"Manning Up"

The spring-like weather last weekend has brought out many more climbers (I think there were two rescues last week in Boulder and Eldorado Canyon). As I go through my warmup circuit at Flagstaff, I have been encountering more than a few nervous boulderers out there. One of the more common scenarios is a young woman accompanied by one or more incompetent young male climbers. Through lack of fear and/or common sense or too much hormones, these young men often scrape up moderate highballs and then call down to the woman, "Go for it!" The other day, I actually heard someone tell a young woman to "Man up" as some kind of encouragement. Seriously?

Anyone who has been climbing a while will hopefully understand that climbing up little rocks next to the road has very little to do with real courage or depth of character. But associating courage or bravery in climbing with the male sex is a depressing trend which I am calling for an end to right now. "Manning up" or "sacking up" or any of the other equivalent phrases are simply bogus. If you really want to man up, get a career, have a family, serve the public in some important way, and especially don't perpetuate sexist stereotypes.