this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025

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Cops don’t protect women. Food, housing, and money do. (briarpatchmagazine.com)

submitted 11 months ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[–] Punchshark@lemmy.ca 27 points 11 months ago

Pigs are completely useless at this point. Security guards for the rich

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It would be nice if someone could fly a plane with that as a banner, or maybe wrap a car with it? Or maybe a billboard?

[–] brax@sh.itjust.works 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'd wrap my car with it, but I don't think I could handle the amount of getting pulled over I'd have to put up with

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 11 months ago

that is a good point that I should have thought of sooner, lol

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

But those things don't protect the rich, cops and first past the post voting systems protect them tho.

Murder and crime is just the price we all have to pay so some investors can jerk off over a line going up and down

[–] Pilferjinx@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I'm pretty sure cops know who not to fuck with in their area. All of them rich and connected.

[+] doingthestuff@lemy.lol -10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Does anyone protect men? Haha, I know they don't. Bootstraps and things ..

[–] HonoredMule@lemmy.ca -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Maybe men should start supporting each other. You know, as long as admitting to having feelings isn't too gay or whatever.

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

That would be convincing if they didn't tear down every men's support systems. A few years back, they tore down the nation's only men's rape clinic, despite the fact that there was strong evidence that a quarter of all rape victims were actually men. Today, there are zero resources for male rape victims because just mentioning it often invites violence.

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

.... Are you talking like a men's specific clinic?Here in BC there's all gender options which include men through the Fraser Health Forensic Nursing program which is available through emergency rooms. Or the SVPRO Program at UBC (https://svpro.ubc.ca/) or the AMS Sexual Assault Support Center.

A lot of the services on the West Coast are available to all genders and a lot of effort is being made to make services unilaterally available but you won't find a lot of services strictly for men. There's a push to make care more diverse which accounts for different cultural groups including men.

It's definitely true that some options are confusing. The BC Women's Hospital doesn't have boundaries for whom they treat for sexual assault and rape related care. You could go there, but they don't do the greatest job of creating an environment automatically comfortable for men. There's also a lot of outside care groups that specialize on specific populations with special needs such as trans, indigenous and non-neurotypical people and people with disabilities that don't specifically list men (though provide services for men who are part of the group) because they are focused on folks who have very particular hurdles to accessing care so they aren't put in a position to educate their caregivers on their basic needs while in distress. Those groups are usually funded and created by advocates specifically from those communities.

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Turns out that it was a shelter for domestic violence, not sexual assault.

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That is a space that is more generally lacking. A lot of spaces prioritize women in part because there's a real issue with abusive men hunting down and killing their partners when they try to leave so women require a spy-like bugout infrastructure to safely leave. Historically this trend motivated womens groups and queer centric undergrounds to go above and beyond and was reinforced later by government grant because establishing support while victims are still alive is cheaper than the apparatus of investigation for their murder. It's a balance sheet game.

This hunting behaviour is something highly statistically unlikely for women to do which tends to mean support for straight men could look a lot different and be effective but also the monetary government incentive to provide it is not as lucrative for governments who are always triaging spending in sectors that don't somehow save them money.

It's absolutely correct that these resources should exist but it is going to take a much greater grassroots effort to maintain and structurally speaking expecting it to look exactly like the model in place for women is probably in part the enemy of progress because those models are prohibitively expensive.

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm not arguing against the idea that shelters should be gender specific, or that most shelters should cater to women. Statistically, 80% of all DV reports are made by women, though studies suggest that only 50% of DV cases the woman is the victim.

But even ignoring that, it's major problem that there are zero shelters for men in the entire country. 20% of all reported cases have no system in place to protect the victim of DV. That's insane. It's like a city having a boil water advisory, but bottled water not being available because all the shipments were diverted to another larger city.

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am not arguing for Gender specifc shelters what I am saying is that it's not a matter of how many reports of DV, the motivating factor in funding is how often each statistical group end in a homicide. It's a stumbling block which means that the priority often overshadows services for men that do exist when doing a casual search even online.

The main needs of men escaping DV are mental health support and police assisted extraction, temporary housing and childcare assistance. The first two are decently prioritized depending on Province. Here in BC there's decent resources directly through Coastal Health and less great coverage the Fraser Health Authority but childcare assistance is across the board spotty and really 99. 9% of the time the elements of making someone physically untraceable are not nessisary if the offender is a woman which means that if we were to look into hotel voucher programs and relocation services instead of permanent brick and mortar shelters for those cases you could likely provide options that fill the requirements for communities in smaller towns with a quarter of the funding of a shelter. Straight men generally do not have to skip town so they can often rely on their previously made support structures more so the time spent in temporary housing is often stays of less than a week.

What a lot of advocates in the space keep pushing for is a replication of the system because of the idea that it's not fair to give men a "lesser service" but the needs of the cohort are completely different and we should structure care to fit the needs based on an evidence based model instead of pointing to something else that is designed for a group with completly different needs.

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't agree that's the point of DV shelters. The entire point of them is to be a way for victims to be separated from their abusers. It's entirely a short term solution to a long term problem, but it's a step that is needed to be able to have a long term solution, regardless of the gender of the victim. Not being separated from the abuser means that the victim is primed to further abuse, or be convinced that escape is impossible.

All the other services are available to both genders for sure, but that's because most of it isn't DV specific in the first place (putting aside divorce lawyers at least).

The issue I'm saying is that the first step is the most crucial and virtually a prerequisite towards a solution, yet there are zero facilities for men in the entire country? Maybe it's different now, but at least it wasn't in 2013, though I'm not knowledgeable enough on the subject to know. But you would think that at a minimum, there should be at least one such facilities in every major city in the country, right? Even if can only handle two or three people at most, with a part-time assistant to help the victims.

There's a massive difference between being underfunded, and having zero resources, and that's what I think is the biggest problem. It's not about being poorly funded, or poorly serviced, but a complete absence that's the same as saying that this isn't an issue, despite police reports themselves saying that it certainly is.

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

A complete absence of funding isn't the same as saying it isn't an issue. At a government level there's always more problems than money and manpower to solve them. Approaching it from that perspective is not a particularly healthy way to approach these situations. Realistically when you look at the the two cohorts you see very different behaviours. Funding for all shelters is currently massively declining across the board in Canada and no one pilots a new program when existing ones are failing.

Think of it like this. If you do not fear for your life but are escaping from an abusive relationship with child in tow what sounds like a better option : seeking help by going to a friend's or relative's place where there's familiarity and seeking help from an authority for assistance OR going blindly into a shelter system with a lot of unknowns? While it's true that men do need support seeking help from a formal shelter system is not a popular option.

The reason why women don't tend to rely on their existing support systems is because it's the first place abusive partners stalk if they intend a violent attack, not just an abusive encounter but an actual physical assult that puts other family members and friends lives at risk.

Hotel voucher programs and reserved open spots in pre-existing shelter systems do a similar solve to contemporary shelter programs but the reason mens shelters close isn't always funding related. In part it's because men don't often choose that route because a restraining order is usually more than enough to deter a female abuser and it is more comfortable relying on people you know. In the cases of DV homicide women are way more likely to be killed if they leave, men tend to be killed if they stay. It's not a matter of just dry DV stats. It's in the nitty gritty details of how these scenarios play out by gender divide that cause these initiatives to fail... which means it needs dedicated grassroots support which by and large isn't happening not because people won't donate but because while straight men love to complain that there's no mens shelters they are not coordinating dedicating their free time to make it happen. Queer specific initiatives are generally more successful because the organization structures are dedicated and they often do not rely on government but community support. What straight guys need to imbibe is you do not need a government stamp to start stuff.

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

I'm not denying the need for them for women, or that it's greater, or that there are also issues with the existing shelters or anything. It's just that half the entire country's population is denied a form of emergency service just because it's less critical for them.

Look, I did a quick search, and found listings for womens' shelters that maxed out the listings I found in several different cities. More shelters than the service I used could show. But there are zero such services for men? Across the entire country? When 20% of reported cases are for men?

Look, I'm just trying to say that why isn't there at least one per province or something? Why isn't there a single half-baked part-time shelter anywhere in the entire country? It's a complete abandonment of an entire demographic compared simply being underfunded. It's like if there was zero funding going towards prostate cancer because breast cancer research was a higher priority.

It's the difference between trying your best with what little you got against not even trying at all because you have differing priorities. One is a sad story, the other is abandonment, and that's what I think is so terrible about it.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

"Who is "they"?

And who do you think started and operates most of the resource centres for women?

[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

When you say "they", did you mean that "men"? Like, men tore down the nation's only men's rape clinic?

(genuine question, reading it back I can sound like a dick)

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 2 points 11 months ago

Looks like I was a bit off. Looking it up again, it was a men's shelter for domestic violence. The only one in the entire country was shut down due to a lack of funds over a decade ago. I do remember reading that there was pressure from some feminist groups to shut it down and helped to pull funding, but I can't find articles that mention that, so either I'm remembering wrong, or the article was pulled.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/privately-run-shelter-for-male-victims-of-domestic-abuse-forced-to-close-its-doors-due-to-lack-of-funding

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

I think they imagine that the resources for women were spontaneously built by governments, and it's not fair that governments don't do that for men, too!

The idea that the support networks were started by women in their homes, with zero public support for decades until they managed to demand it by building grassroots support might be totally alien to their sea-lioning ass.