MJ calls what happened to her in Zion national park “small ‘T’ trauma”. She knows women have experienced worse from their partners. But she still feels the anger of being left behind on a hike by her now ex. “It brings up stuff in my body that maybe I have not cleared out yet,” she said.
Five years ago, MJ and a new partner – he was not exactly her boyfriend, and the pair were not exclusive – traveled from Los Angeles to Utah for an adventure getaway. MJ, who is 38 and works in PR, was looking forward to exploring Zion’s striking scenery; its vast sandstone canyon and pristine wading trails were on the list. But on the morning of their big hike, MJ was not feeling well. She could not shake the feeling that something was “off”; indeed, MJ would learn on this trip that her partner was seeing other women.
As they made their way up Angel’s Landing, MJ’s partner started walking faster than her. “I could tell it was getting on his nerves that I was slow,” she said. “I was like, ‘Fuck it, just go ahead of me.’” He did without hesitation.
When she caught up at the top of the mountain, they took a picture together. Then her partner hiked down the mountain with a woman he had met on the way up, leaving MJ to finish by herself. They broke up shortly after that trip. (MJ asked to be referred to by her initials for the sake of speaking openly about a past relationship.)
Last month, MJ opened TikTok and heard the phrase “alpine divorce”, a label she now attaches to her experience in Zion.
This is so fucking sexist.
Hey everyone, women are just as capable of surviving in the mountains as men!
There’s some safety and ethical rules in the mountains. You don’t leave your hiking/climbing partner unless you both agree it’s fine. Gender of this partner doesn’t matter. Guy leaving another guy is equally bad as guy leaving a woman. Women are not inherently more prone to dying in the mountains than men. The fact that everyone treats this as someone abandoning a helpless person is infuriating. It’s shitty behavior but it would be equally shitty if this guy left his male friend or if she left him. It’s 2026, this is fairly progressive space and still everyone looks at with “women need protecting” mindset. It’s mind boggling.
When I see women in the mountains I don’t think to myself “oh my god, they are here without supervision? hope they will be fine!”. Am I the only one?
Society is very fucking sexist. In my experience (which is a small dataset), unprepared women are more likely to go on a hike with a man than the other way around. Men like to play the provider/protecter role. Women know that. Society has taught women to put themselves in a vulnerable position to appeal to men (movies… constantly). Some women seem to actually want to be “rescued” by thier man as well. Dunno if that is social training or something else. So yeah, it’s very sexist, but it is also a breaking of the social contract, and it is unacceptable. Even is the roles are reversed it would be unacceptable. It’s just less likely to happen.
The difference being, it’s your fucking partner, and it’s guys doing it. No sexism here, just men being shitty partners. Shame them and move on instead of deflecting.
Yes, shitty men are shitty partners. Why is being shitty in the mountains different than being shitty anywhere else? All this is assuming that when a couple goes into the mountains men is responsible for women. Which is sexist. Both are adults, both can take care of themselves.
because cultural sexism. that’s why. innocent women must be protected from evil horrible men at all costs!
i bet if this story was about a gay couple you’d have a wildly different set of comments on here. and it would also be different about a lesbian couple.
but since it’s hetereosexual you have everyone projecting their sexism and relationship violence fears and generalizing it into some epidemic.
shitty people are shitty to each other, no matter the relationship. it has little to do with the sex of the people involved.
the truth of the story is probably far more complex and nuanced than is being told, but that would get in the way of the simplified narrative of an innocent woman being abused and neglected by a horrible man, onto which people can morally condemn and project how they’d never do that.
I bet if you looked at the numbers, it happens to ciswomen from cismen a statistically large amount of the time. Like at least three times higher than the others per capita. I mean, that wouldn’t be particularly surprising to me because queer couples tend to have different issues, but I am gonna take a wild shot in the dark and say that you have maybe one queer friend and thus know very little about the relationship dynamics.
I think if your problem is that women are complaining about men is sexist, then you are preemptively trying to shield shitty partner behavior when it’s done by men. To me, that reeks of someone that thinks it’s okay to be abusive to women, which is sort of a shitty person indicator, which, as you indicated, is because you are shitty to others.
I think the main takeaway here is that alpine divorce is an intent to murder. And yeh, it’s sexism. Not exactly in the way you’re putting it tho.
When they abandoned First Nations in Saskatchewan, and one made it back alive to tell people what was happening just like this woman is, the takeaway wasn’t that hey , gee, ya know they can survive being abandoned …it’s that they were abandoned to begin with WITH A VERY SPECIFIC INTENT TO DIE OUT THERE.
I think you not noticing that is the overall disgusting misogyny that society regularly overlooks and minimizes women’s right to life and safety should be considered not just that she can do it herself it’s that no one gives a shit if there was a chance she didn’t survive and how.
This shouldn’t be dismissed or minimized.
Assuming that women alone in the mountains will die is the sexist part. There are to aspects of this story:
men are breaking up with women in the mountains - if you can prove this is something men do but women don’t it’s a valid take. You can call it ‘alpine divorce’. It’s weird behavior. It would be interesting to learn why it happens (if it a real phenomenon)
more experienced hiking partners are leaving less experienced hiking partners alone in the mountains - this is shitty and dangerous no matter the gender. It’s about basic safety in the mountains
Both are valid concerns. It becomes sexists when you combine the two for no reason and assume women are always the less experienced person in the mountains. When I’m reading about it I’m imagining two adults going their way in the mountains. I don’t immediately assume one is responsible for the safety of the other only because of their genders. Because I’m not sexist.
Yes, it is ethically wrong to leave anyone behind in the wilderness.
What has surfaced in the news more often recently is men doing this to women. Was that not clear from the article?
if you do wilderness first aid training, they do in fact tell you to leave people behind, especially in circumstances where it would get them aid faster or in which you staying would further hasten their demise.
but that has no bearing on this story.
There was one story from the Alps. That’s it. It looks like someone saw this story and tried to create a new phenomenon looking for stories that will fit the narrative. All assuming that when two adults go into mountains women are universally the ones that can’t take care of themselves and need help and it’s men’s responsibility to provide this help. It’s sexist.
There was actually a case in Brazil recently where a girl left her male friend alone during a hike, and the guy got lost and stayed 5 days surviving alone in the jungle near the mountain until he was eventually found alive. Almost no news outlet mentions that he was abandoned, but there is a video from the girl who was supposed to be with him saying that she left him behind and out of her sight. No news outlet blamed the woman like they would if the gender roles had been reversed.
I’ve actually been left alone on a trip before. I was the less experienced one, but I managed. Not trying to play the victim just saying it happens. I’m used to being left behind it’s so ordinary I wouldn’t call the news, (because when women do this to men it would never reach the news, and whyd I’d need this attention anyways)
Yeah, you’re right. I’m always complaining to my Bros how I’m sick of getting left in the woods by women. /s
Come on, why bother with the lie? Why not just paste a nice link to some stats? Get out of here, man.
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No one throwing a fit about this article has actually read the article
Yeah, I started reading the other responses… Big oof.
Popularity in the news doesn’t equate to reality, any more than everyone saying “5 emails” makes it correct to do so. It just means it’s popular in the news because it sells more ad time.
That’s probably true.
But it makes it weird when a story about women being effectively abandoned in the wilderness elicits responses from (I’m guessing) men who feel targeted without any connection to these events.
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It’s bait.
It’s a story designed to maximize rage engagement… and create gender war rage. and it is incredibly successful. look at the comments in this thread and how many of them are people flaming about how men are evil.
and now dumb people will read this and think there is some CRISIS of all men abandoning women malaciously and broadcast it all over social media or add ‘their stories’ to try and capitalize on the trendiness of it.
and around it goes, until next week everyone forgets about it and moves on to the next rage-bait story.
You’re ignoring the recent criminal case that brings this up as a topic of conversation which is a very real thing that did happen.
How did they establish it’s not also happening at the same rates in other-gendered situations? Seems anecdotal and contrived.
Sounds a lot like whataboutism.
This the same reaction as “men also are abused!”, which is obviously true, hut at much, much lower rates than women.
There is no requirement to establish a pattern of women abandoning men for this article, because it’s not about that.
i take it you’ve manned and run the domestic crisis phone lines and seen this firsthand like i have because my experience is that women get much much more help (because help exists for women, it does not for men). men just report their first experiences, move on without getting the assistance that does not exist for abused men and then do not report any more abuse they suffer.
You want to know the fun thing about your fucking dipshitted lie? If you are a man and you call a domestic crisis phone line, they will still give you resources. Resources for abused men, be they straight, queer, cis, or trans, DOES EXIST. In bigger areas, they will attempt to direct you towards more specific help since there might be groups better geared towards your specific situation, but, like the fact you think that a women’s crisis resource would abandon men in need because they are men is such a fucking sexist lie. They might not be able to offer the same level of help, true. But they are there to help people in domestic abuse situations. Go fuck yourself.
So an article about women being abandoned in the wilderness should somehow evoke the plight of men’s lack of support… What’s the connection between these two?
men report abuse less than women because the support structures are not there for them. it’s like autism and left-handedness. it does not go away simply because you are not looking for it.
Again, I’ll ask wtf that has to do with the article.
here, i emphasized your own words for you so you couldn’t miss them this time.
It’s not whataboutism, even if it sounds like it.
Primus “I want chicken”
Secundus “What about salmon?”
Primus “Whataboutism! Your claim is invalid you have lost the debate.”
Pro tip: We’re not locked into one topic. We’re allowed to make comparisons, we all do it every day.
Yes, I know you will now say I a gaslighting. You win
It’s sexist in the way that it might depict only women suffering from this type of behavior, but I think that women do tend to be the major demographic that suffers from this type of behavior, which, to me, is a type of sexism that is nowhere near as harmful as the behavior it condemns. It’s not saying they can’t hike.
This type of abuse can happen literally anywhere. You’re out in the city and you’re not walking fast enough? Get ditched with no warning. And that’s the problem. There is usually some modicum of control that the people ditching (you can read this as men) have over the situation that leaves the partner in a vulnerable state. Sometimes they drove. Sometimes they know the way. Sometimes they have the experience. It’s an abuse tactic to do something like that.
So, idk man, calling this sexist and then pretending there’s some unrelated problem to address is a weird take.
Thank you. Weird ass take, I thought we left this shit on Reddit?
When I first moved to Lemmy from Reddit it wasn’t this bad. Now it’s no fucking different than when I worked in a sawmill, surrounded by shitty men.
I recognize your username now that I’ve been on lemmy for a minute and I always appreciate your contributions here <3
This place has a misogyny problem and looks no different than 4chan or early days of Reddit.
Right back atcha Velma. Always good to have comrads fighting beside you. :)
The article also goes into this aspect of the conversation.
So some women in the industry agree with me. Good, I was starting to think everyone is sexist. I hated the excerpt so much I didn’t read the entire article. Nice to see they also covered it.
You should really read the article before you get all upset about how sexist it is.
I was referring more to the concept the article was talking about and the general attitude in comments under this and other similar posts as being sexist. It’s good that this article is somehow better at covering it but this doesn’t change how most people react to those stories.
It could have bolstered your argument if you had actually read the article before spouting off.
At the end of the day, it’s just women noting to others another way men can choose to abuse. It’s just another way for women to keep each other safe by sharing our stories.
Ok, I guess I didn’t consider leaving someone to hike alone abuse because in my experience women are perfectly capable of hiking alone. It’s like saying that leaving someone to shop alone in a mall is abuse. If it’s actually reasonable to assume women need male companion in the mountains then you’re right, it’s not sexists.
You’re ignoring the subtly to these stories - in a lot of cases, these women’s male partners were more experienced, were carrying more supplies, or were otherwise more prepared for going into the wilderness. So there’s an additional layer of danger when these men decide for whatever reason to leave behind their less experienced partner.
A shop is not the same as a hike in the wilderness. People do have different levels of experience and preparedness.
Reading the article would have shone a light on this for you.
Ok, maybe you’re right. I’ve read the excerpt which doesn’t say anything about experience or not being prepared. It’s possible that OP chose the dumbest part of the article as the excerpt and other examples are much better. After reading this silly story of a women left behind on a popular, short hike and being traumatized by it I didn’t feel like reading the rest. Maybe I will read it later.
You’re overlooking that men tend to be attracted to this sort of activity more and may have greater experience. When they invite their inexperienced girlfriend, they have a duty of care towards them. You’re right, sex doesn’t matter and this could be reversed, but you need to ask yourself where the statistic lie.
This is not sexist. You’ve found the wrong conclusion.
Yes but the story of MJ doesn’t talk about experience. It’s just talks about gender.
because it’s rage bait. It’s not about hiking, it’s about men being awful to women and fanning the flames of gender war rage.
Yep! Also touched on in the article.
I live in hiking prime area. This is not true in any way.
This is why anecdotal evidence has little use in the real world.
Men historically outnumber women hikers, but the split is relatively close. Like 55-57% of hikers are men with women and non-binary making up the rest.
Not enough to suggest the “men are innately better hikers” thing the person I was replying to was alluding to.
They didn’t suggest men are innately better hikers. They literally said men are attracted to this hobby in larger numbers and tend to have more experience doing it.
That’s my point. I call bullshit on that.
The gender breakdown of avid hikers results in more men than women hiking. About 55-57% of hikers are men.
I’m really not trying to like argue with you or anything, I just think you’re misreading what they meant. There are more men that hike than women statistically.
This thread is all about feelings