UKC

Not sure if anyone has been following the online drama, but he's been dropped by BD and La Sportiva for bullying Sasha and other female climbers

https://www.outdoorjournal.com/news-2/black-diamond-drops-joe-kinder/

There's a (brilliantly named) thread on UKB about it.

I saw Sasha's post on Instagram. I guess my take on it is that I don't know either of these climbers personally, so have absolutely no idea whether this is a misogynist getting his comeuppance, or a bit of childish banter blown out of all proportion. From what I gather Kinder has made a public apology, and that should really be the end of it.

As for the sponsorship angle, well, sponsors will want something in return - which these days is a lot of public social media exposure for their brand. Give them the wrong kind of exposure by acting like a complete dickhead in public, and you can expect to be dropped faster than an Iranian nuclear agreement.

That thread title is awful.  Almost a Kinder Tresspass.

Interesting to note that someone who was a victim of cyber-bullying/ online hate would end up doing just that.

Well, he cried cyber bullying to get people off his back last time he was caught doing something.

I found the whole thing quite ironic, since Sasha is offended for comments about her weight yet she promotes energy drinks with the highest sugar content. Not sure what Kinder said as it's all deleted now, perhaps was a punt on the sugar drinks, not sure, but misogyny and bullying is out of order and he had it coming being fired since his job is being an online persona, and therefore promote good values. Oh gotta love yank tinterweb drama...

I know! maybe it was revenge. Or he's the type of guy who's never far away from controversy... who knows. The amount of flak he got for chopping a tree... yet the Raven Tor tree culprit still walking free on the streets...

Well, can you imagine if the Aldery Cliff Gardener were outed on UKC? I wouldn't want to be that person...

I've seen some of it. To me it's not clear who's bullying who. As far as I can see Joe has come out of it far worse than Sasha.

The story seems to be that she brought this into the public domain as a way to stop him harrassing her. But from what I can see the stuff from her was posted days after his public apology so that cannot  be the reason. More a case of payback it seems to me. Take that you b*stard! Perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps not. Who knows?

It's easy to call someone a bully but so far I've not seen any evidence to support that. So far it seems it's more just a case of name calling.

My take on it is that he deserved to be dropped.

Maybe he thought he was being funny and it was all just a laugh but Sasha said she'd already asked him to stop and told him that it was upsetting her. Carrying on at that point is clearly bullying, regardless of whether it could previously have been justified as humour.

The apology rings hollow given that another climber then accused him of similar behaviour towards her and he tried to hide her comment and block her rather than accepting the criticism and expanding his apology.

Yes, it's sad to see someone effectively lose their job but as other people have pointed out, this episode wasn't unrelated to his job. 90% of his job is getting positive exposure for his sponsors and he entirely undermined that.

Well said and I completely agree.

I'm not sure it was in public though. I got the impression it was on a private feed to a small group of people he knew.

Is it really so ambiguous? I obviously don't know them either but I haven't seen Kinder dispute Sasha's statement that she contacted him privately to let him know he was upsetting her and only went public when it continued. If he knows her personally, he should certainly know that she's spoken out publicly about having body image issues. Given both those factors, or either one of them alone, his behaviour strikes me as pretty despicable.

Even if 90% of people would agree that you're being humorous, once the person the "banter" is aimed at tells you that you're really hurting them, you can't just carry on without being a dick.

That's just so naive for the general public let alone anybody with an income from sponsorship.

I think Joe came across as an absolute arse, even with the apology it’s just me, the “locker room talk” “skater-kid punk” attitude.

Joe went out his way to create a false account, and persisted over a period of 8 years whilst Sacha tried to resolve it quietly. 

https://www.theinertia.com/news/pro-climber-joe-kinder-dropped-by-sponsors-...

Out of curiosity does anyone know why Joe’s had a problem with Sacha start with?

Woah! 8 years! He took it waaaay too far. Taking the piss offensively of someone who doesn't enjoy it for that long certainly warrants what he got and more. I just discovered chosscollective and I thought sometime they took it too far, but it's short-lived and some are hilarious, but sounds like kinder was on a mission on Sasha, totally not cool.

maybe he was rejected by her ?!

The issue clearly had to come out but this article attempts to explode it into a holocaust. Clearly there are problems with media exploitation and elitism generally, but the talk of 'ableism' … are we all supposed to quit climbing ?? 

Sasha doesn't control the reaction of Joe's sponsors. Joe receiving some consequences for his actions doesn't mean Sasha bullied him. All she did was politely and thoughtfully ask him to stop (after previously asking privately and being ignored). She then graciously accepted his apology, which she wasn't obliged to. She also specifically stated that she didn't want to see him dropped by his sponsors. Trying to claim that constitutes bullying BY Sasha is one of the most ridiculous assertions I've seen on UKC in months.

Then you must have misread or misunderstood. Lots of articles in climbing media recently have set out the timeline and lots of the relevant social media posts are still publicly visible. Postulating some kind of weird conspiracy that he apologised before she called him out just isn't compatible with reality. Kinder himself doesn't appear to be disputing any of Sasha's assertions so I can't imagine what basis you have for doing so.

Then you must be deliberately ignoring all the reporting on this, in which case I don't understand how you feel qualified to question accusations which the accused has acknowledged and apologised for.

Oops sorry - I 1st read about this in another article

https://medium.com/@georgieabel/sasha-digulian-joe-kinder-and-the-reframing...

- and maybe I don't even know what is 'ableism' ?!

Georgie's post certainly levels some pretty big accusations but I don't think they're entirely unjustified. Where do you get the impression that she wants anyone to stop climbing though?

If you don't understand the words she's using, maybe you could look them up rather than dismissing what she says without understanding it.

That's the article I was going to post here a few nights ago, I had a feeling that it would "trigger" a few people here.

People should actually think about what she says though rather than just getting hung up on terminology they don't like - it makes some very interesting point, some of which are perhaps less relevant in UK climbing than in the US (indigenous rights), but overall an important take on the story. It will be interesting to see if any women feel willing/able to comment on this thread - I don't know everyone who has commented above, so maybe some are women - but these discussions often end up dominated by blokes arguing with blokes.

This whole debacle is utterly ridiculous and should never have become a public spectacle. I find it difficult to believe there weren't other ways to deal with this situation and the sooner it disappears from social media the better.

I agree, but for what I understand making it public was the only way to make him stop. She tried many times over (8?) years apparently, messaging him and talking to him but wouldn't stop, so she had to go public. Again, as said earlier, this is what transpires. So he just brought unto himself really, should have stopped when she asked it was hurting her. The whole thing is pretty sad 

Nobody seems to have mentioned that it wasn't just her he was bullying. He had used an image of an overweight lady to humiliate Sasha. It was both women who he therefore humiliated.

Fair enough everyone should be able to take a joke, but when this 'joking' continues for years and persists when privately asked to cease, then it's bullying. I hope that these events can help him to change his ways. With him excusing it as skate punk behaviour, I found it unlikely but perhaps with BD and La Sportiva dropping him, he'll become a better person and learn from this.

Yes and also Courtney Sanders. It's still unclear whether he did only to girls or guys too, or guys had thicker skin and didn't say anything, but it seems like it had been going on for way too long. I'm sure he's regretting it now...

The whole second instagram account thing - seemingly mainly used to take the pi** out of people (women?) is quite unpleasant  - all a bit 4chan/certain sub-redit troll behaviour.

The reporting is one thing but the actual evidence is something else. I've seen one photoshopped image of an obese Sasha with Edu Marin. It's not clear who that image went out to or the context. and I certainly wouldn't call that 'bullying' in and of it's self.

I'm not sure why you think I need to be qualified to raise questions. I'm not party to any of the behind the scenes stuff so I can only react to what I've seen and read. In something like this I wouldn't automatically trust either side are being totally honest. Some of the comments have alluded to the fact that Sasha too has offended people too in the past. Again I don't know the details. I'm not making a judgement about it and I think the only people able to do so are those who are on the inside and actually know the facts.

That still strikes me as a bizarre position to take.

I can't see why Joe, Sasha or any responsible third party would share the offensive material just to provide evidence. Sure, Sasha could have made up the accusations but in that case Joe would have denied them rather than owning up and apologising. To me, the story is pretty clear and I don't need to know the exact words or images that were shared to feel the evidence that bullying occurred is pretty clear.

Sharing the "evidence" you seem to expect to see would just be exacerbating the problem by bringing it to a wider audience.

I'm certain that Sasha has rubbed some people the wrong way in the past. I'm certain everybody on the planet has. That's pure "whataboutism" and it has no relevance to this case.

Sure, in any media story there are details that we don't know as outsiders. Sometimes those unknown details matter and there's reasonable doubt about whose claims are correct. In this case, though, nobody has actually reported any disagreement or disputes on the facts. You seem to be speculating entirely in a vacuum and I cannot figure out what your motivation is.

Joe Kinder apparently accepted that he did wrong. Why can't you?

Well that doesn't seem right to me. Assuming he had stopped after his apology (about a week ago) then she didn't need to go public at all. Her public posts only appeared in the past couple of days.

Never mind about her drinks causing weight gain, what about his eggs?

"Rock climbing is also a pursuit that relies heavily on things like privilege and access to indigenous land. It tends to glorify a colonialist attitude and conquering things. It promotes the shirking of responsibility. And just like society at large, this community actively promotes misogyny, white supremacy, ableism, rape culture, homophobia, transphobia, body shaming, and the erasure of native narratives."

(from the linked article)

And I thought it was all about a bloke being a screwed up a****ole......

That's just plain wrong. The original post by Sasha was on May 3rd. Followed by the apology from Joe on the same day.

She's posted other updates/statements since then but the original post calling him out is still publicly visible on her Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/sashadigiulian/

The story that Ramon posted a link to at the top of the thread has all the posts embedded, which includes how long ago they were posted.

The question for me is was it bullying or was it just taking the piss. I honestly don't know because I've only seen that one image. I agree with you and understand why other she would not want to share more content (if it's even available) but that neither proves nor disproves the claim that its bullying.

From what I've seen of stuff posted in the US is that there seems to be an almost puritanical form of political correctness in some quarters where people take offence at almost anything. Is that what happened here? I don't know and I don't think anyone else does unless they've seen the content.

How genuine was Joe's apology and what was it that prompted him to make it in the first place? Some kind of threat from Sasha's side perhaps? A last ditch effort to save his career? Who knows? The elite climbing world is a pretty small one. If it really was a case of bullying why didn't a third party intervene on Sasha's behalf before now? I don't know the answers to any of these but they're important questions to understand the whole thing. 

Finally this issue has spawned a lot amateur journalism on the web. People fire off ridiculous statements and it's a way of driving traffic towards their websites. Like the claim there's a culture of rape within the climbing community. Really? I've been a climber for over 3 decades, I've lived in the States and gone out with a number of climbers and I've never heard that before. To me it's very similar to The Sun kind of reporting. Low on anaylsis and high on moral indignation and assumptions that everyone is telling the truth.

OK fair enough I hadn't seen that post.

Kinder Surprise?

Stupid question. Purely subjective, if the person on the receiving end doesn't regard it as harmless fun, then it's bullying. I know I've been guilty in the past of overstepping the mark and feeling guilty for gauging someone's potential reaction wrongly. Such is life and the danger of being a bit of a piss taker!

But if you've been told that someone doesn't like it, and keep persisting, then you run the risk of something like this blowing up, 100% more so when your doing it in a public arena to a public figure. 

I think it's not that easy to say. By that definition then there's an awful lot of bullying on these forums. Are put downs and name calling a form of bullying?

Taking the piss is, by its nature, offensive. Was the TV program Spitting Image a form of bullying? Week in, week out they ripped the piss out of celebs and high profile people and I'm sure a lot of those ridiculed would have preferred not to have been.

Some people just don't like having the piss taken at all. Does that automatically make it bullying? Does that mean that certain people can never have the piss taken simply because they don't like it? The intent of the perpetrator is the same.

Maybe the difference is more to do with intent. Was something done more for a laugh (admittedly at another person's expense) or was it more than that? Was it more about deliberately trying to hurt someone? For me I think that is what makes it bullying.

Is it possible that some people might see taking the piss as a form of bullying?

I think the key is in the persistent nature, you can test the water, but if you get it pushed back to you, and then in the full knowledge of knowing that the recipient finds it unpleasant decide to continue...

Well often times people who take themselves too seriously end up inviting more ridicule. That's the whole point. I'm not saying that's what happened here. But I don't discount it as a possibility either. The only way to have a realistic idea would be to see all the evidence on both sides. Since that's not going to happen then I think the only thing to do is to reserve judgement.

"That one image" seems like a pretty solid case for bullying behaviour on its own. Aiming an image of an obese woman at someone who's publicly posted about her struggles with body image issues is reprehensible. The ONLY possible defence I can think of is to claim it wasn't aimed at Sasha but he conspicuously hasn't done that.

If Joe was posting about supporting Trump and wanting less immigrants from Mexico, Sasha might be offended by that, I don't know her political views, but it's not personal to her and her feelings wouldn't trump his right to express his opinion. Joe was, by all accounts, posting stuff personally targeted at Sasha. She told him it was hurting her. He ignored her and continued. It barely even matters what the content was. It hurt her, she told him, he continued. That's unpleasant behaviour.

I have friends that I tease about all kinds of things. I'm fairly confident that none of them are offended but if one of them turned around to me one day and said, "hey, it really upsets me that you keep picking on thing x about me" then firstly, I'd be mortified and upset and then I'd apologise and never do it again. Simple. He had that chance and he ignored it.

From the timeline, it seems pretty clear that he apologised because she called him out publicly (in a very restrained way, without mentioning his name). And yes, pretty clearly an attempt to save his career.

I don't see how that's really relevant. Maybe they did. He ignored Sasha's attempt to ask him to stop, maybe he ignored others too. Maybe nobody knew it was hurting Sasha.

Given how a lot of people have responded to this, maybe other climbers thought they'd be judged negatively for getting involved.

I don't see how this is relevant to the veracity of the claims of bullying either but anyway...

Firstly, there's been a lot of amateur journalism on the web for quite some time now. This incident hasn't spawned it. Maybe it made you notice some more of it.

Secondly, I haven't seen anybody claim that climbing has a particular problem with rape culture. All I've seen is suggestions that climbing probably isn't some kind of special exception to a lot of problems that also dog every other section of society. I think it's reasonable for climbing, as a community, to ponder whether there's anything we can do to reduce the existence and impact of some of those issues within our sport.

In reply to Luke90:

Look at Postmanpat"s post at 17:02 - the quote there is from medium.com - from where I picked the use of ableism. I did understand the sense of this article and its OTT

Yeah, I've seen that quote and the rest of the article. That's exactly what I was referring to when I said "All I've seen is suggestions that climbing probably isn't some kind of special exception to a lot of problems that also dog every other section of society."

She clearly and explicitly says (in the quote you refer to from PostmanPat) that in most of the examples she lists, she's accusing the climbing community of having the same problems as the rest of society, not worse ones. You quoted me a bit selectively, really. Even if the emphasis on "particular" in the sentence you quoted was a little unclear, I think my very next sentence clarified.

Going back to the ableism thing. I'm perfectly happy to accept that you understood it. I only suggested looking it up because you posted: "and maybe I don't even know what is 'ableism' ?!"

It's not all that clear but I thought you were saying that you didn't know what ableism meant. Which seemed unfair when you were criticising the article and suggesting that it somehow wanted people to stop climbing.

This is exactly the kind of detail that's lacking. That and how many messages he posted. Was 10, 100 or 5? How many times did she ask him to stop? Was it over 8 years or 1 and half? What was the stuff that Sasha did that offended people. In short what is the context here? For me the devil is the details.

People like to get all riled up and morally indignant but how well do we really know these people beyond their online personas? Speaking only for myself I can say I don't know either of them at all. As such, and along with the fact I only know scant details of the accusations, I actually think it would be unfair to pass judgement on anyone.

Beyond the actual story the reaction of people on the web is very much like a witch hunt of old. Once someone is declared a witch everyone just jumps onboard, kill, kill, kill without a care for the truth or whether they might actually be adding to the problem. I would say that is as potentially harmful, if not more so, than the bullying of one person by another.

Hmmm. Sounds like it could be so-called 'negging'. Negging is defined as "low-grade insults meant to undermine the self-confidence of a woman so she might be more vulnerable to your advances."
Here's some (presumably almost all women) discussing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/7f2zzg/what_are_your_experiences...

Judging by the lack of details provided - I wouldn't be surprised.

Sure they are also asserting that the rest of society is dogged by all the bad things. However, the article does in fact say, "this community actively promotes misogny, white supremacy, ableism, rape culture, homphobia, transphobia, body shaming, and the erasure of native narratives."

I thought pottering around Stanage at weekends was to fill a hole in my life but apparently I do it to actively promote rape and because I hate transgender people. 

"This community" doesn't have to mean "every member of this community" or even "most members of this community". She's also writing as an American about the American climbing community so some of the things she says, particularly about native culture/land, isn't going to be applicable to us in the UK. Implying that she's judging your pottering at Stanage to be promoting rape is clearly ridiculous. If you want to disagree with her, argue on the merits rather than mocking a strawman position that she isn't taking.

Do you agree that society in general has problems with rape, transphobia, misogyny etc.?

Do you think that members of the climbing community are immune from those problems?

If they're not, do you think there's value in conversations about how we can minimise them and avoid allowing them a place to hide?

on all the social networking sites I'm familiar with its possible to unfriend or block someone who bothers you - is this not so on Instagram ? I would be interested to know where the offensive post was actually made ?

It means the community as a collective or it means nothing, and as such it's a ridiculous slur.

I couldn’t read past the third “reach out” and the second “is not okay” without vomiting at the sheer America’s awfulness of it all. 

So are you saying that it's the American climbing scene that is actively promoting rape culture, transphobia, misogny and white supremacy so I'm all right at Stanage am I? Phew.

At least the KKK only actively promote white supremacy, the American climbing scene must have taken that the next level.

There's a huge leap of logic required to get from saying that a community isn't immune to the evils of the world (e.g. bullying) to then stating that the community actively promotes rape culture, misogyny and transphobia. One is bleedingly obvious and the other is reactionary and offensive nonsense.