Just looking for advice or support, I guess. This is my third year at an outdoor guiding job in a male-dominated outdoor space. I work closely with 8 other dudes, and we all live on-site. Mind you, I’ve known 6 of these guys for almost 3 years now, would say I’m very close with 3 of them, and consider all of them family. I’ve attempted to talk to the guys I’m closest with about this, but there never seems to be noticeable change.
I have two close AFAB friends who live about 30 mins away, and I get to see them weekly, however, I’ve been struggling with feeling like an outsider at this job (and in outdoor spaces in general).
During work days themselves, I rarely feel like I have anything to contribute to conversations. I feel like most topics involve video games, action movies, guns, cars, or hyper specific things about rock climbing or mountaineering that I can engage myself in briefly but lose interest in quickly. Like, 95% of conversations center around video games/action movies and guns. I, respectfully, just don’t give a fuck about those things, so I’ll try to start a conversation about something I can contribute to. And one-on-one, most of these guys are more than happy to chat about whatever I bring up, but in group settings, it’s just like a hive-mind mentality takes over. I feel invisible at best and purposefully excluded at worst. For example, we have a list of daily tasks, like taking out trash and cleaning bathrooms, to complete. The other afternoon, I was about to go perform some route maintenance on a climbing route that really needed it. I went to the building with the supplies I needed, where everybody else was also gathering supplies for various tasks, and was “voted out” by one of my closer friends (I’ll call him John) to go clean bathrooms. I know John probably meant it as a joke, but on top of everything I had already been feeling that day, it just felt like a punch to the gut.
Outside of work, I’ll try to plan social activities. I get “no” probably 85% of the time. I’ll text the group chat asking John and my other closest friend to go climb or bike or swim somewhere, and they’ll usually leave me on “delivered”. Then, they’ll go off and climb a different day and not extend an invite to me. They live together, so I understand if plans are made in the moment, but I don’t understand why it’s so damn hard for these men to participate in any activity I suggest. And if they don’t feel like doing an activity I suggest one day, why they can’t invite me whenever they plan an activity for the next day. I feel like I’m the only person here trying to cultivate a sense of community.
Again, I have great relationships with each of these men one-on-one. We’ve all had deep, meaningful conversations about politics and religion and future hopes and dreams. We’ve all gone on awesome camping and climbing trips and had crazy adventures, but whenever another man from the group is available instead, I just feel like a second thought or not even a thought at all. I feel like a secondary friend, which is so confusing, because nobody has given me any indication that I’ve done something to put myself in this position. I don’t know if other women have had this experience, where it feels like their friendship is cheapened in the eyes of a man just because they’re a woman. I enjoy the same outdoor recreational activities these men participate in. I perform at a similar level as they do. We all laugh and joke, but I still feel like I’m not of an equal friendship status, and the only reason I can think of is because I’m a woman.
It’s exhausting and really taking a toll on my mental health. I already face enough discrimination from dudes in outdoor spaces. I’ve had men jump out at me on trail and try to scare me off my bike. I’ve had gross things shouted at me while climbing. I’ve had men try to diminish my accomplishments because it took me a little extra time to get to the top of a route, for example, or I had to work through the crux an extra time or two. I know I belong in this space, and I have no intention of leaving. I just would love to hear success stories from other women about how they’ve overcome these feelings.
Comments
It sounds like you’re carrying the weight of being constantly overlooked in spaces where men dominate the conversations and decisions, which can be incredibly draining and isolating. You’re not alone in feeling like you have to fight for space at the table… and it’s exhausting trying to prove your worth when others don’t even see you as equal.
That sounds lonely at best and mean at worst, and I am sorry you are in that situation. If you’ve already shared your experience and feelings about it with the three co-workers you feel closest to and they continue to act this way, they are not your friends. They know you feel left out and then decline your invitations, don’t extend invitations to you, and delegate the least fun, solo tasks to you while they do the social ones with the people they actually care about. Those are not the actions of friends, and I would expect better from co-workers even if we weren’t friends outside of work. You sound lovely and deserve better, but I dont think those men are capable of giving you actual friendship.
Call them out on the more obvious job related things:
“Why do you always ask me to clean the bathrooms while you guys get to work on the ropes?”
As for the social stuff, that’s harder. Maybe they feel you can’t keep up in the back country. Maybe they don’t want to worry about where they pee. Maybe they want to be able to make dirty jokes. You can’t force them to be your friends.
What you can do, though, is ask your employer to try to hire more qualified women. Point out how much the clients appreciate female guides.
And if that fails, start applying for jobs with outfits where women guides feel more welcomed.
I am going to get a lot of flak for this, but I believe it’s needed:
What you’re experiencing is the loss of privilege, not some sort of discrimination.
If instead of a woman, you were a somewhat smaller, somewhat weaker man with zero to contribute to the common topics, do you think they’d treat you any different? They are already treating you like a man.
Of course that feels isolating. In mixed groups (or in one on ones) men often adapt so the women feel comfortable and included (generally for selfish reasons, but that’s besides the point). Your coworkers aren’t. They’re treating you like a guy. And if there’s 3, 4 men talking about a topic and a guy comes and doesn’t have anything to add, they won’t change topics to include the dude.
You’ve gotten so used to preferential treatment that the lack of it feels like targeted discrimination. But all you described, including the direct hierarchical competition, is the default way men treat each other.
You cannot have the cake and eat it. You cannot ask to be treated “the same” but then expect them to act different around you just because you have different hobbies. You cannot expect to demand “respect like men get” and then to not be part of the direct power games men play on each other.
You are being treated like another guy. And you don’t like it. It’s okay not to like it, but it’s not “because you’re a woman”. That’s how men treat each other, and most men are completely OK with that.