Institutional Sexism - have we reached a tipping point?

[MrsCakesPrecognition]

I've been thinking about the inquiries and report being carried out into the way public organisations failed to address the child abuse in Rotherham. I wonder if, in the future, we will look back and identify this as the tipping point when organisations finally start to recognise and try to address institutional sexism, in a similar way that the murder of Stephen Lawrence was the tipping point for starting to tackle institutional racism.
It seems to me that there is/was a culture of minimising violence and disbelieving young girls because they are girls, at least as much as a failure to pursue the perpetrators for cultural reasons.

Rereading my OP, I'm not sure that I've expressed myself very well.

I think this is an interesting point. I really hope you're right.

Good parallel to draw. I hope so.

Well I hope so. But we have had so many "tipping points" recently - whether any of them will end up as an actual tipping point or whether - maybe more likely - the accumulation of different situations will all act together as one, I don't know. I really really hope so.

I also hope that all of the recent scandals around children being failed will act as well for other victims of sexual violence.

Institutional racism was supposed to have been identified and stopped after the whole Steven Lawrence thing - but it still goes on. I just don't think people can change the way they think because they are told to or there are new rules in place.

it takes a generation.

TBH no.

Largely because the phrase "institutional sexism" or the words "sexism" or "misogyny" still have not even been used in mainstream media AFAIK.

I think there is far more resistance to acknowledging sexism than racism and because of that, we're not even going to get an acknowledgement that's it exists for a long, long time.

It could work for men too.

Maybe women's lives could also be seen as expendable enough to be risked on the frontline of wars too. Or men might get equal treatment within the NHS.

That's your response to the news that our institutions failed at least 1,400 children in the UK, leaving them to be systematically sexually abused?

OK.

Does it make you happy to know that women and children are killed in far greater numbers than male soldiers in the wars that are instigated by governments and religious institutions that are run (often exclusively) by men?

Does it make you feel a sense of fairness when you read about rape being wielded as a weapon of war on civilian women and children? Does that happy news do anything to sooth your indignation at all?

I will be sad if it doesn't.

In another bright note, more women are killed by men as a result of domestic violence than men in wars. So that might also serve to cheer you up a little.

Come on, buck up now.

Basically women and children being raped and murdered in vast numbers all over the world by men, most often in wars that they did not start and have no control over, is irrelevant as long as one man somewhere might be getting a bit of a raw deal.

If you want to protest for women on the front line then you can join with the women in the armed forces who are fighting for that right.

If you want to understand issues around men's health in the UK then feel free to research and agitate for change as you see fit.

Just don't tell people that those things are more important than the hope - just a hope - that our institutions might start to take victims seriously when they tell them they are being raped, rather than telling them to shut up and fuck off.

For christs sake.

And the reason?

Because men like you just do not give a single fuck about women and children suffering. Is the long and short of it.

Maybe there is some tacit approval in there also, I don't know.

I'm so angry.

Oh and look here here

"Defence secretary Philip Hammond's positive tone suggests the ban on women in combat units will be lifted" May 2014

Because women in the army have been fighting for the right to do this for years.

A small detail I found really depressing amongst the greater horror in the Rotherham case was the researcher being bullied and threatened by police and council services was given a really hard time and quite dismissed by a number of senior female police officers and councillors.

I don't know why that got to me particularly, I have enough experience of institutional bullying and managerial defensiveness from both sexes after years in the NHS, and hold no brief for the supposed natural empathy of women for women, but I just sort of felt let down.

I agree with Basil, that sexism isn't even acknowledged properly yet. Racism is aknowledged as a Bad Thing - that's why the police did not want to acknowledge that their failure to investigate the Stephen Lawrence case was anything to do with institutional racism. But sexism is seen as a Not All That Good Thing But Really Not the End of the World As Long as You Don't Go Too Far. At my place of work, to be accused of being racist is extremely distressing and has serious consequences but to be accused of being sexist is generally considered a bit of a joke and dealt with by eye-rolling, a muttered apology if you're lucky and - the icing on the cake - the come-back that, really, political correctness has gone mad and women are being over-sensitive.

Sexism is not acknolwedged or even recognised a lot of the time. Today my DD's school reminded all 6th Formers of the dress code and a teacher, a really inteligent, good female teacher who DD and I both admire, told the girls that they must not wear low cut tops because "they would distract the male pupils AND male teachers from their studies/jobs." If any adult male teachers really can't stop themselves from looking at teenage girls' breasts then I don't want them anywhere near my child's school! But this remark would not be recognised as "sexist" or even that offensive by most people.

Great posts, Seven - get the rage out!

Or men might get equal treatment within the NHS.

FUCK THEM.

If they need to be coaxed to go to the doctor about their really fucking OBVIOUS health problems, and would die without their hands held all the way, then FUCK THEM.

We're better off without them. I'm sure we can find a way to make it work.

Great rant there Seven. Spot on.

I agree with Basil and rosabud. Until male violence is named and recognised regularly nothing will change.

At the moment it's just people doing horrible things to people. The gendered nature isn't mentioned or highlighted.

God I really hope this "rutters1" read your reply SevenZarkSeven and has actually made a space in his tiny brain to understand it.

The male/female NHS cost is currently being discussed on this very interesting other thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2181318-The-recent-thread-started-by-a-MRA

Women may statistically use the NHS more but consider how childbirth which most women will experience more than once, which used to be the number one cause of death, is now far safer thanks to medical advances. This seems to fill you with jealous rage Mr MRA. That women and children now live through childbirth.

Plus female conditions have been excluded throughout history from medical research up until recently, and so now there is rather a lot of catching up to be done.

This is hardly a male disadvantage. So women use a tiny fraction more of the NHS services. They are not taking the service away from men are they. Men still have equal access to these services if they want it, and if they want to campaign their ass off for more research on male issues like feminists have they are free to do so.

It is not an issue on equality/rights.