MINE

So, I'm a member of a mountain rescue group, yada yada yada.  It's a interesting way to maintain mountaineering skills and to learn rescue techniques, which are pretty far and away different from standard mountaineering geekery.  Also, there are helicopter rides, sometimes.  And free bratwurst at the summer picnic!

Anyway, there are a number of women in the group, which is not unusual.  It doesn't stop all manner of sexist joking, like the lead rigger screaming that the mainline raise team is "HAULING LIKE A BUNCH OF GIRLS!" or another rigger delicately quoting lines from "Forty Year Old Virgin" as he helped haul a 3:1 leverage system on a belay line, and I quote him, "SUCKER MOTHERFUCKER! IN THE ASSHOLE! COCKSUCKER MOTHERFUCKER!"

(Yarding on haul lines is hard work.)

They're a pretty tight group, these guys.  And morbidly funny.  We'll have a membership meeting and be going over points: recent donations, upcoming trainings, blah blah blah.  Then the president will close the meeting with an offhand remark like, "and oh yeah, don't forget that spring is here now and we've still got a couple up in the freezer who are going to thaw out soon, so stay ready."  As in, two corpses somewhere up on the glaciers that are going to surprise some tourist hikers soon and necessitate a quick body recovery.  (Or two.)

So last week, Laura asked me if it would be okay by me*, if she joined the group.  She said that one of her previous SO's used to rigidly partition "his activities" and "their activities."  As in, he didn't want her doing "his stuff."  So he refused to take her camping, for example**.

I can sympathize with that attitude to a very small degree, because I know I like to carve out my own bit of the world that I can call my own.  But seriously?  It's really pretty childish to declare that someone can't do something because you need your space.  You gotta make your space, not deny space to other people, I think.

Plus, I really can't wait to see what happens when a bunch of good-natured he-men are exposed to a feminist who won't back down, and who can probably out-perform (athletically) most of them.  She'll swear up a blue streak right next to them, and turn those "bunch of girls" remarks right back on their heads.

Yeah, this is going to be pretty amusing.  Hell YEAH she should join!

*Obviously, we still are getting to know each other.  I can't imagine Laura asking the same question of anyone that she knew well.  She'd just say "fuck it, I'm joining this thing!"

**Which is just patently stupid because skinny dipping with a hot girl in a mountain lake is the best thing ever.  Just saying.