Elisha McArthur, who’s featured in Moye’s piece, guiding with her daughter. Photo: 5280
In 2016, the federal government released a damning report outlining a series of sexual and gender discrimination cases in the Grand Canyon National Park’s white-water rafting district. In all, 13 women filed complaints with Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell alleging that, “Grand Canyon River District supervisors, boatmen, and other employees were guilty of offenses such as sexual propositioning, unwanted touching, and rape.” The river trips were government-funded rafting expeditions through the Grand Canyon for scientific research, shoreline/trail maintenance and education.
The report lit a fire under talented Colorado-based journalist Jayme Moye, who decided to write her own piece on the issue in her home state. Colorado, with its plethora of road-accessed rivers, is an epicenter of whitewater tourism. Despite criticism often rooted in the old-school mentality, Moye pushed forward, uncovering a culture of misogyny that she says, “scared her.” This week, her story about sexual harassment in the Colorado rafting industry was published in 5280 magazine, a Denver-based publication that covers the Colorado lifestyle. I caught up with Moye to talk about her journey during the year-long process of writing the piece.
How did you decide to pitch the article?
I’m an adventure news correspondent for Men’s Journal. When this report came out on the Grand Canyon in January of 2016, it’s something I reported for MJ. It was interesting to watch, from a social media perspective, the impact: who was sharing, the different comments. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it with anything I’ve written where it blew up like that. The comments from women were really specific in saying, ‘hey this isn’t just happening on the Grand Canyon.’ And they were really consistent: every female commenting was like, ‘yeah, it’s happening everywhere in the commercial sector on every river.’ I’ve lived in Colorado for 18 years and the question naturally formed, ‘huh, what’s it like here?’ The Arkansas River, statistically, sees the most whitewater-based tourism of any river in the country. I thought we would set the standard (in terms of progressive treatment of women in the workplace).
What did you find?
I found that Colorado was more behind in terms of its treatment of women in the rafting industry than I thought. It wasn’t 100 percent pervasive. There seemed like there was a large discrepancy in business acumen among outfitters in terms of policy and level of professionalism. Some people run (their rafting outfits) like a legitimate business and other people don’t. So, what happens in Colorado is people—specifically women–start figuring the good places to work and not so good places to work.
Looking at it from 10,000 feet, one would assume the remote aspect of rafting—meaning companies are often based in small towns with small-town mentalities—would mean sexual harassment might be more prevalent.
I actually held that assumption, too, and it might be the case. Anytime there’s less education, often less progressive values go along with it. But it’s interesting, one of the people I interviewed was an attorney from Denver focused on labor and workplace issues and she said something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: these situations exist in the most executive of settings. She was like, ‘you wouldn’t believe what I deal with right here in Denver.’ If I was to do this type of research in another industry, I might find the exact same thing. It made it hard for me to fall back on, ‘oh these are just small towns.’ That kind of scared me, to be honest.
Moye, who’s reported on women’s cycling in Afghanistan and blind kayakers, among other stories, on the job. Photo: Instagram
What was the most telling thing you found in your research?
The discrepancy of what men were saying and what women were saying. Women ranged from, ‘yeah this is absolutely happening and I learned to deal with it,’ to, ‘yeah this is absolutely happening, it makes me sick and this is what I’m doing to fight it.’ Women were finding a way to deal with it or not.
For men, the common response was, ‘this isn’t happening here, this isn’t a problem. I worked as a river guide for seven years and have never seen a single incident.’ To, ‘it goes both ways you know,’ acknowledging a culture of sexual harassment but that women give it to men just as hard. What I hear from women in response to that is, ‘yeah I play that role because that’s the culture. If I want to work on the river that’s the role I have to play.’ One thing is certain, there wasn’t one woman I talked to who said, ‘I love it when my co-workers sexualize me. I love getting smacked on the ass. I love being the token woman.’
Can you compare the situation in the Colorado rafting industry to any other industry or situation out there?
It’s kind of what we’re seeing with college campuses, which I do call attention to in the piece. It can degrade into the riverside version of the university Greek system: being completely inappropriate and intolerable for fun until it’s really not so fun anymore.
As writers, the trippy thing with researching and working on a story is that part of you changes or you leave a part of yourself with the piece you’re working on. What did you gain, or lose, with this story?
I kind of wavered from being really upset to then hopeful about the situation changing. I was inspired by some of the people I spoke with. Something I realized personally is the idea of men and women being different. I spoke with a woman named Niki Koubourlis who founded a group called Bold Betties: Part of the way women find success in the outdoors is that they do it their own way
And part of problem with guiding, and anytime a woman tries to slot herself into a male-dominated industry, she does it like a man does it. There’s a disconnect there. Most of the time men and women are going to do it differently. Elisha McArthur, who is featured in the piece, says she was trying to guide rafts like guys, and that aspect made her miserable: trying to do the last man standing thing (while drinking whiskey around the campfire), telling raunchy jokes, piloting a raft. Like any industry, stop trying to do it the way the guys do it, just because it’s male dominated. Lets figure out how women do it and how to work together.
Read Jayme Moye’s full feature in 5280 magazine, here.
