In the first episode of season 1 of Buddy Check, Freddie tells her story of how she first learned to climb. Then, we dive into the preliminary findings from Céline Hequet’s PhD research on the climbing community. Céline is a sociology PhD student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She is observing and interviewing rock climbers who identify as men about their experience with mentorship and mentoring others, their romantic relationships within climbing, and about how they perceive and understand their own masculinity. Her research will help to explain a pattern we’re seeing in climbing today, where many more women are participating in the sport and many attribute at least part of their mentorship to a heterosexual, romantic relationship.

Resources:

• Donnelly, Peter Alexander, "The Subculture and Public Image of Climbers” (1980). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8019455. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8019455
• Robinson, Victoria. Everyday Masculinities and Extreme Sport. Berg, 15 Oct. 2008.
• Reych, Zofia, “Climbing Women and Nice Media: Beyond Alternative Femininities” (2013). Dissertation in Anthropology and Sociology 15PANC999, Programme: MA Anthropology of Media from University of London. https://www.academia.edu/5651891/Climbing_Women_and_Niche_Media_Beyond_Alternative_Femininities
• Lauren Delaunay Miller. Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing. Seattle, Wa, Mountaineers Books, 2022. https://www.laurendmiller.com/valleyofgiants

Episode 2 of Buddy Check looks at two ways of thinking differently about navigating our climbing partnerships that overlap with our romantic ones. First, what can we learn from queer partnerships, where traditional gender norms are already subverted to some extent?

And then, a conversation with a couples counselor about better communication strategies to increase equity in heterosexual romantic climbing partnerships in order to acknowledge and address the tendency to limit ourselves within traditional gender roles.

Resources:

• @frontrangequeerclimbers on Instagram
• Dorian Evers, therapist based in Boulder, CO: http://www.cultivategrowththerapy.com/