Sexist Grading System

J Q wrote: I know you didn't mean to, but you answered your own question. But because you need a little help: philosophy has to do with reason, logic, and an ability to look at issues from a point of view other than your own, something you suck at.These are all very useful when creating an objective system of evaluation. But don't worry, we don't expect you to understand anything other than what you already believe. But a psychologist might be interested in why you are so angry and resentful at everyone who has a different point or view than your own, heck, they even have several names for that and none are too pleasant.

When I said logic I didn't mean philosophy logic 2 different things I mean more of like discrete math (which I know people I talk with all the time and they have the same name but they aren't really the same)

It is the internet, I am not angry or resentful your seeing things that are based on your on interpreting of text not what is really there. It does annoy me when someone writes alot of crap with no basis in fact (and can honestly be disproven very easy) and is purely their own random thought. If there is a climbing accident and 2 people die, you can't always prove why they fell to their death and it doesn't bother me when different people have different options. But what he wrote is basically like having a race and arguing who crossed the finish line first (when you have a high speed camera recording the event)

I have a degree in philosophy, always had an interest in it (for fun not for work, also have a degree in religion because I find it interesting as well) but you are talking about making it into something it isn't.

Your trying to say people grade stuff because of some magical thought in their head they they want to be better than women, or they are trying to grade it in such a way to make it harder from women to climb?

Is it that hard to understand that people grade based on how hard it is for them to climb something (has nothing to do with being male or female). Is it that hard to believe that is all they are doing? It is simple. Stop trying to make a conspiracy theory out of everything.

There is a difference between having a logical point of view that can have supporting factors and one that is complete BS.

Climbing is more complex with grading but ultimately it still comes down to who can get from location A to location B the fastest (example not really talking about time).

Why is it so hard to understand is beyond me (you don't need a PhD to see it).

Is it going to make any difference if you have a guide book with all women grades? It still will translate to the same thing I climb X on male scale and Y on the woman scale.

Going back to his article. I agree with most everything he says in there just take the woman out of it (has nothing to do with woman has everything to do with grades being people's option). He acts like woman are the only ones who can climb a V10 in one area and can't climb a V5 in another. Maybe he should go visit HP40. I have climbed dozens are V5s and a few V6 but can't climb a V2 there...? I have seen people who onsight most any 5.12 get shutdown on a 5.10 slab because they had never touched a slab climb.

He is completely blind if he thinks that grading issues have anything to do with sexism and everything to do with the basic issues with grading facts.

Article wrote:If a dyno feels V5 for one person and V9 for another, why put a single number on it? Instead, we call this problem “yellow,” a color that generally corresponds to a range from V6-V8. Most climbers will find the difficulty to be in this range, while others will think it lies outside these bounds.

This doesn't help the grading system. All it does it make grade ranges looser and encourages people to get on a route they could hurt them self on. When I go do a 1000ft climb without a single bolt I don't want a guide book that has green, yellow, red... How am I suppose to judge my abilities to the rating? We all know grades are subjective and you generally read up on the route and type of moves, try out other similar aged / graded routes in the area, and than you commit to the wall. If the best I could get is hey it is a yellow which could mean I don't know 5.8 to 5.11... that is just going to get dangerous.

People are naturally bad at grading things. We are good at comparing 1 thing to another. So generally most areas have similar grading between routes there, and that is all the grades are suppose to be there for. Who cares if a 5.12 in NC is a 5.8 in CA, it isn't ideal but as long as all the routes in a single area compare to each other well enough that is all you need.

Anyone who purely believes a grade and doesn't do research about how the grades compare to climbing in their home area is doing something wrong.

ViperScale wrote: And what does PhD in philosophy have to do with grading a route? That is more along statistics, logic, and judging physical ability. To many people with PhD have no common sense and try to figure out something that is very simple and right in front of their face.

First of all, it's "too" not "to"

Second of all, I'm sorry, but to get a PH.D. you must possess some sort of general knowledge as well as whatever content knowledge that degree is being attained in. In case you are not aware of this, but to attain a Ph.D. you must have more than just financial means, you must also be at least a little more intelligent (in at least a specific field) than the average human.

mozeman wrote: First of all, it's "too" not "to" Second of all, I'm sorry, but to get a PH.D. you must possess some sort of general knowledge as well as whatever content knowledge that degree is being attained in. In case you are not aware of this, but to attain a Ph.D. you must have more than just financial means, you must also be at least a little more intelligent (in at least a specific field) than the average human.

I never claimed to be the best english writer in the world (if that is all you can see when you read a post i feel bad for you), I scored perfect on math half of the SAT when I was in 10, I didn't do so well on the english side.

Still that degree means next to nothing about grading a climbing route (sure it does have to do with how people come up with the grade for themself etc but has nothing to do with how the system takes multi inputs and averages out the grade etc). That and nothing he said in there can be isolated to only affect women. His only example he uses compares an extremely short women to the grading system (aka the average climber).

It doesn't take any of the degrees I have to understand the massive flaw in this system. A grading scale takes input from multi people to try to get an average grade for an average person. If you have a physical feature that makes you not average the system will not work perfectly for you.

I take this into account every time I talk to anyone about a route's grade. I talk about how I climbed it with my -4 ape index and issues I personally had to work through to get past a certain move. If they are the same height as me with a 0 ape index than some moves would probably be much easier from them. I also have small hands (probably related to my small ape index) that is also helpful sometimes to get into small cracks others can't.

Maybe we should make a new grading system that scales based on hand size, body weight, height, ape index, etc and it would be a perfect system for everyone on the planet.

Every issue he calls sexist in the article is issues that guys have problems with on the grading scale as well. So his calling it sexist instead of just writing an article about issues with the grading system is stupid.

YDS is supose to grade a route based on the single hardest move (other systems grade on overall difficulty of the route). This means a 5.10a with 90ft and 5.4 moves and a single 5.10a move is going to feel ALOT easier than a 5.10a route with maybe 1-2 move easier than 5.10a.

Lets go get 1 male and 1 female with the same height, ape index, body build and see how they do on a bunch of different routes graded differently. I have no question they won't be similar in grades. Men and women bodies are naturally different so likely there will be some moves the women could do easier and some that the men could do easier but you are only going to get an average.

ViperScale wrote: When I said logic I didn't mean philosophy logic 2 different things I mean more of like discrete math (which I know people I talk with all the time and they have the same name but they aren't really the same)

They are much closer than outsiders and beginners tend to think. Kripke semantics is the first example that comes to mind. You should also look up the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and type "logic" in the search box.

brenta wrote: They are much closer than outsiders and beginners tend to think. Kripke semantics is the first example that comes to mind. You should also look up the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and type "logic" in the search box.

There alot of different branches but I like to think of them as one being if 1 = 1 than true where the other one is more abstract with if (untestable / varies based on unknown input statement = true) than true.

There is overlap on most things though.

A major part of philosophy is the search for meaning. A philosopher is bound to find meaning from time to time in places where there is none, like sexism in climbing grades. Stupid article, don't have enough information to make a judgement on the author however.

I do agree that some routes will be harder for the average woman due to the average woman height being shorter than average man. Which means it will be harder for them to reach some holds on a rare route etc.

However that isn't sexism. Every climber on the planet will find different routes harder / easier for them. So it isn't a bias toward a gender but is a bias towards people being different.

Uhmmm.. uhhh... Uh-wha? People are dumb.

Will S wrote: I know him reasonably well. PhD in philosophy. You may not agree with him (I don't), but he isn't "an idiot". He can also climb circles around you and I, so there's that. Also one of the nicest, most positive people I know.

Simply having a PhD doesn't necessarily make you smart...

mozeman wrote:but to attain a Ph.D. you must have more than just financial means, you must also be at least a little more intelligent (in at least a specific field) than the average human.

An expert in one field, could easily be an idiot in any other...

PhD in Philosophy?

Ha!

I see nothing in his grading theory about monads, so he clearly has no idea about
true causality.

Perhaps his goal of a black belt in philosophy is more a belt that symbolizes the absence of all light, or energy, which is nothingness.

ViperScale wrote: There alot of different branches but I like to think of them as one being if 1 = 1 than true where the other one is more abstract with if (untestable / varies based on unknown input statement = true) than true. There is overlap on most things though.

"if P then true" is a tautology for all predicates P. It looks like you meant something different from what you wrote. Let me reassure you that no logician, irrespective of background, relishes unsound deductive systems. On the other hand, there are good reasons why no one takes a discussion on climbing grades and formalizes it in some first-order language to check the validity of its sentences. So, invoking the distinction between "mathematical logic" and "philosophers' logic" in the context of this thread is the wrong thing to do.

Here, how about this. To tone down Viper and possibly give the author a little credit (while still disagreeing with him), here's what I'm getting...

The author is basically stating that:

1) Grades are subjective judgements made by the FA, potentially modified by consensus

2) Most FA's, and the majority of any consensus is male-driven, because of largely demographic and original conditions in the sport

3) There's nothing inherently wrong with either (this is more of an aside than a main point, but he states it nonetheless)

C) The first two together create a system in which women are wronged by the grading scale, and blurring out the scale will essentially remove this bias by adding a gender-encompassing spread to each grade. So if most males find a problem to be "yellow," most women will also find a similar rating to be accurate.

____

The general response seems to be that women are not expressly wronged as a group, or they're harmed equally as much as anyone else with "non-standard dimensions" compared to the average FA or consensus contributor.

The above is something that almost everyone (likely "standard dimension" men, women, and all in between) take into account when climbing. For instance, none but the most uninformed (or extremely well rounded) climbers will jump on 5.10 hands, gym, steep jugs, slabs, OW, and thin fingers with indifference.

Just like gym climbers often go "huh...." when they've been projecting 12's inside and get spit off simple 10's outside, we all understand what we are and aren't good at (or learn in due time). There's some argument that the climbs generally deemed "classic" and given some sort of elevated meaning in the community are generally more male-oriented, but this still doesn't exclude slab-meisters, OW masochists, or women from determining what they do and don't enjoy in climbing. In fact, they generally do: don't ask me what a classic OW is, but apparently Scarpelli et al. could tell me and I'd still think it was disgusting.

In any case, it does seem to be taking a distinction too far, and drawing some urgent gender-equality issue that can be magically fixed by reprinting guidebooks with color grades. IMO, this seems both unlikely, and could be fixed (for everyone) by simply stressing the importance of personal improvement (specific to style, form etc!) to new climbers, and of course, taking some sand-bagging ass-hat's opinion with a shaker of salt.

Again, it seems like most of this is already done to some extent, making this mostly a non-issue, though you could have a terrible time climbing as a girl in a group of guys where there's no accommodations for your preferences, but again, I think anyone would feel similarly if they were thrown in with a group who almost exclusively preferred and climbed one person's anti-style. To each their own...I guess?

Here is the best possible solution to grades utilizing the technology on this very site. We all can vote on the grade of a route, yes? Add body measurements to the data, sex, and you can then filter out what someone with your general body type and sex FEELS the route to be, it being all subjective and such.

So there's your feature wish list. You can't really do that in a guide book, which at best relies on grades arrived at by fewer people. Sites like mountainproject are the ULTIMATE DETERMINATORS of grades. Silly individuals can't be trusted.

And anyone that still maintains that Alligator Soup on Grey Rock at Garden of the Gods is a 9+ is WRONG!!!!!!

I took the PhD to mean he might have spent a lot of time in a US university campus environment. (Please don't ignore that word might, or that many non-US campuses may have similar phenomenon.)

Having never stepped foot in a US university campus, I only get an impression from what it's like in the media. But the impression that I get is for some campus's, there can be strong feminist movements.

I had to say movements up above because when someone says feminism it can mean one of a million things. Unfortunately that makes it hard to talk about 'feminism' or 'feminists', because the response can always be "well that's MY brand of feminism'. But, none the less, I'll march on using this vague term...

Feminism as a cause has been going on for a while now, it's achieved some wins, but now it seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. This is as one would expect of a movement that's been successful.

Today it's not about the right to vote, or the more general right to equal treatment under the law. Women have those things. Today it seems increasingly about 'social justice'.

Some people look at groups and when they don't see a 50/50 gender split, they attribute it to sexism of some sort. (In this case, one might put forward the idea that the climbing grading system is biased to men, thus climbing has systematic sexism that is discouraging women from participating). As a male you often can't dispute this, because your view will be dismissed because you see things from the position of someone with "male privilege", since most climbers seems to be light skinned, it's likely the claim will be that you have "white male privilege". When that happens you often have to rely on the females in your group to continue the discussion without you*.

It seems to be increasingly the case that in male dominated fields, the question of why women are under-represented will be raised. The attempted solution is often to give the women an advantage or incentive to join in some fashion, it might be through gender quotas in companies, or it might be through be through female only scholarships or programs especially targeting females.

Of course climbing doesn't have the money for that, so I doubt we'll see much happening in our space. The closest thing I could imagine manifesting is females being favored for sponsorship from companies (perhaps if only because if you sponsor 9 men and 2 women, it's awfully bad press to be accused of sexism - no matter how baseless) and clubs doing targeted membership drives.

• It is hilariously ironic in a discussion about sexism to dismiss someones viewpoint based on their gender, but it happens alarmingly frequently.

Disclaimer: I've never stepped foot in a gender studies class. And I do not have a degree in communications, nor have starred in any Harry Potter movies. Thus am grossly under-qualified to talk about this huge and complex topic. I like science, and from what I've seen there's very little of that going on at the moment.

brenta wrote: "if P then true" is a tautology for all predicates P. It looks like you meant something different from what you wrote. Let me reassure you that no logician, irrespective of background, relishes unsound deductive systems. On the other hand, there are good reasons why no one takes a discussion on climbing grades and formalizes it in some first-order language to check the validity of its sentences. So, invoking the distinction between "mathematical logic" and "philosophers' logic" in the context of this thread is the wrong thing to do.

Think of it this way. If woman than V5, if man than V4 (this is basically what it is coming across in this post). This is logic but abstract form (yes you can call it concrete in that it is easy to test for the logic but it is at a higher level and likely not all woman will think it is a V5 and not a V4).

If height 5.8 and ape index is 1 grade V4. If height 5.0 and if ape index is 0 than grade V5. This is a more concrete form of logic (and is really what ultimately he is saying in the post and would apply to anyone has nothing to do with gender).

However noone is going to take the time to make a grading system like this and there is no way to scale a system like we have for this because it varies not by current grade but by rare cases of moves in each route.

I don't completely disagree with alot of the things he is saying about how our grading sucks. To me they are just commonly known facts that most everyone I climb with understands about it. His conclusion on the cause of why the system sucks is the problem.

Well this got really lame really quickly.

Maybe the OP should ask Sasha or Lynn if they want to climb to grades that are modified because they are women--pretty sure they have moved on to bigger and better realities.

Jonathan Cunha wrote:Maybe the OP should ask Sasha or Lynn if they want to climb to grades that are modified because they are women--pretty sure they have moved on to bigger and better realities.

Pretty sure making another grading scale for just women would only lead to them being looked down on for climbing an easier grade. I don't think either one of them would want that.

Yeah, I would agree that they just want to kick as on their own terms (as they most certainly do) with no article from dude with PHD needed.

FYI-most inspiring climber out there right now (for me) is Shanti Pack and she appears to be way tougher (and physically stronger) than any man I've ever met.