we'll see that changing ...

[remus]

And when women do do really hard first ascents, they often don't get repeated for ages, or get quasi-sidelined. Think of how long it took for the Nose to be repeated -- or Meltdown, especially relative to other super-hard cracks.

I think it's worth bearing in mind that The Nose and Meltdown are both just really hard (a serious testament to Lynn and Beth), and hard routes see less attention and get repeated less frequently.

If we look at other hard single pitch cracks  the ones that stand out are Cobra, Recovery Drink and Century Crack. Cobra is ~8b+ (where the others are ~8c+, or harder according to Carlo) so it makes sense that it gets more ascents. Meltdown, Recovery Drink and Century waited 11yrs, 7yrs and 5yrs to see a repeat so it's not like any of these routes are getting loads of attention. Maybe Meltdown isn't getting much attention because it's really hard, rather than because it was put up by Beth?

It seems similar to some of Alex Huber's hard stuff (Open Air, Weiss Rose) or Tommy Caldwell's Flex Luthor. Era Vella they are not!

[moose]

I think as well as being incredibly hard, Meltdown suffers from terrible conditions a lot of the time - spray and flooding from the waterfall.  I think Traversi had two or three years where it just wasn't feasible.

[Offwidth]

I reckon I have been back following this forum for six months or so and don’t recall a single post by a woman.
I could be mistaken.
That has to be a bad thing.

I actually agree that climbing forums can be very dude-heavy, which in turn tends to be self-reinforcing, and that this is not ideal.

However, it can also be easy to assume that all posters on the internet must be men unless they state otherwise (because we're trained to think of male as the "default" identity, unconscious social assumptions and all that). Which is also not ideal!

That's masterful understatement. UKB is the most male dominated forum I use. Its my biggest gripe about the place. I can't quite see why either;  its certainly much less sexist than the other channel. Maybe its the hanging on to adolescent humour (something that I like).

[Offwidth]

Emma is a star. The person you were just sitting next to is well into the teens on guidebooks worked on as well.

[jwi]

And when women do do really hard first ascents, they often don't get repeated for ages, or get quasi-sidelined. Think of how long it took for the Nose to be repeated -- or Meltdown, especially relative to other super-hard cracks. You just get the "small fingers" line, and then the strongest male climbers are weirdly unwilling to test themselves against it.

On the Enormocast, one Yosemite climber of Lynn Hill's generation (blanking on the name atm) suggested it was because, after Lynn freed the Nose, if you went and repeated it, well, you were only being "as good as a girl". And if you went and tried to repeat it and failed -- you're "not even as good as a girl"!

^THIS. In retrospect it is clear that Lynn Hill was by far the best American climber during the 90s and that they shouldn't be ashamed to fail as they where all clearly worse than her at everything except bouldering. At the time, I don't think anyone wanted to admit that. I believe that Lynn Hill's onsight first free ascent of Mingus in Verdon also more or less killed the route for 20 years, it still has curiously few repeats and no other onsights so far, I belive.

Hopefully we'll see that changing ...

I certainly hope so. At least one guy (Arthur Guinet) has had the balls to repeat Anak Verhoeven's Sang neuf (9a) and to try the extension/linkup she also freed (Sweet Neuf 9a+).

[petejh]

I've always found odd the disparity between men and women in 1 and 2. I used to imagine it was something to do with women being inherently less adventurous, but now I don't think that's true.

I've wondered if there's a thing that the hardest-climbing women still feel the need to focus on proving themselves by repeating routes put up by guys.

....

So, yeah. I wonder if all that -- the sidelining, the reluctance to repeat -- might tend to deter the top women from doing hard first ascents, versus "proving" their ability through repeats. Women are still mentally playing on other people's terms, rather than setting our own.

Hopefully we'll see that changing ...

It's a theory.  I'd be interested to hear some of the top women climbers speak on why they (relatively) rarely establish significant new routes. Like you say women are currently playing the climbing game on men's terms, climbing routes put up by men, but it needn't be like that. If any activity has equal barriers to entry it's climbing.

An interesting outlier is Innes Papert. She has a long history of putting up significant first ascents of hard mixed climbs. I recently returned from arctic Norway with group of mates, we established 4 new mixed routes between us and repeated a bunch. Papert has been active there putting up new routes and they're amongst the hardest routes there, too hard for most climbers. Same all over the world. I realise it's not fashionable to suggest 'nature' but I can't help wonder if her brain is wired slightly differently to 'the average' female brain were you to examine in an mri. Or whether the difference is all down purely to 'nurture'.

[slab_happy]

I'd be interested to hear some of the top women climbers speak on why they (relatively) rarely establish significant new routes. Like you say women are currently playing the climbing game on men's terms, climbing routes put up by men, but it needn't be like that.

Agreed and agreed! It seems like women in climbing are hitting new levels of confidence, so I hope that we'll see it starting to change.

... now I really want a workshop on development and new routing at the next Women's Climbing Symposium.

An interesting outlier is Innes Papert.

Pamela Shanti Pack would be another, it occurs to me.

I realise it's not fashionable to suggest 'nature' but I can't help wonder if her brain is wired slightly differently to 'the average' female brain were you to examine in an mri.

That's a classic "no true Scotsman" argument, though. Women aren't into new routing -- except for this woman (and this other woman, and these other women before that ...), so maybe she really has a "male brain"!

In the 60s and 70s, women were a pretty small minority of climbers, full stop. If people had postulated that this was bcause of "nature" (as I'm sure they did) and that women just weren't wired to be interested in that sort of thing, they'd look pretty silly right now.

It just seems like common sense to me to assume that social factors have a significant effect, before we start having to postulate special neurological differences that determine whether someone's into new routing or not.

[petejh]

I agree that it's that type of argument. And I realise that type of argument holds no water if it's just based on having a narrow uninformed perspective or a biased outlook. But I'm yet to be convinced that it doesn't have some merit in this case.
I say that because my layperson's understanding of the brain science (been fascinated with reading about if for years) shows it is indisputable - plenty of recent brain scanning evidence and references to back it up - that the centres of the brain that work with emotion (and that underlie powerful drives and instincts) do not work in exactly the same way in males and females; and therefore the drive and instincts that result do differ on average between males/females. Some females have more typically 'male' emotional centres and some males have more typically 'female' emotional centres. But on average there is a distinct difference. The emphasis on behaviour that results is different - typically a stronger drive for dominance in males and a stronger drive for maternal instinct and security in females. That isn't intended to characterise with a broad brush and there's way more to it than could be expressed in this post so don't kill the messenger, maybe question the evidence instead?

Before anyone says. This isn't the case for the rest of the brain. The parts of the brain that work with reason and logic work the same in female brains as they do in male brains.

It isn't that much of a leap of imagination therefore, to imagine a link between a difference in emphasis on drives between males/females, with different behaviours expressed in an activity involving risk, uncertainty, ego, competition and territory. Not that I think it 'should' be that way. I don't.

edit: For a start, new routing needn't be an egotistical, territorial 'thing'. It's probably males that make it that way. But then it gets a bit chicken and egg.

[Will Hunt]

If you assume (incorrectly, but more on that later) that to do new routes you have to climb hard, then the answer is fairly obvious. If men as a population are performing at a higher level than women as a population, then by the time women are able to climb grade x, the men have already been there for years gobbling up all the new stuff, of which there is only a finite supply. It's certainly the case that new stuff that is quite hard is more likely to be widely reported, so that's part of the picture.

Obviously, if you're prepared to explore then you can find new ground at any grade, and most of it will be fairly steady just because of the nature of rock. I'm not sure why there aren't as many women doing this, but based on my own personal experience I'd say that I find this to be the case. Maybe a confidence thing, as slab_happy says.

[tomtom]

#mansplaining

[petejh]

I was waiting for that.

On a forum with one female poster, an element of mansplaining is inevitable 🙄

[slab_happy]

Haven't read it yet, but I hear very good things about Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender as a review of the science. Gina Rippon's The Gendered Brain also looks promising.

[mde]

We are a climbing family and have a girl (9) and a boy (8 years). Both kids are keen climbers, the girl (even if you remove the difference in age) doing a bit better than the boy at the moment. I occasionally put up routes, both sport and multipitch. Mostly projects for myself, but also did some things for and together with the kids.

The girl just enjoys doing it with me, which means belaying and the trying the route once it is finished, etc.. She never expressed any interest in operating the drill etc.. Complete the opposite for the boy. He at least wants to bolt together with me or even prefers to realize his own ideas (about where the bolts should be or where the route should go).

I never had the impression that I treat(ed) the kids differently due to their gender. I know it's just an n=1 observation, but I guess it's still pretty typical, even at this very young age.

[Oldmanmatt]

If we’re exploring apparent gender roles, as a slight aside to the main topic...

We have two boys and two girls.

I usually tell friends we have “one of each”.

Our eldest daughter, 13, seems to exhibit a mix of characteristics, probably fits into the “girlier” end of the tomboy spectrum. The best climber of the kids, likes to get muddy. Very pretty, sings onstage, staring roles in school productions (in a school that takes it seriously), mid range roles in a couple of small movies. Surfer. Kayaker, hiker, likes to bivi etc and obsessive Dr Who and Red Dwarf fan, who carries at least two books everywhere she goes. Paints and draws and plays piano (in the livingroom, fucking constantly, might be better when she gets better).

Eldest boy, 12, stopped climbing 😱. Obsessed with football. Trains four nights a week. Plays in Junior FA league every (EVERY SINGLE FUCKING) weekend. If not kicking something vaguely spherical, he’s playing rugby, basketball or sat in front of the PS4 playing Fortnight. Spends his money on football gear and hair products. I constantly tease him for looking like he’s part of a Korean Boy Band.
Couldn’t be more cliched if he tried.

Youngest Son 10 is sensitive. Very good climber, very keen  Boulderer, shits himself (I mean totally freezes) more than 6mtrs above the ground. Obsessed with Greek mythology and history, wants to be a Palaeontologist and probably will be. Does not conform to male stereotype inthe slightest. Prone to tears. First to whine. About as tough as a damp tissue. Despite living in a Zoo of a household.

Youngest daughter 10, complete thug. Despite us all being somewhat posh, well spoken and her own very high academic abilities; she sounds as if she was raised on the streets of the Eastend. Football obsessed. Only girl in her team. Quick with her fists and good with them too. Uncontrollable temper. Struggling, now, because she has no female friends, but all the boys she’s hung out with until now, are suddenly starting to feel “odd” around girls. Fearless, would jump off a cliff on a dare. Skateboarder. Mountain biker. Reminds me sometimes of Joe Pesci’s character in “Goodfellas”; a three foot ball of pissed off psyco.

Point being...

They just don’t fit into any particular “gender” package, across the board. They sort of touch on different points of a wide spectrum (with All Male at one end and All Female at the other) and I mean, many different points, depending on which aspect of their “character” you choose to assess.
It would be interesting to know what gender they would choose to be, given their impressions of the roles and opportunities society has allotted then based on their reproductive organs. I might have that conversation.

[slab_happy]

I never had the impression that I treat(ed) the kids differently due to their gender.

I doubt that you managed to raise them in a bubble immune to all outside social influences, though.

One of my nieces (aged 5) came home from school distraught because the boys in her class had told her that "girls aren't allowed to like dinosaurs".

[tomtom]

On the theme of influences on children - I enjoyed this article over the weekend.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/09/how-to-raise-good-feminist-boys-sons

[slab_happy]

Off-topic: your descriptions of your kids are charming. They sound like a splendid bunch.

It would be interesting to know what gender they would choose to be, given their impressions of the roles and opportunities society has allotted then based on their reproductive organs. I might have that conversation.

Gender identity is different from gender expression and gender roles, though. There are trans women who are total tomboys, but who are very clear that they're women doing masculine things, not men. And of course plenty of cis women who are tomboyish or butch or whatever or have "masculine" qualities", but never feel that we're anything other than female (and cis dudes who have "feminine" qualities etc. etc.).

It seems like there's a deep sense of gender identity (male/female/neither) which is quite distinct from whether or not you fit into the role or qualities society thinks you should have. Which is fascinating.

[kelvin]

On the theme of influences on children - I enjoyed this article over the weekend.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/09/how-to-raise-good-feminist-boys-sons

If I'm honest, I didn't know how to be a good feminist man when I was raising my kids, I had my son at 23 and my daughter four years later.
And that's probably the problem right there - education comes too late.

[tomtom]

On the theme of influences on children - I enjoyed this article over the weekend.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/09/how-to-raise-good-feminist-boys-sons

If I'm honest, I didn't know how to be a good feminist man when I was raising my kids, I had my son at 23 and my daughter four years later.
And that's probably the problem right there - education comes too late.

My take home from the article was that kids get their influences from places you didnt expect - and that they're all different. I enjoyed the article from the context of how kids growing up compared against their parents plans/expectations and how wonderfully random children are!

[andy popp]

Haven't read it yet, but I hear very good things about Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender as a review of the science. Gina Rippon's The Gendered Brain also looks promising.

I've been meaning to post a link to "The Gendered Brain."

[Oldmanmatt]

Off-topic: your descriptions of your kids are charming. They sound like a splendid bunch.

It would be interesting to know what gender they would choose to be, given their impressions of the roles and opportunities society has allotted then based on their reproductive organs. I might have that conversation.

Gender identity is different from gender expression and gender roles, though. There are trans women who are total tomboys, but who are very clear that they're women doing masculine things, not men. And of course plenty of cis women who are tomboyish or butch or whatever or have "masculine" qualities", but never feel that we're anything other than female (and cis dudes who have "feminine" qualities etc. etc.).

It seems like there's a deep sense of gender identity (male/female/neither) which is quite distinct from whether or not you fit into the role or qualities society thinks you should have. Which is fascinating.

That’s it, isn’t it.

It’s just identity. Not a male identity or a female identity; just identity.

I mean, it might turn out that, even without societal straight jackets, there are more females who enjoy flower arranging, than males; but ultimately, that sort of preference doesn’t define either gender and any ascribed “gender role” is just the tyranny of the majority.

I hope these old tropes fade away. I’m already pretty sure my kids have a very different view on the matter than I and my peers did at the same age, 36 years ago.
And I’m damn sure my generation had much more opportunity and a more reasonable attitude than my parents did in the late 50’s/60’s.

Whilst it might not be fast enough, whilst there is still a long way to go; progress is moving the right way.

[andy popp]

Some good posts in this thread recently.

[petejh]

Haven't read it yet, but I hear very good things about Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender as a review of the science. Gina Rippon's The Gendered Brain also looks promising.

Thanks for linking those two books, I'll certainly have a read of one or the other. I don't hold strongly onto the belief that male and female brains are different. I'm open minded to both *sides'* theories. I certainly don't feel I have any position to defend and I'm not interested in the labyrinth of gender politics -  I'm only interested in what the truth is.

I know which theory I currently find more convincing. As far as I can tell the weight of evidence currently suggests that the truth is, male and female brains are not identical. The science suggests there are slight but important differences between the emotional centres (but not the rest of the brain).

Those two books you linked challenge that view and question the validity of the research. As far as I can tell they're the minority view against the established scientific opinion. Doesn't mean they're incorrect though.

It's interesting to read some of the reviews written by critics of Cordelia Fine's theory. Some critics claim she's introducing gender politics into what 'should' be a straightforward scientific question - the very thing that she argues has skewed the research. Who knows..
Another critic points out a logical fallacy in some of her reasoning around the importance of social factors:  ''.. showing that a manipulation of social variables changes behaviour does not prove that it was those very social variables that cause the spontaneous sex differences in the first place. Social manipulations are forms of intervention, and we shouldn’t fall victim to the old fallacy of assuming that the absence of a treatment is the cause of a condition. Aspirins can make headaches vanish, but headaches aren’t necessarily caused by the absence of aspirin''

I wonder if there would be as much political interference in the theory that there are biological differences between male/female brains, if it was viewed as dispassionately (and didn't have an associated legacy of power imbalance) as the theory that there are biological differences between levels of lean muscle mass distribution between males/females...

A review on the British Psychological Society website by Simon Baron Cohen:

Delusions of gender – ‘neurosexism’, biology and politics

Cordelia Fine’s new book is a bold new attack on the very idea that there are any essential sex differences in the human mind and the brain. Her barely veiled agenda, in this long, scholarly book, is to show that any sex difference found in humans can be made to vanish! How? Simply by a quick manipulation of a social-psychological variable. If, for example, men on average score higher on a maths test or a mental rotation (spatial) test, then simply by telling women ahead of time that women on average score higher on such tests can not only lead women to perform better than they usually do, but can make the sex difference vanish.

These are just some of the dozens of social psychological studies that Fine reviews, and her argument has an appealing simplicity: if women and men can score equally in areas where robust sex differences have been reported, then surely they don’t constitute essential sex differences. They must instead be a remnant of the centuries of sexism that attempted to portray women as less intelligent than men. Fine goes further to argue that any modern cognitive neuroscientist who suggests there may be any essential sex differences in the human mind is just perpetuating these historic sexist attitudes. And she coins a new word for the exploration of sex differences in the mind by contemporary scientists: ‘neurosexism’. She litters her book liberally with quotes from 18th- and 19th-century sexists, as if contemporary scientists in the field of sex differences are no different from those who wished
to deprive women of the vote, keep them confined to domesticity, and as if to say ‘look: nothing has changed’.

So what’s good and what’s wrong with her basic argument? What’s good is that this book examines the role of social psychological factors in how men and women perform on psychological tests, and this is a welcome contribution. As one of those psychologists Fine has in her sights, it might surprise her that I strongly agree that social variables are important and doubtless play key roles in shaping our behaviour. Indeed, the kinds of effects Fine highlights can be thought of as commonsense demonstrations that if you make someone feel more confident, they do better on a test; or that if you change a person’s expectations of how they will perform, their performance is influenced by their expectations. We should thank Fine for reminding readers not to forget the importance of social factors influencing sex differences.

But showing that a manipulation of social variables changes behaviour does not prove that it was those very social variables that cause the spontaneous sex differences in the first place. Social manipulations are forms of intervention, and we shouldn’t fall victim to the old fallacy of assuming that the absence of a treatment is the cause of a condition. Aspirins can make headaches vanish, but headaches aren’t necessarily caused by the absence of aspirin. Where I – and I suspect many other contemporary scientists – would part ways with Fine is in her strident, extreme denial of the role that biology might play in giving rise to any sex differences in the mind and brain. My own book The Essential Difference was I think quite moderate in suggesting that sex differences are the result of both social and biological influences, and the same is true of Melissa Hines’ excellent book Brain Gender. But for Fine, even a hint of biological influence is too much biology.

So how does she deal with experimental findings that show either prenatal or neonatal influences on sex differences? Here, her main strategy (arguing that sex differences can be made to vanish by using the trick of manipulating social psychological variables) just doesn’t apply. So she is forced to adopt a different strategy, namely, dissecting the experiments that purport to show prenatal or neonatal influences, to reveal that such experiments are flawed and therefore incorrect in their conclusions. This is Fine’s last-ditch attempt to make sex differences go away.

Being a co-author of some of these experiments I can examine her criticisms with the benefit of close knowledge of the studies she discusses, and found errors in her critiques. For example, in our newborn study (Connellan et al., 2001), which showed that girls look longer at a human face and boys look longer at a mechanical mobile, Fine attempts to dismantle this evidence by saying we should have presented both stimuli at the same time, rather than one at a time, since one at a time might have led to fatigue-effects. However, she overlooks that it was for this very reason that we included counter-balancing into the experimental design, to avoid any risk of such order-effects.

Secondly, she argues that the experimenter may not have been totally blind to the baby’s sex because there might have been ‘congratulations’ cards around the bed (‘Congratulations! It’s a boy!’). However, she overlooks that it was precisely for this reason that we included a panel of independent judges coding the videotapes of just the eye-region of the baby’s face, from which it is virtually impossible to judge the sex of the baby. Fine is right that our newborn baby study needs to be independently replicated, given its importance for establishing a human sex difference in the mind at a point in development before culture has had a chance to have any influence. But it is
an example of where Fine’s scholarship shows some shortcomings, where details are overlooked in order to fit her biology-free theory of human sex differences.

Although we would all like to believe in Fine’s extreme social determinism, efforts to explain (purely in terms of social variables) why neurodevelopmental conditions like autism, learning difficulties, and language delay affect boys more often than girls lead to the ludicrous position of blaming these conditions on sexist factors in society (or in parents). And extreme social determinism has major difficulties explaining why left-handedness is more common in boys (12 per cent) than girls (8 per cent). In contrast, a moderate position that recognises that – over and above the important role of the social environment – biology may also play a small role opens up all sorts of lines of inquiry (e.g. into the effects of prenatal hormones and genes). Autism runs in families and many genes have been implicated, and it may turn out that some of these are relevant to why it is sex-linked.I have also been impressed to see consistent correlations between amniotic fetal testosterone (FT) levels and measures of social development across 10 years of follow-up studies of a cohort of typically developing children we have been tracking, whose mothers all had amniocentesis during pregnancy (Baron-Cohen et al., 2005). An extreme biological determinism would be equally ludicrous, since there is no doubt that social variables can amplify and interact with such biological effects.

Fine is of course obliged to try to find fault with these hormone studies, challenging, for example, whether FT in the amniotic fluid reflects FT in the brain. Again she overlooks that if we could measure FT in the brain in an ethical way, we would. FT in amniotic fluid is the next best ethical option, and it seems to be showing us that FT is associated with sex differences in the mind.

Ultimately, for me, the biggest weakness of Fine’s neurosexism allegation is the mistaken blurring of science with politics. Her book reads as a polemic about the implicit political bias underlying the science of sex differences. However, this ignores that you can be a scientist interested in the nature of sex differences while being a clear supporter of equal opportunities and a firm opponent of all forms of discrimination in society. One endeavour need have nothing to do with the other. Fusing science with politics is, in my view, unfounded.

[slab_happy]

A review on the British Psychological Society website by Simon Baron Cohen

.... who's really not an objective commentator on this one.

I mean, you could consider it a "right to reply" from him to criticisms of his work, but given that he's written a lot of popular science arguing that there's an essential difference between male and female brains (and that autistic people have "extreme male brains" and so forth), he can't be an objective reviewer.

Also, on a quick glance:

"efforts to explain (purely in terms of social variables) why neurodevelopmental conditions like autism, learning difficulties, and language delay affect boys more often than girls lead to the ludicrous position of blaming these conditions on sexist factors in society (or in parents)."

That's straightforwardly wrong. Conditions can be sex-linked because they're gene-linked -- for example, Rett syndrome only affects girls -- without indicating anything about fundamental differences between male and female brains.

Also there are now strong indications that autism is seriously under-diagnosed in girls/women -- which may be partly because of gendered stereotypes about how it presents (the Asperger "little professor" is assumed to be a boy not a girl, etc.). There may well still be a gender skew in the incidence (given that we know there are genetic factors), but it's somewhat ironic to pick that as an example when assumptions about "extreme male brains" are part of why we don't know what the ratio actually is.