In other sports even a very average amateur male competitor is better than the best female professional.

"What. A. Joke. What sports would those be? Please, feel free to back up your statement with something like substance."

In various other sports that are also popular with climbers like skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing, a half decent male amateur competitor can wipe the floor with the female professional world champion.

Is it because of inherent physical differences between men and women? Yes and so what?
It is what it is and not some kind of conspiracy to keep women down.

I do not believe the article was about gender "equality" in the sense you're ascribing; in fact, it highlighted the many aspects of gender differences in climbing and that women should make more of an impact in establishing routes (among other things) that define climbing technique and strengths that are important to them, vs many of the standards already set by men.

I find it strange that you might see this as "excuses" for "shortcomings." I don't think not being a man is a shortcoming of mine, personally, and I don't think Colette thinks so either.

I never said men's and women's differences are or should be a non-issue--clearly they're not, clearly we'll never be the same.

And another thing, I can guarantee you that a substantial portion of women who will spout their feminist BS for hours have no problems with accepting financial handouts from the men in their lives.

Wrong. I don't know any feminists who take financial hand outs. From the post, I highly doubt you know any feminists.

In various other sports that are also popular with climbers like skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing, a half decent male amateur competitor can wipe the floor with the female professional world champion.

Is it because of inherent physical differences between men and women? Yes and so what?
It is what it is and not some kind of conspiracy to keep women down.

In some of those sports, a few select women are just barely starting to do maneuvers that men did two decades ago. The men have since moved on and the gap is still there.

Also, the women who compete professionally in those sports started doing them at the same age as the male professionals so Aerili's thesis that's it's all about how men and women are brought up just doesn't hold water in this case. The difference is just too great to be explained by that.

But as others have already pointed out, gender differences are not the only differences that affects climbing. Age, height, ape index, weight all play into climbing performance.

Being who you are or who I am is not a shortcoming of either of us, but whining about standards not set to your or my strength/weakness would be.

Actually, what I am saying is this: Climbing in itself has nothing to do with gender, race, age, height, etc. So don't bring any of that up when climbing or on the approach and people won't have any issues with your gender, race, age, height, etc.

Aerili I believe there's just not enough methodologically stringent scientific research in this area for you to always bandy that term around trying to argue your points.

It would be impossible do some truly double blind truly randomized and truly controlled study with 1000 male and female infants to determine if a woman can be raised to be the best snowboarder or skateboarder in the world if she's raised the right way.

But the whole "scientific" research thing: If Aerili would just slightly change her language to "research suggests" instead of "research shows", people I might be more receptive to her ideas.

The way she writes it about now it comes off as pedantic and self-serving and will naturally make people me defensive.

The end.

Dingus, I'm not so sure that's a problem with my premise because that's exactly the point I was trying to make, that men are better at these sports for inherent genetic reasons.

The judging of skating, surfing and snowboarding comps is somewhat subjective, but there's a well-established and accepted hierarchy of the difficulty of certain maneuvers and the flow and fluidity during and between the maneuvers which in turn affects the ability to maintain the speed needed for the next maneuver.

Also, even if you can't measure it with a stopwatch, you can measure the height achieved past the lip of the half-pipe or number of rotations in the air, for example.

To put it simply, if a male skateboarder can do everything that a woman skateboarder can do but the reverse isn't true, I'd says it's pretty clear cut that the man is "better" at this particular activity as the word is commonly used.

Men are better at these sports for specific physical reasons: center of gravity, body fat, muscular differences, breasts vs no breasts..who knows? But it's not because of judging bias.

Not that it matters a whit in the grand scheme of things.

And yeah, I agree, there's something inherently lame about someone sitting there "judging" how "well" you're moving your surfboard through the water or your body through the air.

Now, to examine sports that have somewhat more even participation between the sexes and a whole lot more known about their training variables: do you really believe Joe Amateur Volleyball Player would outplay Misty May? Or how about Joe Average Tennis Player beating Serena Willliams? I don't think "an average amateur male" basketball player would fair too well on the courts of the WNBA, either, personally.

So you are saying. in those sports at least, men worked harder and took more risk to get to where they are.

puerto a problem with your premise is this.... all those sports you mentioned are judged sports and they are judged based upon male physiology.

Half pipe, skae boarding, are all judged based upon stunts that favor the male body type.

I believe Serena Williams tried against a chain-smoking-no-name ex-pro and couldn't return his serve.

i think a lot of the group differences are behavioral, but you can't use that to say individual men work harder than individual women.