This blog piece is going to be too good for this blog. It should be in a magazine but of course magazines are failing to do any kind of job. Blogs are just blogs so can't fail, Andrew Bisharat take note. Women on the other hand don't fail, they succeed, they succeed more than men because they don't try as hard as men and still do a great job. Well most of the time anyway. In Yoga most of the teachers are women. In climbing most of the good climbers are men, but how much do the men try compared to the women? Now I am generally a fan of women, but despite what I have just said, I have to tell you that you are under achieving. There is a great deal of chauvinism in climbing which is keeping girls back. So girls don't take any notice.
This is Laurence (Laurence is a girl's name) burning me off on a very importantly sized edge. Despite much training this edge is very hard for this particular male climber to pull on. I am a good climber, Laurence is a good climber, but Laurence is more comfortable on this edge. In my family there are a few females who climb they all have stronger small hold capability. There are in my family two yoga teachers and sundry members who practice yoga and stretching, only two can do perfect box splits, one is a yoga teacher the other me. Who has tried harder at box splits the girl or me? Is it harder to do box splits if you are of the disadvantaged sex? Is it harder to pull on tiny holds if you are of the larger sex?
In order of appearance are Harmonie, Melody and Stevie warming up. Who will be the best climber, who has the most advantages? At the moment it will be me, but not for long, if these girls keep it up I believe they will out climb me, and I look foreword to it. When Fishuber did the famous route Action Direct-the 'male route' which has testosterone written all over it, he was asked if a woman would ever do it. To his credit he said, they would if they had sufficient height. Years ago a sport climbing champion said that women would never on-sight 7c (yes Jibe that was you), how wrong he was. Today I can now see no reason why girls won't onsight 8c, or more!
And some of the guys out there are thinking what about power and how it affects climbing? Well girls are just as powerful as men if you weigh them, and thats what counts. If a girl wants to carry 5O kgs sacs of grain like me, she won't look like a ballerina. If a girl wants to climb a powerful climb like Action direct she won't even have to be very powerful, just have strong fingers, a strong core, and know how to move. I can't wait for this to happen, it makes me smile just thinking about it.
