Bullying in Outdoor Sports: Reactions & Responsibilities

In the past several days, there has been another reported instance of bullying going on in the outdoors sports world, and the loud, swift, and aggressive responses to this, have made clear that many of us still have a lot to think through. Last week, professional climber Sasha Digiulian announced on social media that she has been the ongoing target of tasteless jokes by fellow climber, Joe Kinder. Sascha stated that she had reached out to Joe in private about this to try to resolve the matter, but had received no reply. So, finally, she went public. You can find - and should read, if you haven’t already - in the show notes to this episode on Blister Sascha’s statement, Joe’s apology, and the responses by Black Diamond and La Sportiva, about why they decided to end their sponsorships of Joe. But the reason why we are talking about this here, is because of those alarming number of disturbing responses online and on social media to these events. So in this conversation, I’m joined by Blister’s climbing editor, Dave Alie, to discuss why it’s wrong to assume that this is simply some little, isolated issue in the climbing world; whether Black Diamond and La Sportiva were justified in their responses; and how our own words of criticism -- or support — of any of these parties— can quickly become unfair, tasteless, or unjust in their own right. TOPICS & TIMES:What happened, and why are we discussing it? (0:18)Did Black Diamond and La Sportiva do the right thing? (16:25)What appropriate & inappropriate responses look like — from all of us (18:57) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.