Going on a trip with friends can be a bonding experience that creates lifelong memories or a nightmare filled with stressful moments and palpable tension. You should only travel with people that you know you’ll have a great time with, as the stress of being in a new environment can sometimes be too much for friendships to handle. In fact, some group trips go off the rails before they’ve even started.

One woman shared a story on Reddit detailing how her boyfriend’s friends decided to uninvite her from a ski trip she helped plan after they decided that it should just be for the guys. Below, you’ll find the full story, as well as some of the replies readers left her.

This woman was thrilled to go on a ski trip with her boyfriend and their friends

Image credits: fotosparrow (not the actual image)

But when the guys decided she was no longer invited, she realized that they were never actually her friends at all

Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual image)

Later, the woman added an update on the situation and responded to some of the replies readers shared

Image credits: Alena Darmel (not the actual image)

She then came back with a second update, along with a message to her former “friends”

Image credits: snowboardingblues

Traveling with friends can be stressful

Going on a trip with your best friends can be a great way to get away, and sometimes, it’s best to leave your partner or spouse at home. If you haven’t had as much time to bond with your friends due to the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it’s understandable to want to have some one-on-one time with them to relive stories from college, talk about hometown drama or catch up on how life’s been treating you. But if the plan is to have a solely girls’ or guys’ trip, that should be specified early on in the planning process.

It’s not fair to let someone put time, energy and money into planning a trip only to be told at the last minute that she can’t come. But as the woman in this story shared, it seems like her partner’s friends never actually saw her as a friend. In fact, it looks like they might view all women as lesser than.

In this day and age, it’s easy for some men to assume that we’re past the need for feminism and that it’s now appropriate to use sexist humor, but that’s far from the case. A 2022 study from Ipsos found that one third of men around the globe believe that feminism does more harm than good and that “traditional masculinity” is being threatened. One fifth of adults also believe that feminism has caused men to lose out in terms of economic, political and social power.   

Image credits: William Fortunato (not the actual image)

Sexist jokes are no laughing matter

When it comes to violence against women, 15% of adults around the world believe that it is often provoked by the victim, and 20% of men around the world believe that women often make up or exaggerate when reporting abuse they’ve experienced. One in ten adults also believes that women are obligated to have sex with their husbands or boyfriends, even if they don’t feel like it.

While you might be thinking that these views are extreme, they can quickly become normalized when men use humor to mask their misogyny. One study from Western Carolina University found that exposure to sexist humor can lead to men feeling more comfortable expressing discriminatory views about women. 

“Our research demonstrates that exposure to sexist humor can create conditions that allow men – especially those who have antagonistic attitudes toward women – to express those attitudes in their behavior,” Thomas E. Ford, a faculty member in the psychology department at WCU said. “The acceptance of sexist humor leads men to believe that sexist behavior falls within the bounds of social acceptability.”

In their experiment, the researchers also found that men were less willing to donate to women’s organizations and allocate funds to women’s organizations after being shown videos including sexist humor. 

Image credits: Andrea Piacquadio (not the actual image)

Men who enjoy misogynistic humor likely believe that there’s a bit of truth in those jokes

It’s easy for men to use the excuse that something was “just a joke” or that misogynistic jokes don’t actually reflect how they think. But what often makes a joke funny is that there’s a bit of truth in it. So what kind of truth are they finding in sexist jokes? 

One concerning study found that after being exposed to sexist jokes, men reported higher levels of rape proclivity. Meanwhile, another study found that, for men high in hostile sexism, exposure to sexist humor got no reaction out of them. They reacted in the same way that they would to hearing non-offensive humor, and they reported feeling less “self-directed negative affect” when imagining that they had behaved in a misogynistic way.

Losing a friend is always painful, and it can be even more hurtful to lose an entire friend group at once. But there’s no excuse for sexist jokes and behavior nowadays, and it’s certainly not worth it to cling onto friendships with people who hold harmful beliefs. Perhaps this woman dodged a bullet by skipping out on this ski trip.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this situation in the comments below, pandas. Then, if you’re interested in checking out another Bored Panda article discussing travel drama, look no further than right here!

Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual image)

Readers assured the woman that she had done nothing wrong and called out the men for their bad behavior

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