Climbing and Creating Space for the Trans Community with Ayla Jay Darklis

Ayla shares how climbing has impacted her life and how it can support mental health. She tells Mel about the challenges faced by the trans community within the climbing world, highlighting the need for inclusivity and support. Ayla reflects on the realities of being a trans climber, and her motivation for creating content that encourages others to embrace their identities in outdoor spaces. She tells us about her current climbing projects and favourite locations, particularly her love for slate climbing in North Wales.
 
Chapters:
00:00
Introduction

03:41
Climbing as Therapy

10:50
Community and Inclusivity in Climbing

18:05
Climbing Goals and Personal Growth

24:38
Encouraging Others in the Climbing Community

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About your host:

Mel Reeve is an experienced writer, casual climber and enthusiast, bringing her knowledge and passion to the podcast. With a background in writing, copywriting and content creation, Mel is dedicated to sharing the diverse stories and perspectives that shape the climbing community.

Transcript

Thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. Could you just tell me a little bit about yourself? 

Yeah, sure. I'm Ayla. Climbing is kind of all I do at the minute. I'm not working at the minute because of mental health. yeah, climbing is pretty much the only thing I'm doing. I'm trying to share that and encourage other trans people to also come outside and climb. Amazing. 

And what got you interested in climbing in the first place? When did that begin for you?

 When I was like a teenager, I went on like a little residential trip. It's a long, long time ago now, but yeah, I went on a residential trip and we did some top rope and I think it was in North Wales, although it might've actually been the Peak District. was that long ago. I can't actually remember. And then I lived in North at the time, so I didn't do much in the way of climbing and post that. There was a little bit of top rope and briefly at the gym. But I remember enjoying it at the time, but I was always a very terrified child of...of social things more than the actual climbing I think. A couple of years ago now, one of my friends, yeah, mentioned that he used to climb and I said, oh, that'd be cool. I'd like to get back into that. So yeah, like Easter bank holiday, think it was like 2022, he took me out climbing in Portland and just got a bit obsessed since then really. That's quite a big transformation then because it's obviously a huge part of your life now. What's that process been like, that experience of going,

relatively new to the sport as an adult and then it becoming such a big part of your life. It's been an interesting progress or process and I guess it's probably for viewer wise it probably makes or for listening wise it makes sense to mention that I'm a trans woman. You might not be able to tell that from the audio alone but yeah it's been kind of really important to me in keeping my brain.

steady. At the first time I went climbing in Portland, I think we climbed Fallen Slab, which is like a 3C or something, like quite a simple climb really. But it terrified me enough for my brain to just like focus on what I was doing. And I've just kind of been chasing that feeling ever since really. Yeah, climbed a bit indoors, but it's mostly outside is like the love for me. And it's just, it's taken over my life.

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Mainly because it makes everything else feel achievable. Like that level of terror that makes my brain focus and work has made everything else, yeah, like a little bit more achievable. Mental health wise, my brain doesn't do normal things very well. Like normal things are pretty tricky, but yeah, like getting into like the flow state of, I let go, it's going to really hurt. It seems to have...

Like as long as I can do that relatively regularly, can sort of semi-function as a human basically. Yeah, I really relate to what you said there about how that moment where you just have to focus solely on climbing, you you can just find yourself really chasing that because it can help so much with your daily life when there are struggles or challenges that you're facing. I think that's really interesting as well to hear about how I guess it's kind of like a coping mechanism, would that be fair to say, or like a support for you? Yeah, I guess it's kind of like therapy for me really.

Like actual therapy is kind of hard to come by in the UK unless you happen to have money to pay for it privately. But it really works for me. it allows my brain. Normally my brain's got everything going on all at once and it's very hard to like focus on any one particular thing. But when there's that level of terror there and consequences to your actions that you can, but they're manageable, like they're actually

like they make sense, like I'm scared of going outside because of people, but that doesn't necessarily always actually make sense, like sometimes people are just fine and it's not problematic at all, but I still have that anxiety reaction and I can't control it, whereas with climbing, if I'm scared I'm going to fall off and hit something, that's like a real thing and it is within my body's control, so yeah, just kind of use it as therapy I suppose. Yeah, absolutely, that makes a lot of sense I think.

Lots of people I'm sure listening will be able to relate to that feeling. We all come to climbing for lots of different reasons, but I think for many of us, it really unites us to find a way to manage our mental health or to improve our lives or to feel better about our ability to move, our ability to engage with the world around us through the sport. And I'm interested, I guess, on your experiences of community as well. So you've mentioned, obviously, you have the specific perspective of being a person, especially in the UK, where if we have

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listeners from abroad maybe aren't aware that, I think it's fair to say, life for trans people is particularly bad in this country. It definitely feels quite hostile to trans people, especially like, and it just feels like that's getting worse. Yeah. Like it feels like there was a point where just people were more accepting and nobody really cared. And now we've been used as like political footballs for the last however long and like the new bogeyman for the media. So

everyone's got an opinion of trans people now as opposed to just, oh yeah, I've never met a trans person, even though they've still never met one. When I originally started climbing, I was mostly based around Bristol, which is quite a big city, it's quite a lot of queer people in Bristol. And I climbed in gyms more than I climbed outside, and when I was climbing outside, I was climbing with just other people that I already knew, and it was all pretty chill. There's a nice queer climbing club in Bristol, it's really easy to climb with other queer people.

There's always queer people at the gym. Fast forward to like when I left Bristol, I left Bristol because of a transphobic attack as it happened. Yeah, I left Bristol and decided that I was just gonna, like climbing's inclusive, you know, like everyone's friendly, no one cares, I've never had any problems climbing. And then the problems kind of started really. Climbing's not as inclusive as...

you seemed always like as I thought it was and when I started like posting more about it like my first I did a YouTube video mostly because you do what everyone else does when you start getting obsessed with something you look for like other people like you that are doing it and it was quite hard to find anyone else like me that was doing it I found Law and their film on YouTube and watched that that was proper inspiring and then kind of thought well why not

why not just start your own channel? So I posted this video of climbing an E4 and I just shared it to like, I think it was like UK climbing or something on Facebook and it kicked off. Like all the transphobes came out of the woodwork. Like, yeah, all sorts of, all sorts of like just straight from like straight up transphobic comments to like loads of like middle-aged men telling me how inclusive climbing in

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is and that this isn't needed and like well if it was inclusive like you wouldn't care and also I wouldn't be the first trans person you've come across doing it like so yeah getting outside is and I spent a lot more time outside now like I climb outside three or four times a week if I can. Finding partners is a bit tricky mainly because it's like it still is a bit of a big deal like I don't want it to be a big deal it's just who I am but

a lot of people it is a big deal and it's like an awkward conversation you have to have with someone you either have to have the awkward conversation with someone before you meet them which feels a bit strange and there's obviously all the safety concerns of meeting random people in crags in the middle of nowhere and and then literally putting your life in their hands like i don't know what you're because like we said earlier everyone has an opinion in england now like it's not like

Although people are kind of indifferent, they only become indifferent once they've actually met a trans person and spoken to them and been like, yeah, you're just people. Like, yeah, no shit. But yeah, it's been awkward. And it's awkward being at crags when people are making homophobic comments or transphobic comments or racist comments or anything like that.

Again, you either have to out yourself to people or just feel incredibly uncomfortable and know that these people are out there. Yeah, climate's not quite as inclusive as I made myself think it was. And as perhaps other people that don't mean you don't see the underrepresented communities, that's kind of the point, isn't it? Well, it's not the point, but like, if you go to a crag and everyone's the same as you, then yeah, you probably think climate's pretty inclusive. if you go to a crag and you're the only one there.

and everyone's making jokes about your existence then... or you go and climb next to like some of the root names even like there's a root at Sahawi so I'm sure people can look up if they want to but yeah it's not particularly pleasant to be involved or just there when people are all having a good laugh about this horrifically transphobic like root name and you're just like

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Yeah, hi, I'm like, making me feel a bit sick. I think that's such an important point you've raised, which I kind of had identified when I started this podcast, because I started climbing only about a year ago. So I'm quite new to the climbing world. And when I started this podcast, it was because I wanted to uplift the voices of people from those underrepresented communities. And I definitely anticipated that people would have, I guess, hostility or apprehension or whatever you want to call it about that. But I hadn't anticipated.

there would be this attitude that you don't need to do that, which I think you've kind of described there, where people would very loudly and in the comments say like, what's the point of this? We don't need this. We're really inclusive. And obviously by saying that, are proving the point that that's not the case because they're making it uncomfortable for those people to be in this space. And I think it's quite a specific barrier that exists in the climbing community where there is an attitude that nothing needs to change from certain people within the community. And so of course, because of that,

it becomes harder for people who are making the change to be more inclusive to do what they're doing and to do that in a way that feels, I guess, comfortable and safe, essentially. Yeah, I mean, it almost feels like climbing is kind of like the inclusivity part of climbing is maybe like 20 years behind the rest of the world. Like, it's still quite a boys club. It's still, especially when you start getting outside and like trad climbing, it's like, it's pretty...

hard to access in the first place. Like the gear is horrendously expensive. There's not anything you can do about that. You know, it costs money to make, but like that already excludes a huge amount of people from. So most people are relying on someone they already know to take them climbing. And for the most part, that's going to be like perhaps a middle-aged, cis, white man and probably

Like there is working class climbers of course, but like there's a lot of middle class climbers as well when you get into the trad world that can drop like several thousand pounds on a rack. Like that's definitely not something I'm capable of doing. And yeah, they think it is inclusive because, because they, I guess because they've maybe brought their daughters out climbing or they've brought their wife out climbing or whatever. And maybe they've seen a person of color once at the crag. So they're like, well, it is inclusive, isn't it?

 (12:17.09)

Maybe they know a mate that's gay and like, they like climbing. But that's like, if you've got one little tiny, yeah, I've got some relation to a minority somewhere I've seen climbing, and so climbing is inclusive. That's not really full inclusion. And if you shut people down when they have these conversations, then that kind of proves the point. Yeah, definitely. So what motivates you when you make content about your climbing? Because obviously that's how...

I've come across your climbing and that's why we're talking here today. Mostly, I mean, we go back to like the sort of the climbing has been really good for my mental health. And I think it's also really positive. Like a lot of the people that I climb with regularly have mental health problems. I've not searched out people with mental health problems to climb with. It just so happens that a lot of the people that I vibe with like neurodivergent have got various issues with like mental health or society or whatever.

And they also have that same feeling from climbing that it clears their brain, it helps them.

It kind of goes to the someone's got to do it, haven't they? Someone to encourage other people to feel safe to come out and to come out and be their queer selves at a crag. Then there needs to be more people being vocal and like open and loud about who they are. So I guess that's what motivates me really. It's like a situation I didn't really want to be in.

you know, ideally there'd be someone else that's doing it all already and everyone's like, yeah, yeah, that's A, let's use a trans woman. It's all totally chill though, not, have you heard that person over there? Like, is a bit weird or like, can you leave your pronouns at home? I think was my, my favourite comment. now I wear them. But I found that quite motivating in a weird way. I now wear them on a little badge on my chalk bag. Just like.

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I'm going to take them everywhere with me, actually. Love that, yeah. I think you touched on something there as well that came up when I spoke to Law for my episode with Law, and it's the idea that actually being the first to do something is quite alienating and horrible. if you're in a minority or underrepresented group experiencing oppression in some format, like, you don't want to be the person that goes out and does the first something, whether that's like sending the first route or being the first person at a crag that other people there have experienced. You know, that's not

a good place to be for the people from those groups. I wonder, do you have any thoughts about if people are listening who are wanting to be more supportive and to create better environments, whether that's indoor or outdoors, in the climbing world, do you have any thoughts around what they can be doing? I mean, it's a tricky one, isn't it? To start with, you can just do really simple things like actually displaying the fact that you are an ally. You can have these conversations with your friends when...

When your friends are joking about this horrific root name, for example, you can go, do you know what? That's pretty shit. Maybe you shouldn't do that. I'm not suggesting we start changing root names to make them PC or anything like that. Like for whatever reason, people thought that was fine at the time, but yeah, like you can interrupt conversations that happen at Craigs. You can stop.

homophobic conversations, can stop transphobic conversations, you can stop racist conversations, like, you can actually stand up and do something like all of the people that that affects have no choice but to either interject and stop that or just feel the pain of it. But if you're just simply an ally, especially if you're a cis man as an ally, like you're in a really privileged position, like no one's

You don't need to be worried about your safety in the same way, for one. So you can interrupt these conversations and you can change the narrative and you can be like, well, do you know what? Like these are just people and they have just as much right to be out here enjoying nature as we do. Like there's no reason that queer people or people of color or anything coming to crags outside or getting more into climbing changes anything.

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for the people that are already climbing. You can still get all the same enjoyment you get from climbing, just someone else holding your ropes. Like it doesn't make any difference to you, but you can make that person feel an awful lot more comfortable. I think that's like what needs to happen. And in terms of like gyms and things like that, I mean, there's lots of things people can do, but again, being a bit more proactive as opposed to we've put a progress flag up, like.

I'm like, a progress flag is at every single gym I go to. Yeah, great. It doesn't make me feel any safer though, in reality. Like, I've still had stuff happen standing next to a progress flag. It's not gonna like, you don't put that up and job done. But I feel like that's kind of, for a lot of people, where that allyship kind of stops, they do the performative thing. And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. Like, obviously it's great.

to have that sign that you are welcome. But sometimes it requires a little bit more than that. Sometimes you need to put a little bit more effort in. You need to maybe be calling out some of the behavior that goes on. There's a lot of toxic traits that go on that are just allowed to continue. Even just simple misogynistic stuff. How many times do you hear someone being like, stop being such a girl when someone wants to take or whatever?

I know loads of girl climbers that are fucking way stronger than you buddy. Like, it's not an insult. That's a really great way to look at things and I think it's a good reminder to people that we all have a responsibility within this community that we exist in to make sure that people are safe and supported and feel able to access the sport if they're new to it or just feel able to be safe in that environment. So we've talked about how

you do lot of outdoor climbing and I'm really interested to hear more about that. Do you have favourite places to climb? Where are you climbing at the moment? What kinds of things are you working on? I'm like fully obsessed with the slate in North Wales at the minute. I've got like a full on love affair with the slate slabs going on. My friends that introduced me to climbing brought me here like it's about two years ago now. Pretty much bang on for the first time.

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And when I first came here I couldn't really climb very well. Obviously this is all subjective as well. I could climb 6A at the time, which to me at the time felt really difficult. But there was still loads of stuff to climb here. And now I'm spending more more time here. It feels like it's a limitless thing. There's everything here up to 9A class, sport-wise, which...

you know, it's going to take me years and years to get there. But there's also like, I really enjoy the going back to like the sort of mental health part of it. Like I need there to be some level of like commitment and consequence. And there's a lot of like traditionally bolted stuff in the Slate Quarries, which is in essence just huge run outs. So if you fall, maybe you're going to hit the floor or maybe you're going to hit the floor before you get to first bolt. Like at the minute today, me and my

friend went and I tried to onsite an e-wave which didn't go very well but I didn't hit the floor so you know it did go pretty good yeah. But yeah I like the fact that you can be like yeah okay I can push myself here like incrementally like there's an e4 just next to it that I fell off at the start of the year and I think my way of climbing confuses a lot of people because they're like well you haven't actually like got that clean yet.

Do you want to maybe? I've got everything, I've got the fear from that now. That's fine. But I haven't climbed to like the first bolt that's at like five meters or whatever on this one yet. And that's going to give me that great feeling again. So I decided to sack off the E4 and just get straight on the E5. Which is really fun and it definitely had the right level of terror. Also trying, got like a project over the way, which I've not been on for a while actually.

had a couple of weeks on it and then I've had a couple of weeks off which again is just like long slab climbing, long slab slate like standing on tiny little edges and lots of feet and and trusting yourself which yeah I guess again coming back to like my brain, exercising like trusting myself have become quite important to me like and slate slabs definitely the one although I'm starting to get more interest in

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in other stuff. One of my friends is quite into more burly things. I've now managed to put enough effort in that my grades are kind of the same. They're a little bit skewed towards towards slab but not quite as dramatically as they were. Like it was like I can't climb a 6a overhang but I can climb a like an a plus slab which doesn't really make a lot of sense now it's you know around about 7a plus ish.

level. So yeah, I just like climbing outside basically. It doesn't really matter that much what it is, but slate is my love. And how do you decide, you've kind of mentioned it there a little bit, but how do you decide your goals? It sounds like the fear is a really big part of that. Goal wise, like I set myself, when I first started climbing, I set myself this weird goal of an 8 before 40, which was like, I think I had about seven months to achieve that from like starting climbing and

I guess you could say that I achieved that, although I wouldn't have said I was a 7a climber by the time I climbed a 7a, like I climbed a 7a badly. And then after that, I kind of spent a little while just floating about and not really having any specific goals. In terms of stuff in the slate, the cavity wall is like the sports roof that I'm projecting in a minute. And it was just recommended to me, recommended to me by a guy on Facebook who was quite supportive when I posted my first YouTube video.

He was quite supportive. He also told me about someone that also used to be in the slate. Used to do a lot of stuff in the slate and go to climbing club meetings and stuff. I mean, I can't talk on this person's behalf because I've never met them and I'm not sure if they're around anymore, but I think the guy that I was talking to referred to them as a cross-dresser. They used to go to like the AGMs as their alter ego and then climb as a guy, which was quite cool.

But yeah, he recommended this route, so I was just like, okay, I'll get on it and see how it goes. And turns out it's really good. I've not really looked at any other 7C's around like this late yet. Long-term project-wise, I watched Honor, Hazelnut doing, I think it was Once Upon a Time that got me fully like, wow, that looks amazing. So that's like long-term project way down the line. So yeah, kind of short-term project is just like, get good so that can be an option.

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That's such an interesting little piece of queer history that you've touched on there and obviously not speaking to that specific person's experience necessarily, but it's a really great reminder, I think, that LGBTQ plus people have existed in climbing communities, whether people knew it or not. I might be the first trans woman that is shouting about it. I'm probably not. In reality, there probably is lots of other trans women out there that, for whatever reason, are maybe being a little bit more quiet about it.

going all the way back. There's so much history of mountaineering and climbing that's hidden. Lots of women were climbing stuff, but their names aren't in any books. Yeah, I live in Scotland and there's some really great pictures of very early female mountaineers in the big massive dresses with one rope around their waist and stuff. It's amazing. Exactly. There's always been alternative people to the norm, which we're saying the norm is men, I guess, but there's always been alternatives to that.

It's just whether or not people have felt comfortable to actually express that. you have any thoughts for anyone listening who is maybe trans, queer, or for whatever reason just feels nervous about engaging with the climbing world, but is keen to give it a try? Do you have any thoughts or advice for someone in that position? I mean, if you're in the UK, then I guess it depends where you are. Like if you want to come outside climbing, just find me on Instagram.

like let's go outside climbing. I'd love to go climbing with more queer people. If you're in like main cities there's probably like there's probably a queer club that goes climbing. I know there's a trans social climbing group in London. Everything's quite London-centric like trans world in England but I know that exists. Yeah if you're near that maybe go to that or gyms in general are pretty chill. I will say that gyms in general are

a pretty chill and a pretty welcoming place, especially bigger cities. You're likely to find other queer people in the gym. Outside-wise, I guess you're already climbing by the time you're coming outside, so maybe come with a friend or just steal yourself for stepping back in time a little bit. Yeah, Climb Out Fest and Plasie Brennan and Mountain Trainer, I to remember all of them, all combine to subsidise some instructor training for like...

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queer people and yet I did my RCI training with them in end of August I think this year which was amazing like lots of queer people all doing cool stuff together that was that was like one of the best climbing experiences I've had since I started climbing just being out and about with so many queer people from different walks of life and like yeah we all have this love of outdoors and now and now thanks to Climb Out Fest and their affiliates they've all

enabled us to then start getting some qualifications so then when people are looking for I want to start climbing but I don't know where I don't know where's queer-friendly you know hopefully soon there'll be some of us. Yeah I think that's such a great point isn't it that like the more scaled up people can be then the more people from our communities we can bring in and the better it is for everybody. Yeah exactly the more people I can introduce to the sport then like

generation down the line, it'll be even more normalized and then everything will change, it? Everything does change, everything moves forward and yeah, you've just got to be a part of it, I suppose. Yeah. Wow. I feel like that's a really beautiful way to end this conversation actually. So where can people find you if they're interested in seeing more of your content, maybe seeing some of your climbing? Best way is just Instagram, which is just AilerDarkness. Yeah, at AilerDarkness. My YouTube is probably linked from there, although there's not a lot on there at the minute.

I've got a big, we had a conversation about the big stack of editing that I need to do. Yeah. And also I need to recover mentally from like, being like, hi, I'm a trans person and I climb and the fallout of that before I start posting more again. Yeah, because that was quite recently, wasn't it? I think I remember saying on the Facebook group. It was quite recently. Yeah, it wasn't, wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that long ago. There was like this to just

continue this conversation now. There was like this weird thing I had where I was like, I want to do this, but I'd like, I feel like I need to be really good before I post anything. whatever, like there was, I started filming stuff like maybe, maybe a year ago. I was like, nah, that's not good enough. That's not good enough. Someone's like, that's even more ammunition for it. Cause it was already in my head that this was going to be a thing. And then this E4 happened, which was kind of a spur of the moment decision anyway, like

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I fell off a relatively easy climb a few days before and hit the floor. And then we ended up going to Fairy Caves at my suggestion. I was just like, do you know what? I want to climb this. Like this looks absolutely terrifying. So I want to do this. It all kind of coincided right. There was someone else there that could film it. like, so it was a little bit more interesting than just a still camera. And I was really proud of it. I was really proud of sending an E4.

So was like, this is it then. This is like, I just go with this feeling of actually being like properly proud of what you've accomplished and share it. Cause that's what other people do on YouTube and that's fine. Yeah. And that proud moment kind of got like, kind of turned into a like, God, I'm too scared to even look at like Facebook for quite a while. It's a really important point you've raised there though, that, that feeling that I think lots of people get in lots of different ways that before you engage with a space, enter a space, you have to be good enough.

So for me, I remember there's a really great women's bouldering group that's really inclusive and wonderful that I'm part of. And I wouldn't let myself go until I felt like I was a good enough climber. And now looking back, I'm like, that's really silly. But it's the same feeling, I think, right? This idea that we have to prove ourselves before we enter spaces. And particularly, obviously, in the situation you're describing when you know you're very likely and indeed did face pushback from the kind of cis white men in that community.

But yeah, is that guess insecurity that you have to be a certain level before you're allowed to take up space. It's interesting, isn't it? It's interesting that we have this of like, and I have this conversation with like with people I climb with now as well though, the person I climbed with on Sunday, when I first suggested climbing together, she was like, oh, I'm nowhere near your grade. So like, don't really care. Like, I don't really care what you're climbing in. All I really care about when we're outside climbing is that you've got

good vibes and you're going to catch me if I fall. Like that's it. Like apart from that, like I can be psyched for you getting up a four for your first ever time. And then you can come hold the rope for me on a seven C if you want. Like it makes no difference to me at all. It's been so great to hear more about your climbing and I'm excited to see hopefully some more videos on your Instagram and your YouTube showing your climbing. And yeah, thank you so much for joining me today.

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You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.