Consider the following scenario: a female war veteran pays a visit to a Veterans Administration health clinic. She has been suffering with bad cold symptoms and they won't go away. The doctor recognizes her illness as something that can be treated with a specific antibiotic. The doctor has already used this same antibiotic with great success on many other patients. What should the doctor do?
1. Offer the antibiotic to the woman?
2. Refuse to help the woman, stating that there are more male veterans, and so all the clinic's attention should go there?
3. Take out a bottle of the antibiotics, remove one pill, and cut a sliver from it. Offer the sliver to the woman and tell her it represents the percentage of women in the military?
The choice seems pretty simple to me. Choice number 1 is the correct choice. Numbers 2 and 3 are sexist and cruel. And the justifications in 2 and 3 make zero sense because she is actually a member of the same population as the male veterans. It's the population called "veterans."
For what it's worth, I've yet to meet someone who disagrees with me. But here's the interesting thing. If men are perceived as the smaller group in a service population, most people tell me it's okay to deny services. Or they say it's acceptable to give men substandard care.
Take for example male victims of spouse violence. There is difference of opinion on whether male victims are a smaller population, but most people assume they are. And this is a common excuse used to deny all services, or approve only a sliver of care.
This is only one example. Only one analogy. But there are more. Just notice what goes on around you. See if anybody around you thinks it's acceptable for services to exclude women, or treat women with substandard care. Compare this to the number of people who make excuses when men are treated this way.
