I want to start this little post by expressing gratitude. I’m grateful for a kick in the pants to update this nearly-defunct blog, and hopefully get over the tipping point of feeling like a writer again.
So there I was, catching up on some reading while sitting on the crapper at a rented cottage in Rocklands. Climbing.com, the current form of Climbing Magazine, is not usually on my list, but I’m on a climbing trip, and I was hoping for a palate cleanser of sorts after reading about the latest abuses and outrages of our accelerating slide into full-scale Christian fascism in my home country of the [formerly] United States. That’s how I learned that they fired my friend.
If you don’t know who Dr. Shannon “SJ” Joslin is, that’s OK. SJ isn’t really a big-time sprayer, despite being a total boss when it comes to climbing. A co-author of one of the finest guidebooks out there, the latest Yosemite Bouldering Guide, SJ is one of our favorite people that we got to know through our years on the road. For the last few years, they’ve been a full-time Park biologist studying bats in the Valley. Or rather, they were until quite recently.
You may recall the giant Trans Pride flag that was hung up on El Cap, in response to the reelection of Trump. That was SJ, along with a few other activists. It was a beautiful act of love: a peaceful, non-violent expression of support for a marginalized, demonized community. And SJ got canned for it. And they made sure to tell them why. From the article: “According to Dr. Joslin’s account of the termination letter, the flag display violated 36 CFR § 2.51, a National Park Service (NPS) rule against any demonstrations that take place outside of designated park areas for First Amendment activities.” Long story short, rules were changed and loopholes were exploited to justify SJ’s termination.
Dr. SJ Joslin, PhD, is an amazing human. They’re intelligent, hilarious, kind, thoughtful, curious, and courageous. We got to know them back in 2013 when we filmed “The Shoe Wars: Five Ten vs. La Sportiva” in Joe’s Valley with their then-partner, Flannery. (The video was amateurish and the music intentionally awful, and it might be the best film we will ever make…) In the years since, we’ve climbed in Squamish and Yosemite together, and it’s never not fun.
Now SJ is fighting to get their job back. For that reason, and because of who they are in the first place, you won’t hear much from them by way of anger or resentment. I have no such restraints; who I am is obviously complicated, but believe me when I say I can rage with the best of them. It’s a part of me that I’m working to get a handle on, because I’ve been careless in the past, hurting people I love with badly aimed and poorly expressed anger, but I believe anger can be an appropriate response to injustice.
So while we supposedly still have free speech, I’m going to let anyone who cares to read this post know that I’m so fucking pissed off at what’s happened to my country. Fuck your feelings if you feel icky about trans people. Fuck your church if it condones this kind of oppression. Fuck Donald Trump, fuck JD Vance, fuck Mike Johnson, fuck the absolute joke of a Supreme Court, and especially fuck all the cynical, spineless hypocrites who have all made calculations that it’s easier to go along with tyranny than to risk some small personal loss.
And that last bit, to a large extent, includes me, a tall and economically privileged cis-gendered heterosexual male. But fuck that. It’s time to risk something. I’m not sure what it’s going to look like, but I am positive that they fucked with my friend, and that’s not cool.
Nothing radicalized me. I’m just a guy who thinks all humans deserve to be understood, and sometimes I climb rocks, and take pictures. Meanwhile, to paraphrase Kipling, it feels like the whole damned world is losing its head and taking it out on us. So if you reckon I’m being overly dramatic, and you can’t see by now that this so-called administration is what’s radical, then fuck you too.
But if you’re with me, I can tell you that a good place to start is by calling your local, state, and federal representatives. Call the National Park Service. I promise you it doesn’t take long. It may not feel like much, but it’s not nothing, and it does feel good. When it’s all said and done, we won’t get any credit for silently disapproving while democracy died.