Manifesto

Bringing Toxic Masculinity back to the Crag.

The mission

The Man's Climbing Coalition exists to return rock climbing to the outdoor fact it already is. A person. A rock. A result. The years between the first ascent and this website have been busy. They have added plastic, playlists, process, and a belief that every session should come with a feeling and a witness. We looked at that belief. We did not adopt it.

This site does not wink. It sits there and waits to see what you do. The slogan is not a costume. Bringing Toxic Masculinity back to the Crag means the crag is not a support group, a brand channel, or a place to rehearse the person you would like to be online. It is a place to pull on holds until the route is finished or you are.

We are in favor of strength, because strength is how moves happen. We are in favor of risk, because rock is not furniture. We are in favor of silence, because most of what gets said at the base could be replaced by another try. We are in favor of dominance only in the old, narrow sense: you either do the thing or you do not. The rock does not negotiate. Your doubt does not get a vote. The coalition does not either.

What it means at the crag

Toxic masculinity, as practiced here, is a house style with a short list. Read it once. It does not get softer on the second pass.

• Your feelings make the walk in and the walk out. They do not make the move. Leave them in the pack.
• Beta is a courtesy, not a right, and it is usually neither. Point at the start. Stop talking.
• A gym is a gym. Call it by its name. Do not call it the crag with the lights on.
• Spotters, stacks of pads, and a committee under a boulder are a different sport. It involves more standing than climbing.
• Risk is not a personality. It is the condition of being up there. Manage it like an adult, then stop announcing it.
• Dominance is not volume. The loudest person at the crag is having a different day from the one who is climbing.
• Nobody here wants your project update. Send it or do not. The rock already knows which one it was.
• If a sentence can be replaced by climbing, replace it.

That is the whole doctrine. People looking for a safer doctrine can find one. It will have more adjectives. This one has a rope, and the rope is optional only in the sense that you already decided before you left the car.

A history that did not ask to be written down

The coalition began in 1978, on a Tuesday, in a dirt lot at a desert crag that does not need the advertisement. There was one truck. There were two people. There was a rope that had opinions about neither of them. They shook hands, which was the only meeting the organization has ever fully attended, and they went climbing.

The bylaws were written on the back of a gas receipt and then lost, which was an improvement. What remained, because someone repeated it until it stuck, was one sentence. Pull harder.

There are no officers. Officers start wanting agendas, and agendas start wanting feelings about the agenda. Membership, in the early years, was a matter of showing up and not making it worse. It still is. The portraits elsewhere on this site are a sample of the posture, not a door you knock on. If you need a door, the rock has several, and none of them open inward.

The slogan arrived later, when a visitor suggested the coalition work on its tone. The coalition considered the suggestion for the length of a sip of water and adopted the accusation as the job description. Then it went climbing, which was the whole reply.

No minutes exist. A few stories do, and they get shorter every time they are told, which is the correct direction for a story. The website is the longest thing the coalition has published. It will not happen again at this length. You have the manifesto. You have the reports. You have a shop that does not ship and a forum that does not talk. The rest is the approach.

If you want in, there is a list, and the list wants an email and nothing else. We will not write often. When we do, it will not be about your feelings.

Get on the list