When I said in my guest post earlier this week that I wasn’t the sort of person who climbs mountains, that was a thought with many facets.
I emphasized the self-confidence/failure side of it–the 7-year-old who always came in last on track and field day.
That’s by no means all of it.
I went to a “jock” high school and have a long-standing association in my mind: the world of football players and cheerleaders is a world of rape culture. There’s no particular place in my own experience where I got this. I was a nerdy kid and stayed as far as possible from normal peer activities in adolescence, apart from my very closest nerd friends. I tried youth church group once and that was certainly a very rape-culture place. I suppose that that being a dangerous places didn’t make me eager to try other peer spaces.
I’m sure this association is unfair to many individual football players and cheerleaders, but rape culture in sports is real, even if I haven’t “personally experienced” it. (Whatever that means. Like compulsory heterosexuality, women whose behaviour is controlled by fears of things they haven’t experienced are still controlled by—experiencing—those things.)
Consider for example this recent news story: Outrage for delayed sentence for sentence for Calgary hockey player convicted of sex crime against child
Bouldering has been accessible to me because it happens in coffee shops and other somewhat alternative spaces where I feel safe (under the train arches at Vauxwall in London!). And the people doing it are diverse and often nerdy and I feel safe with them.
Sometimes when I travel, bouldering spaces are more like normal gyms. I like the fact that that means greater class inclusiveness (good old egalitarian Finland). But not when it means less. (I’m looking at you, U.S. boulderers talking mergers and acquisitions and when you’re going to make partner. And salivating over that hot babe doing radical things (your words, not mine).)
When I go to a climbing wall that is literally part of a sportsplex, I’m surprised by the strength of my association of those spaces with a lack of safety. Just going through the front doors and into the locker room puts me on alert. It’s not the sort of thing that blatantly stops me–it just gives it a slightly aversive feeling.
I had slight PTSD from my first ridge scramble. For a week afterwards I involuntarily visualized myself falling off Crib Goch when I was falling asleep. My clever career coach suggested I remind myself that I didn’t fall off, and rehearse instead the (true) memory of being successful. This worked. I’m not discounting structural and cultural approaches to rape culture (at all), but it’s good to have tips and tricks to help control how the associations are affecting my life.
