Gender in society is a difficult topic for me to express. Since I am a man and don’t have 100% liberal/progressive opinions, my opinion is moot, and counted as chauvinist, bias, and counter-productive to some. That being said, I do believe that given the right circumstances and attitudes, women can compete with men, and in many cases surpass them. For example Claude Kogan was much more suited for climbing than her male companion Pierre Vittoz in the article Sharp End: off the Map. However, I believe there are definite differences in the sexes that would impede from accomplishing physical goals (there is a reason why men and women do not compete against each other in the Olympics). Daringly I would say that men are more physically capable mountaineers (not me). In a study done by the Marine Corps in 2015, women are twice as likely to be injured. These injuries tend to be ligament damage in ankles and hips, due to over encumbrance. The same study found that the top 25th percentile of women Marines overlapped with the bottom 25th of male Marines.(Marine experiment finds women get injured more frequently, shoot less accurately than men. [n.d.]. Retrieved February 09, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/09/10/marine-experiment-finds-women-get-injured-more-frequently-shoot-less-accurately-than-men/). Several similar studies have recently shown similar conclusions. With these statistics I hope to prove that any biases that I have concerning the physical abilities of women are not unfounded  The relevancy of this article is just, in that the skills of the Marine Corps and mountaineering are sometimes interchangeable.

I believe in Theodore Roosevelt’s vision of being “manly”, in the sense that a man must learn how to work with his hands, as well as seek danger to test and prove ones self. Roosevelt’s philosophy was the driving force behind adventure seeking in America. Proving one’s manhood by pursuing danger is what combats laziness and pampered urban dwellers. Although this ideology has battled complacently in men for the last one hundred years, it is outdated and has no room in the twenty-first century. I disagree with Roosevelt in that it is not only a man who must endure struggles to obtain quintessence, but also women. The ideology of man pursuing adventure must continue, but not at the cost of excluding women. Christopher McDougall said it best in his book Born to Run. He expresses that if one is not pushing the limits of their body, i.e. running, or learning, then that person is denying themselves what evolution has worked for millions of years accomplish. McDougall does not specify sex in this passage. This is the philosophy that can replace Roosevelt’s.

The article by Susan Frohlick, made for a very interesting read. It is appalling that not more than 20 years ago, there were still strict moral claims against women mountaineering. No woman should be shamed for wanting to enjoy mountains as men enjoy them. Women have every right to pursue glory in the mountains, just as men have the right to find solace in being a stay-at-home dad.

As, for Susan Schrepfers article, I am not swayed by her theories of masculinity of mountaineering. She hyper analyzed and cherry picked data to prove her points. For instance, I do not believe that men were drawn to mountaineering so that they can be born into manhood by their own means, instead of by the means of their own mother (Schrepfers Pg. 57). I do agree with Schrepfers in that, it is common for men to seek to take the virginity of women, and this may be synonymous to the joys of the first ascent. Yet, I do not believe that this because of a inherent need to sexually dominate. It is more related to humans inherent nature to obtain first place in all things, i.e. first to the moon, first to break the sound barrier, etc.(Schrepfers Pg. 57)