(via pbs-r)
“Mean girls all grow up to be nurses!”
“Mean girls all go into social work!”
“The mean girl to teacher pipeline!”
Y’all, these are just pink collar jobs. The reason you think there’s so many “mean girls” in these fields is because they’re all like 97% women. Of course some of them are gonna be assholes. There’s assholes everywhere.
We get it. Your job isn’t like other girls’ jobs. It’s a cool job.
it’s true that there are some incredibly cruel people in all of these professions.
it’s also true that they all suffer from chronic underpayment, overwork, lack of institutional support, and insane bureaucratic demands that would make them fail the people in their care all the time even if every single one was a saint.
That’s absolutely missing the point.
While those are all “helper” professions and they very much are pink collar (and are underpaid, that’s not an incompatible idea), they’re also ones that involve power over vulnerable people’s lives. (And I’ve only encountered it as a comparison to, say, male bullies becoming cops, it’s not like men aren’t being mentioned here.)
Secretaries/administrative assistants aren’t on that list for a reason. Flight attendants aren’t on that list. Housecleaners aren’t on that list. Receptionists. Customer service representatives. Dental hygienists. The people who style hair or do nails. That’s not a list of pink collar jobs. It’s specifically (pink collar) positions where if you want to abuse people you’re relatively likely to get away with it.
It can both be true that “nurses who care for disabled people need better pay” and “nurses who care for disabled people have a lot of opportunities to abuse their power and that’s something worth talking about.”
Women aren’t immune from treating people badly because they’re women, or because women are underpaid. They’re sure not immune from specifically seeking out jobs that will allow them to be cruel without any consequences to them, if they get personal satisfaction out of being cruel.
You are trying to shut down a conversation about abuse.
Shitty people are attracted to positions of power. That includes working class women!
There have been a lot of studies about hazing and abuse in nursing communities and even murder!
My mother is a nurse, her co-workers sit around laughing about the people who fall out of their wheel chairs, about the nurses who do cry when someone dies, my mother has ignored patients crying out in pain in order to drink her coffee.
My mother has intentionally let elderly patients at her nursing home die. She has abused them and she has laughed about it. She has left people suffering and has caused that suffering.
Nurses are underpaid and they are disrespected as medical professionals who aren’t a doctor. That’s true and we should talk about that, but we can not ignore the fact that violent women seek out these jobs with God Complexes and the intent to do harm.
Sure, that harm might be because they are bitter, over-worked, and disrespected. None the less, it is no different than when a male doctor causes purposeful harm to his patient.
Nurses contribute to eugenics, to patient abuse, elder abuse, and yeah even child abuse (my mother was proficient in all of them!)
Here are some important articles to read:
Nurses Eat Their Young An article about hazing and bullying among nurses. The title comes from a common saying in medical circles, the first time I heard it, it was in reference to my mother’s best friend who had poured coffee over the hands of a new nurse who had reported another nurse to a superior for abusing a patient.
Bullying in Nursing – Why The Hazing is Getting Worse A brief article on forms of hazing.
Nurse hazing: a costly reality
Why do nurses abuse patients? Reflections from South African obstetric services
Patients’ lives being left at mercy of abusive nurses
Every single one of these articles, with exception of the last – which is guardian article – is a professionally published medical article.
(via treethymes)
“Women are never allowed to publicly (or privately) discuss their regret at having children or becoming pregnant. They are supposed to accept every change to their body as a gift, whether it is damaged skin, damaged organs, damaged joints or damaged pelvic floors. The process of pregnancy and birth is one of the most dangerous and damaging a woman can go through, and yet, if she is anything but elated, she is likely to panic that there is something wrong with her. The same can be said for those days and weeks after giving birth, which are socially portrayed as some sort of perfect paradise – but are often filled with sleep deprivation, anxiety, aches and pains, heavy postpartum bleeding, the healing of stitches and internal and external injuries, bruising from injections, catheters and IV lines. Ultimately, women are expected to be completely selfless at the time of pregnancy and birth, they are not supposed to care what happens to their bodies and their lives, and only care for the baby they are carrying and giving birth to. No matter what goes wrong, or how many traumas the pregnancy or birth causes, they are supposed to feel that it was all worth it. And what if it wasn’t worth it? Would a woman dare even admit that?
The trauma surrounding pregnancy, birth and postpartum periods is obscured by the flowery, cute, fluffy, excited narratives of becoming a mother and ‘having a baby’. The ‘true calling’ of women. No matter what women have been put through, there seems to be no consideration for how likely it is that they have been abused or traumatised – and how triggering all of these experiences can be. Even for women without trauma histories, the experience can be a set of traumas in itself. The way this is all glossed over for pregnant women and girls sincerely irritates me. They are only ever told that pregnancy and birth will be an amazing, life-changing and beautiful experience in which all the fear, injury and illness will be worth it. When women tell them the horrors and experiences of birth and motherhood, they are scolded for ‘fearmongering’. What is clear, however, is that many women will never want to experience pregnancy or motherhood at all, and many more experience this time as terrifying, traumatic and, unfortunately for some, as a period of their lives in which they find themselves medicated and pathologised for being scared, unhappy, anxious or irritated.”
- Sexy But Psycho by Jessica Taylor
(via pbs-r)
canthaveshitingotham-crucified:
canthaveshitingotham-crucified:
i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that’s a poem already what’s the point
you get it. you get the themes. i dont have time to do it justice. just look at it its on the ceiling
(via meiosys)
