I work for an organization that does rape kits with a Safe Therapeutic Assault Response Team. Rape kit testing is not mandatory, usually the victim is given the option (I think they have 72 hours) and then the kit can be held for up to a year while the victim decides whether to prosecute. The problem is there are tens of thousands of unprocessed rape kits sitting around warehouses because of a lack of public funding for processing them. Detroit is one of the most extreme examples.
There have been multiple fundraising movements to attempt to remedy this problem but I doubt the average person knows just how pervasive it is. Rape and sexual assault are a huge problem in Detroit, in general, the backlog just speaks to how few rape survivors ever see justice.
They are invasive, but unfortunately, they are also the best way of collecting evidence of a sexual assault. Also unfortunately, medical personnel are not always trained in mitigating the damage in the immediate aftermath of a trauma and the evidence collection itself can itself be a traumatic experience. The focus of our team is really emphasizing choice for the victim and fully explaining the process every step of the way. I’ve heard some things that I will never be able to scrub from my brain. They will haunt me always. People have no fucking idea about the seedy sexually exploitative underbelly of our culture and IME they don’t want to know. Shit, sometimes I don’t want to know.
The terrible thing about the rape kit backlog in Detroit is that once they started processing them they found multiple serial rapists who had been raping more victims while the kits just sat there. And there are still thousands left. (I work in the Detroit area. This is happening in my backyard. I feel strongly about it.)
No, not all men in general. Sexist men in specific, yes.
First quarter in college, I signed up for an “Honors Physics” class. I ran into one of the men from that class at the dorms and he said “Aren’t you in my physics class? Maybe I can help you with your homework”. I thought that was pretty presumptive and if that was an attempt to get me to date him, FAIL.
Later he had to drop the class because it was too hard (and I of course went on to get a PhD in Physics). At the end of the quarter he asked me how the class went and I said “I aced it” (LIE; I got an A, but it was HARD!) and he said “Hmm, maybe you should have helped ME with my homework.”
That’s the closest I ever got to “getting back” at a sexist.
Yes, the overwhelming majority of men I’ve encountered in life have been decent human beings who treat me as a fellow human being.
Just a couple shout-outs to the guys in my life who have countered sexism:
The fellow RC pilots at the indoor flight center who, when a busy-body came up to me on the flight line and said “girlfriends have to stand over there” pointed out that the “don’t talk to pilots while they’re flying” rule applied to the women pilots, too.
The forklift trainer at my present employer who, when a young man made an inappropriate comment about women drivers pointed out that 3/4 of our forklift operators were female and the young man should keep him mouth shut until he could drive one as well as they could.
And my husband, the time we were considering buying a house and the seller would neither look me in the eye nor answer any question I asked. My husband told him he would either speak to his wife - who, by the way, was the one with the income to make the purchase - or he would lose the sale. He lost the sale, by the way, but I gained a new appreciation for my husband.
These incidents may not have meant as much to the men involved as they did to me but they sure stuck with me.
Absolutely, I do not want to “get back at men in general”, I want to promote the guys who aren’t sexist!
Not at all. Most of the men I know or work with are great people. I have actually had very long discussions about this exact topic with many of them, which they then reply “Oh my GOD! How are you not an angry, bitter woman?”
Gentlemen, sexist men do not give a shit what women say or think or experience. They will only listen to another man. AFAIC if you speak up when you see the mistreatment of women you are a goddamn hero.
I think in some ways sexism has evolved where you can now see women working in nearly every role and its less of an impact. However people of both genders now are comfortable saying they prefer to work with either one or the other and its not always bad. For example a group of women might actually ask to have a man involved because they want a mans perspective on a problem. Other women I know say they prefer a working situation where its all men and they are the only woman.
I cannot say I’ve seen the acceptance for men going into womens traditional roles like say secretary, nurse, or working with young children.
Those “traditional” pigeonholes are… century and a half old, at most. Go back that far, and in the Western world (in the widest possible definition of such) people who made a living writing and reading for the illiterate were most likely to be men; office workers were most likely to be men; nurses were most likely to be monks or nuns of either gender, generally working on their own gender; and teachers were male, again except for a few religious orders.
I do see “acceptance” of men in those jobs (“celebration” would be a more appropriate term for the only one that’s perceived as currently mostly female, which is nursing), but then, I also live in a place that’s generally quite hellbent on getting rid of our traditions of sexism… it’s taking a while, but we’re consciously working on it.
I have seen very, very few male secretaries (they do exist, though), but I don’t think anyone bats an eyelid at male nurses anymore - at least in this part of the world. Agreed with the working with young children thing though; the stigma against it is so strong that they’re having real difficulty getting male teachers now, which is causing problems.
The female nurses I know love having male nurses around. Men tend to be physically stronger - so when you need to get someone turned or onto a gurney - strength matters. And patients get “uncooperative” - again, physical strength matters.
As to teachers, fewer people want to be teachers and stay teachers. Its a hard profession now for anyone. Long hours, little pay - and getting blamed for all the issues every kid you have has takes its toll. Being female doesn’t protect you from allegations of abuse - or from being on the receiving end of abuse from both your students and their parents. I used to think people who went into teaching had a calling - like those that chose religious orders - I know think we should canonize them at graduation for even trying.
My best friend on my high school track team went 6’ 1" and 265 lbs and became an All-conference offensive lineman in college. He’s now a nurse, and always gets called when a patient needs to be picked up to be moved.
I was the only white kid on that HS track team and even this idiot teenager could see how people were not suspicious of me (but were of everyone else) when we stopped to eat on the way to or from a meet. Funny, because they should have been suspicious of me.
Back to the topic: not me, but my wife has been passed over for jobs in favor of younger males who looked good in a suit but didn’t know half what she does. And that has affected our joint income, so…
I’m 64 now but back in 1970-71 when I was in grade 12, there was a local TV show that tested the knowledge of school teams made up of 4 panelists from each participating school. When our own school tryouts occurred, we were clearly told that the top 4 finalists would be on this panel. However, out of the 20 or so kids that tried out, I finished 4th which meant I should have been a part of this panel to go on TV. HOWEVER, my problem was that the three that finished ahead of me were also male and the kid who finished 5th was the highest achieving female. When the final panel was put together I was bounced because our school wanted to ensure something that resembled a “gender balance”. Discriminatory as hell IMHO.
There’s a huge difference in the treatment of female vs male abusers. A female teacher having sex with a 14 year old student yields a “ha ha lucky kid” response. A male teacher doing the same is a monster. That is changing but the disparity remains.
Men are also, for the most part, guilty until proven innocent in accusations of abuse. Any accusation of abuse, even far fetched, is life altering for a man in a way that it isn’t for a woman. There’s obviously reasons behind this, but the result is that men is at a serious risk than women just aren’t.
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I do see “acceptance” of men in those jobs (“celebration” would be a more appropriate term for the only one that’s perceived as currently mostly female, which is nursing), but then, I also live in a place that’s generally quite hellbent on getting rid of our traditions of sexism… it’s taking a while, but we’re consciously working on it.
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I think it goes beyond acceptance of men in jobs. A man’s status in society is tied into his job to a much greater extent than a woman’s. As long as that is the case they will be under represented in low pay/status jobs and over represented in high pay/status jobs.