The Double Standards of Taking Risks

Yesterday morning, I opened my social media to the below video plastered across friends' timelines. 

Back in 2012, icy calm free soloist, Alex Honnold, was featured on 60 Minutes for his ropeless ascents of daunting climbs throughout the world. Despite the mellow and seemingly-sensible climber's repeated descriptions of his solos as high consequence, not high risk, he's been embraced largely for his steely nerves in the face of daring. And the general assumption for most of us, despite Honnold's claims otherwise, is that it's ultimately about adrenaline. Either way, he's lauded as though he's conquering fears for all of us. 

In May, world renowned risk-taker, Dean Potter, made national headlines when his final wing suit flight went wrong. He and fellow flyer, Graham Hunt, crashed into Yosemite's towering stone walls and two lives ceased. Potter was long respected in the climbing and extreme sports communities for his high-risk antics and rule-breaking lifestyle. Though both men inspired many (and doubtless troubled many others), it's Potter's deep and open conversations about death that we tend to remember. "I don't want to die, but I'm ok with putting it all out there, for the most beautiful expression of my life," he's once said. I guess that's one way to practice mindfulness. 

Clearly, extreme risk sports are capturing the imaginations of an increasingly mainstream audience. And this, by itself, seems fine. Culturally, I could expound on the varied reasons sociologists think people engage in adrenaline-inducing activities. It's called edgework and the theories are based in ideas of a sort of psychological disenfranchisement that results from the capitalist economic and work systems. So maybe we need this extreme inspiration. Maybe we're stirred by the perceived bravery or a need, like Potter's, to find that edge that makes life sparkle. I love asking these questions--after all, while I'd never solo, I'm a scared-of-heights climber who keeps trudging back to the cliffs.

But that's not what interests me right now. It's the parallels I keep seeing between participating in high-risk sport and drug use, and the contradictions in how these practices are treated by our laws and our society.

In June, three BASE jumpers were convicted of misdemeanor reckless endangerment for for leaping off the World Trade Center in 2013. The charges could have meant up to a year in jail, but the jumpers were ultimately sentenced to community service. I don't have a problem so much with the charges or sentences doled out to these men. Perhaps, I would even agree with critics that they're harsh, given the fact that they were skilled and worked actively to minimize risks to themselves and others. But as a former drug researcher and social justice advocate, I question why these BASE jumpers received less punishment for their act than they would have for injecting themselves with heroin. And there's no telling what the retribution would have been had they done so exuberantly, had they threatened to inject others, at the base of the WTC. Would drug users have been convicted of the top charge of burglary (dismissed in the BASE jumping case) if they had simply entered the building to use in private? I'm concerned by the double standard that this particular brand of risk-taking highlights. 

So, to start, how are extreme sports and drug use similar?

• Physical risk to self. That physical risk, however, is variable. It depends on specifics, on each individuals' efforts to recognize and minimize it. There are worthwhile distinctions between drug use and abuse and addiction, between injecting and snorting, between using one's own clean syringe and works each time and sharing with others. Sometimes these choices are true choices, other times shaped by social circumstances. Most often, though, the relative risks are acknowledged by the users. Similarly, extreme sports enthusiasts distinguish between free-climbing (using a rope) and soloing, or free-soloing (no rope), trail riding and jockeying racehorses. Some of these things, though related, just aren't so dangerous. Other are. There are degrees. 
• Potential to harm others, especially emotionally.
• While motivations for both drug use and extreme sports participation vary a great deal, pleasure-seeking and adrenaline-seeking apply to many in both groups. Potter's view, mentioned above, offers an inspiring way to view the world indeed. And that's the thing with the folks sociologists refer to as edgeworkers: The ways they play with risk, taunt death, inspires a lot of us. Their risk-taking tends to be laced with a desire to be as close to life in the present moment as possible. It's almost mindful. Whether or not similar motivations drive drug users is debatable, but after years of studying meth use and spending time around both recreational users and addicts throughout my life, I'd say yea, for many this is absolutely what's going on.
• The laws that make both illegal cause more harm than the practices themselves. This is well-documented when it comes to drug use, but was recently, and solidly, put forth regarding high-risk sports.

But the next piece of this puzzle is recognizing how the two are different, especially socially...

• The WTC jumpers were convicted of misdemeanor reckless endangerment. Under NY law, self-injection of a narcotic is a felony. Felonies, even the smaller ones, have a way of ruining lives that misdemeanors just don't.
• Extreme sports participants tend, disproportionately, to be white men. Actually, so do illegal drug users, but those who face the legal repercussions of their use tend not to be. In particular, in the US, it's far and away black men who are punished for using drugs.
• The knee-jerk responses differ considerably. The overdose is always, always deemed tragic, emphasis is on the family, the loss. The edgework death, however, is permitted more complexity. Potter's death saddened many and was scoffed at by some. But time and again, folks brushed the sadness, the accountability to loved ones, aside, to celebrate a man who lived his life "well," doing what he loved. Individuals who die because of drugs aren't afforded that degree of humanity. Their lives are viewed as tragic, their deaths as well. Regardless of how they would have interpreted it.

There's no clean way to wrap this up at this point. It's a thought, a process, with many limbs. But how, I wonder, could recognizing these similarities and disparities move us toward a more human, more humane, way of interacting with one another?  

When life is edgework...maybe too many edges?

Lately, in the hopes of expanding my research identity beyond "the girl who studies meth use," I've been learning a lot about edgework theory and constructions of risk, especially in sport, and I can't help but think about how it applies to my own life. A very simplistic explanation of edgework theory is that it situates voluntary risk taking within the structures of the capitalist economy, conceptualizing it as embodiment of, escape from, or resistance to one's position in it. Lyng's edgework, at its core, is about the skillful navigation of the wiggly and fuzzy boundary that ostensibly separates chaos from control. According to Lyng and other edgework theorists, this navigation of risk (physical, emotional, and psychological) arises as a means of achieving fulfillment. In this sense, many behaviors can be conceptualized as edgework, from so-called lifestyle or extreme sports (skydiving, mountaineering, and rock climbing for example) to high stakes careers, from the pro-ana subculture to participation in S&M. The argument goes that people seek out voluntary risk taking to find the fulfillment that is otherwise lacking in our current political-economic structure. In some forms of edgework, they resist this structure; in others (most of those that have been the center of researchers' attention) they embody it.

While I've never thought of myself as a risk taker or an edgeworker, if I use the above definition, I really always have been. I've spent the vast majority of my life riding horses, an activity that is often treated as a non-sport and low-risk although its risk and injury profile closely resembles motorcycle riding - when we do get hurt, it's often bad, and statistics put it up there as one of the more "dangerous" sports there is. Even as a kid, I rarely rode the quiet horses; most of my mounts were young with little training and/or came off the racetrack at some point. I jumped big jumps and competed in high-pressure situations, and for the most part, I loved it. I thrived on the thrill and, more importantly, on the challenge of walking that edge, of having to control my own nerves, of pushing myself to perform even when frightened or overwhelmed.

As an adult, I continued riding, though mostly this meant catching whatever free rides I could find - read: rescues, horses straight off the auction block, horses about whom little was known. I also spent much of my young adult life looking for something fulfilling and relished in the insecurity of traveling often and moving perhaps more often. In my 20s I met my now-husband who happens to be a rock climber and, despite my fear of heights, I learned to climb. In 2012, I completed a PhD and embarked upon what I hoped would be a fulfilling and exciting "soft money" career. At the time, I had a tough and athletic mare straight off the track. She was challenging emotionally and physically and, for someone like me (not the most assertive out there), she was borderline dangerous. But throughout the final years of my PhD, when I was adjuncting at least 2 classes a semester, commuting many hours each week, and writing writing writing, she filled a void and challenged me in important ways. I even thanked her in my dissertation. During this same time, I really started to push myself at lead climbing, and finally began learning to effectively manage my fear of heights and of falling. I was truly navigating multiple edges, and I was loving it!

Then something happened. I got scared. Really scared. I was scared of my tough horse and now, sometimes, I'm still scared of my much kinder horse. For a while I've been blaming my age, blaming an injury, blaming my schedule. But I can't quite buy it. I fluctuate too much. My confidence returns only to be shot down instantly. And I noticed the other day that when things look good at work, fear wanes in other areas.

That said...edgework theory has given me a new lens that I think is worth exploring. I graduated. I started working on a small NIH grant. My research was still exciting and comfortable, but about a year in, I began to feel the insecurity of soft money. My grant was going to run out and I hadn't yet found more funding. Suddenly, the edges that had been fulfilling were nothing but stressful. Suddenly, it was as though work had become edgework, too, as I sought to strategize ways to secure funding, as I sought to learn as many new subfields and bodies of literature as possible to cast a wide net of proposals, and as I struggled with the fear and insecurity that accompanies the constant threat of losing not only one's income, but one's identity. As the rejections continued, and the (unpaid) work hours lengthened, my job began to feel like the "high stakes" careers edgework researchers always talk about. I am constantly on multiple deadlines, deadlines that if I miss cost me a potential salary. And it's all wrapped up in my identity, or my identity is wrapped up in it. After all, I don't just do social science or anthropological research. I am an anthropologist. What happens if my funding just ends, what happens if I'm not anymore?

As the nature of my work shifted, so did my relationship to my favorite athletic endeavors. Suddenly, the horse's every threat became the potential for death and I couldn't manage my own fear any longer. Suddenly, I lost the progress I'd made lead climbing, and the prospect of even a tiny fall at the gym also became unmanageable. In recreation, I no longer see a boundary between chaos and control, or a way to manage fear. And this has a snowball effect. The more confidence I lose, the more challenging it is, and the less rewarding, to grapple with edges. In the past year, I've come to really want my recreation to feel safe...could it be because, right now, my job doesn't?

So, armed with this theory of edgework, I've begun to ask myself: is it possible to have "too many edges"? I'm so curious to know whether people's relation to edgework activities shifts such that they can only handle a few at a time, or if it only works if it feels truly voluntary, or if we all need varying amounts of it. Is voluntary risk-taking more appealing when most aspects of life are safe and secure?

Why we need to quit gendering "success"

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the climbing gym for a quick session. I was working my way up a route near the max of my ability, and exhausted about 3/4 of the way up, half falling, half simply sitting in my harness. Fortunately, I was on top-rope so fell only so far as the rope stretched, as when I looked down in the direction of my belayer, I saw another climber not 10 feet below me, lead climbing on a different route that overlapped with mine and ended on the same anchors. This behavior is a major violation of climbing etiquette - it is dangerous and it is obtrusive - and for a rather nervous climber like myself, it has the especially anxiety-inducing consequence of making me feel that I need to rush through a "project," perhaps forgoing additional attempts at moves I find challenging. I jumped back on the route, climbed until I fell again one move from the top, and when I saw that the man was still climbing just behind me, I asked to be lowered. My partner and I exchanged exasperated looks with neighboring climbers, but didn't say anything to the offending pair. We waited for them to apologize. They never did, and in fact they engaged in a number of other rude violations of climbing etiquette while there, including leaving a lead rope unattended on a route after they finished climbing it. This occupied the route so that, although they were no longer climbing it, others could not.

Perhaps because I had just returned from the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting where I elected to prioritize feminist panels over those that were drug related, I was really angered by this encounter. Contrary to popular advice or wisdom or whatever, however, I was not angered at my own silence. Rather, I was bothered by the two men's oblivion, by their unwillingness to just look about and consider how their actions were affecting the people around them.

The thing is, there have been countless lists floating around the internet lately that highlight the traits of "successful" people and telling women how they need to change in order to be more "successful" themselves. [I've put the term successful in quotes here as it is a problematic concept in and of itself and these articles consistently refer to very cultured and arguably gendered notions of success - financial, material, work-related, etc.] There is even a recent blog post I came across that urges women in academia to practice engaging in assertive or confident, rather than submissive, body language and to learn to take up (demand) more space for themselves.

In many societies, including the US, dominance is associated with masculinity while the act of submission and traits/behaviors associated with submissiveness are viewed as feminine. This gendering of (preferred vs. undesirable) behaviors manifests at multiple levels of society and reifies the relative status of men and women. It shapes gender, contributing to a strictly binary vision of the construct. Thus, how men and women are taught to act and interact from a young age and specific character traits in turn correspond with the hierarchical categorization of gender across society.

Now, as a relatively submissive person (by nature and probably also via my upbringing and culture), I am certainly grateful for the lessons that have taught me to be more assertive, to be more straightforward and open about my needs and desires. My concern with all this discourse encouraging women to adopt traits associated with normative masculinity and abandon those associated with normative femininity comes when I envision a world in which everybody is demanding that the soft-spoke person across the table speak louder. What I don't understand is why the conversation seems to exclude a request that the soft-spoken person's table-mate listen harder. Why don't we, as a society, ask the person who is taking up more than his/her "share" of space to look around and consider whether and how this is affecting others? Why does it seem that the pressure to change is primarily placed upon those who strive to be less demanding to become more so? Why can't thinking of how one's actions affect others be seen as confident and competent? (Arguably, this is where the reification of the gender/submission association has its greatest impact.)

It makes me think of this interview I heard last summer with Daniel Suelo, who has spent the last nearly 15 years living "without money." While he does depend upon generosity and publicly funded resources for many things, he has managed to survive and thrive for all these years without himself directly engaging the cash economy. And he has apparently been largely criticized for it, with a major and common critique being that what he's doing isn't sustainable for the whole society. In the interview, he noted that odds are, in a society as large as our current one, this is true. His way of life is largely dependent upon those who do participate in the cash economy. But he turns this question back on his critics and wonders why these same people fail to recognize that, at the end of the day, the excessive consumerism valorized in American culture is far less sustainable on a global scale.

Ultimately, we need to consider what type of society we want to live in. Is it one in which every person fights for the limited space on the couch or is it one in which every person makes him or herself so small as to take up less than a cushion? It's probably neither. We need people who are acting in the best interest of themselves and in the best interest of others. We need people capable of balancing being relational with assertive about their own ideas. I'm not proposing an end to the call for submissive women (and men) to step up and make their voices heard, to take up their share of space, or to confidently share their ideas. Rather, I'm arguing that we need an equal call for those who are more dominant in nature to look around before taking up so much space, to try listening harder before asking a companion to speak up, and to consider the good of the group in addition to any benefit to themselves. To truly (re)value these various traits in a more equitable manner we will have to de-gender the traits themselves or acknowledge and rectify persistent gender inequalities. Looks like it's back to feminism 101.