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maculated
Aug 12, 2013, 10:32 PM
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I just got back from a wonderful trip to Courtwright as part of my friend's bachelor party (yay being the only girl) . . . and a friend was mentioning that he'd seen the coverage of Psicobloc and it was beyond disgustingly unprofessional and more alarmingly sexist so I decided to see for myself. The result is this article:
http://www.all-outevents.com/?p=753
Here's the take home if sexist comps don't interest you (but they should):
"But, it’s very easy to lay all the blame on the emcees they hired, but there’s a bigger factor at play, as revealed by the female emcee, Colette, 20 minutes into the clip: “Originally, they were going to cut out some of the women climbers. There were too many women climbers and they sent some of the women home, but in the end, all the girls said, ‘You know what, we want to compete, we’re all here – we’re going to compete’ and they ended up bringing all of the women back.”
“They” decided there were too many women and they cut out the women? Thanks a lot, event producers. Climbing is very much a male-dominated sport, but the women climbing achieve at an equal level to men across most disciplines. Fans of climbing can likely name as many famous, accomplished women climbers as men. It’s not the WNBA here, and there’s no reason to foster that attitude in the nascent climbing events distributed to the greater public worldwide.
"Sponsors of this event, do you hear me? Prana, Walltopia, Adidas, Clif, and all others – do you support the sexism displayed in this event? Will you continue to send them money to reinforce this?
"This is not the 1950s and 1960s. Our mothers were on the walls and in Camp 4 alongside the men so that we could be in these competitions today with the men. And not a single one of them would have let the guys treat them as badly as this comp treated their granddaughters."
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acorneau
Aug 13, 2013, 12:19 AM
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"Emcee" is not a word.
MC is an acronym for "Master of Ceremonies".
Just saying. 
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maculated
Aug 13, 2013, 12:26 AM
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emcee
Ahem.
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Gmburns2000
Aug 13, 2013, 2:42 AM
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maculated wrote: I just got back from a wonderful trip to Courtwright as part of my friend's bachelor party (yay being the only girl) . . . and a friend was mentioning that he'd seen the coverage of Psicobloc and it was beyond disgustingly unprofessional and more alarmingly sexist so I decided to see for myself. The result is this article: http://www.all-outevents.com/?p=753 Here's the take home if sexist comps don't interest you (but they should): "But, it’s very easy to lay all the blame on the emcees they hired, but there’s a bigger factor at play, as revealed by the female emcee, Colette, 20 minutes into the clip: “Originally, they were going to cut out some of the women climbers. There were too many women climbers and they sent some of the women home, but in the end, all the girls said, ‘You know what, we want to compete, we’re all here – we’re going to compete’ and they ended up bringing all of the women back.” “They” decided there were too many women and they cut out the women? Thanks a lot, event producers. Climbing is very much a male-dominated sport, but the women climbing achieve at an equal level to men across most disciplines. Fans of climbing can likely name as many famous, accomplished women climbers as men. It’s not the WNBA here, and there’s no reason to foster that attitude in the nascent climbing events distributed to the greater public worldwide. "Sponsors of this event, do you hear me? Prana, Walltopia, Adidas, Clif, and all others – do you support the sexism displayed in this event? Will you continue to send them money to reinforce this? "This is not the 1950s and 1960s. Our mothers were on the walls and in Camp 4 alongside the men so that we could be in these competitions today with the men. And not a single one of them would have let the guys treat them as badly as this comp treated their granddaughters."
Definitely a crappy position the organizers took. Hopefully they've learned that female climbers are climbers, too. In the end, they all took the same spills the males did.
If not enough male climbers showed up (i.e. - equal to "too many female climbers") then maybe the male competitors who didn't show up should be held accountable instead. I doubt the organizers thought of this, though.
What's left unknown from this article is time constraints of the competition and if the event could manage the number of competitors in general. In other words, if it was meant to have 30 males and females each, and 30 males showed up and 150 females showed up then I can understand the issue at hand. The pool is, after all, not theirs.
But if the article is accurate, then that's kind of shitty.
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rgbscan
Aug 13, 2013, 3:24 PM
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maculated wrote: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emcee Ahem.
Sadly you are correct..... apparently enough people phonetically spelled out the acronym so often, it's been accepted as mainstream english now. Since the the 1930's even.
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rgbscan
Aug 13, 2013, 3:44 PM
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maculated wrote: I just got back from a wonderful trip to Courtwright as part of my friend's bachelor party (yay being the only girl) . . . and a friend was mentioning that he'd seen the coverage of Psicobloc and it was beyond disgustingly unprofessional and more alarmingly sexist so I decided to see for myself. The result is this article: http://www.all-outevents.com/?p=753 Here's the take home if sexist comps don't interest you (but they should): "But, it’s very easy to lay all the blame on the emcees they hired, but there’s a bigger factor at play, as revealed by the female emcee, Colette, 20 minutes into the clip: “Originally, they were going to cut out some of the women climbers. There were too many women climbers and they sent some of the women home, but in the end, all the girls said, ‘You know what, we want to compete, we’re all here – we’re going to compete’ and they ended up bringing all of the women back.” “They” decided there were too many women and they cut out the women? Thanks a lot, event producers. Climbing is very much a male-dominated sport, but the women climbing achieve at an equal level to men across most disciplines. Fans of climbing can likely name as many famous, accomplished women climbers as men. It’s not the WNBA here, and there’s no reason to foster that attitude in the nascent climbing events distributed to the greater public worldwide. "Sponsors of this event, do you hear me? Prana, Walltopia, Adidas, Clif, and all others – do you support the sexism displayed in this event? Will you continue to send them money to reinforce this? "This is not the 1950s and 1960s. Our mothers were on the walls and in Camp 4 alongside the men so that we could be in these competitions today with the men. And not a single one of them would have let the guys treat them as badly as this comp treated their granddaughters."
I don't think it was intentional sexism. I think it was poor planning. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence,
I think production-wise, it was pretty poorly planned all around. I mean, I realize it was the first time holding the event, it was Sharma's gig and he's not a producer, and it was Louder than 11's first time producing. All in a new non-climbing venue. A lot of minor nitpicks though...
-The whole female climbers being sent home thing due to poor planning of the timeline.
-Apparently there was a "costume change" for all the women between rounds, with different "Psicocomp" shirts being displayed and everyone having to match. I thought that was kind of dumb. Being a male dominated sport, I'm sure all the climbing guys in the audience were disappointed that the girls weren't in the bikini's they wore during the practice rounds. I suppose that would have made it even more sexist though.
-The video intros were used for about the first 4 women, then they stopped doing them out of time necessity. The men didn't use them at all.
-The hosts were just terrible, just terrible. Not at all professional or family friendly. Lot's of F-bombs and swearing. Lots of poor descriptions of the course. Bad announcing in general. Climber jargon heavy, and not at all accessible to the general public. Also, they made fun of the non-native english speakers, even though one of those guys was the co-sponsor of the event.
-The pool wasn't heated. Not sure if it is capable of it or not, but although it was 85 degrees out - the competitors were freezing cold and sharing a single heater in the locker room. This affected performance. Many of the climbers mentioned it at the time and on their own blogs following the gig.
-The time of day chosen for the comp was not conducive to video work. With half the wall in the shade and half in the sun (during the womens comp) the camera work was pretty bad, making it hard to see as the camera followed them up and the exposure didn't change to compensate. I mean, I know they were all excited about their blue l.e.d. glowing holds for the nighttime mens comp, but sunlight around 2pm would have been better viewing
-They didn't seem to have a plan for interviewing the winners after exiting the pool, some were, some weren't, and there was a lot of downtime with the hosts just vamping.
-The downtime between the mens and womens round was extensive. I thought they were just removing two hold, to force the dynos, but it sure took a long time.
-They turned on the pool bubbles to soften the landing when the skiier was doing his jump, but didn't have them on for the climbers
-The right side beginning stance was a 5 move traverse versus 1 on the left. Slight disadvantage there.
-The rules weren't clear (to the hosts at least) who called out and then retracted some statements as the rules people corrected them.
I thought it was super fun to watch, and a really cool idea. But it's like version 1.0 of anything.... unrefined and rough around the edges. If you were in the live webcast chat, you had a good time making fun of the hosts all night. It was comedy gold how bad they were.
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marc801
Aug 13, 2013, 5:02 PM
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acorneau wrote: "Emcee" is not a word. MC is an acronym for "Master of Ceremonies". Just saying.
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jt512
Aug 13, 2013, 6:17 PM
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acorneau wrote: "Emcee" is not a word. MC is an acronym for "Master of Ceremonies". Just saying.
maculated wrote: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emcee Ahem.
College English teacher, 1; sound engineer, 0.
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theguy
Aug 14, 2013, 4:18 AM
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jt512 wrote: acorneau wrote: "Emcee" is not a word. MC is an acronym for "Master of Ceremonies". Just saying. maculated wrote: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emcee Ahem. College English teacher, 1; sound engineer, 0.
Reading between the lines of the scoring and OP, you're claiming the article was written by a college English teacher?
If so, poor students.
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jt512
Aug 14, 2013, 6:10 PM
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theguy wrote: jt512 wrote: acorneau wrote: "Emcee" is not a word. MC is an acronym for "Master of Ceremonies". Just saying. maculated wrote: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emcee Ahem. College English teacher, 1; sound engineer, 0. Reading between the lines of the scoring and OP, you're claiming the article was written by a college English teacher?
You should stick with just reading the lines.
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JasonsDrivingForce
Aug 15, 2013, 8:50 PM
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rgbscan wrote: maculated wrote: -They turned on the pool bubbles to soften the landing when the skiier was doing his jump, but didn't have them on for the climbers I thought it was super fun to watch, and a really cool idea. But it's like version 1.0 of anything.... unrefined and rough around the edges. If you were in the live webcast chat, you had a good time making fun of the hosts all night. It was comedy gold how bad they were.
They mentioned that the bubbles were turned off for the climbers because the pool was not deep enough. Apparently the climbers were bottoming out because they had so much less drag than the skiers. I think the bubbles actually create some lift to slow down the skier’s descent into the pool.
I agree the female announcer was pretty much the worst announcer ever. It would have been better if they just didn’t have an announcer at all.
(This post was edited by JasonsDrivingForce on Aug 15, 2013, 8:51 PM)
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gosharks
Aug 16, 2013, 10:30 AM
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JasonsDrivingForce wrote: I think the bubbles actually create some lift to slow down the skier’s descent into the pool.
1. Reduce surface tension of the water
2. Reduce the density of the "water" that the falling body impacts.
Both reduce the initial impact force and have the side effect of increasing the depth of which the body will sink to.
(This post was edited by gosharks on Aug 16, 2013, 10:31 AM)
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SE_climber
Aug 16, 2013, 2:53 PM
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I was rather angry and confused by this too. Colette didn't mention at which point they were going to cut women climbers--I assume it was the finals? In that case, there were equal numbers of women and men. Even if it was before, if you look at the qualifiers/semifinal lists on Momentum's website, there are fewer women than men competing. Perhaps this was when they tried to cut down the women? I don't know, but it was a pretty shitty move.
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RipTips
Aug 17, 2013, 6:13 AM
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Why is this called "Psicobloc"?
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5.samadhi
Aug 27, 2013, 10:46 PM
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A play on psilocybin of course.
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Gmburns2000
Aug 28, 2013, 12:50 PM
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RipTips wrote: Why is this called "Psicobloc"?
That's the word used for deep water soloing in various latin languages. not sure about which ones, but I'm certain it's the one used in Portuguese at least. I assume it's the same in Spanish, French, and Italian, too (or some variant thereof).
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5.samadhi
Aug 28, 2013, 1:17 PM
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Gmburns2000 wrote: RipTips wrote: Why is this called "Psicobloc"? That's the word used for deep water soloing in various latin languages. not sure about which ones, but I'm certain it's the one used in Portuguese at least. I assume it's the same in Spanish, French, and Italian, too (or some variant thereof).
I retract my statement about magical mushrooms
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younggun
Dec 9, 2013, 4:18 AM
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The competition was originally set up for 16 females and 16 males to compete in semi-finals on Thursday night for seating order, and then finals Friday night. 13 females and 13 males were given invites to semi-finals and finals. The other 3 spots for females and males were being awarded to anyone else that wanted to qualify in open qualifying on Wednesday night. The organizers had the invited athletes lined up a moth before the event, and all of the athletes were told they would be competing in semi finals and finals. The organizers also used the athletes through social media to promote the event, and the athletes also helped promote the event. The organizers also used the athletes names to generate sponsorship funding for the event.
The Tuesday night before the event, at an athlete meeting, the organizers had decided to change the event and only have 8 females compete in finals but still the 16 males. The change was made because the organizers thought there would not be enough time to run all of the rounds in finals, so they decided to cut out 8 female spots. They then changes qualifiers to Thursday night, and arbitrarily gave 6 females a pass to finals, but expected 7 others with an invite to compete for 2 spots Thursday night along with any other females that showed up. Needless to say, many competitors would have never made the trip or spent the money if they knew their invites would be yanked at the last minute.
This decision did not sit well with female competitors, sponsors, and others. Late Thursday night, after qualifiers, the organizers decided to honor the invites and have all 12 invited females compete in finals on Friday night. They decided they had enough time or caught enough pressure from competitors or sponsors, to make the change.
Why they made the decision to cut the female field after they were invited, already in Salt Lake, already used to promote the event and generate other sponsors, was not well thought out at all.
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