Thursday, November 29, 2007

MOUNTAINEERING A SPACE FOR HOMOSEXUAL PROTEST?
When I was active in the climbing scene there was one thing that really caught my imagination. It was that so very many of the best climbers and mountaineers were homosexual.
Of course it would be obvious that homosexuals would climb just as any other would climb.
But so many of the very best and world famous mountaineers were homosexual.
I have yet to make good sense of this fact.
Was mountaineering a space for homosexual protest vis-a-vis the dominent culture of male and female chains?
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19 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:53

    The hills are alive with the sound of....
    and I always wondered about yodelling.

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  2. Anonymous16:00

    Leather shorts too?
    Have you ever gone gully climbing when the woman is leading and on top?
    The views are trememdooooos!

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  3. Anonymous16:21

    Women ALWAYS lead.
    That is why they will always be on top of the World.
    OK ?

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  4. zola a social thing16:24

    There I was... trying to make a serious blog and what happens.
    LavenderBlue and that infuriating Anonedoubts wreak the good ship.
    I dunno.

    One of those homosexual mountaineers had a strange name too.
    he was named ( no joke here) Menlove Edwards.
    So perhaps that helps get us back to the serious stuff.

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  5. Anonymous20:09

    Menlove Edwards?
    Tell us more.........

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  6. anticant23:54

    I've always had a terrible head for heights, thank you very much.

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  7. zola a social thing15:52

    Menlove Edwards was also an early pioneer of psychology but he prefered climbing until he topped himself.
    His climbing routes remain today damned good climbs.
    His poetic rationality still lives.

    His life and times was written well by Jim Perrin.

    Life, I suspect, for him, was too good to live for when all around were "Going Over The Top" anyway.

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  8. Anonymous15:54

    Anticant : That sounds like an LA song to me " bad head with heights"?

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  9. zola a social thing16:19

    I would have you know that Anticant has never given a bad head.
    Now, let us get back to the reaL ISSUES.

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  10. anticant23:45

    Thanks, Zola. That's what my friends tell me....

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  11. Anonymous00:31

    Why,Anticant..
    I blush !

    And back to the Issues of ZoZoBear.
    Cowboys are .
    Lumberjacks are.
    Why not mountaineers ?

    Would you like to talk about it?

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  12. Anonymous00:31

    That was me.

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  13. Anonymous11:27

    Oh no it was not !!!

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  14. zola a social thing11:31

    Once walking alone, like a cloud, in the Lake District of a winter I came across a being.
    Wearing lipstick (s)he was.
    Writing guidebooks (s)he was.
    Taking fantastic photographs too.

    But that was 1960s.
    Doubt any of ye outdoor folk would know this once famous being with name.

    Anyway Coleridge would have thrown a wobbler.

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  15. Anonymous12:05

    Was it Trousers?

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  16. anticant05:27

    Lucinda Lambton?

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  17. zola a social thing10:50

    Good try Anticant but no bananas.

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  18. Anonymous12:45

    Was it I.A.Richards?

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  19. zola a social thing13:02

    No it was not but at least you seem to see poetic justice at work somewhere.
    I.A.Richards did not wear lipstick as far as I know.
    Now come on you outdoor types get a fuckin grip on relaity.

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