Women and Homelessness

[Madspirit]

http://www.homeless.org.uk/inyourarea/london/interest/women/index_html/

Women and homelessnessby import — last modified 2007-06-19 10:51 AM
A woman's experience of homelessness may differ greatly from a man's. When women are made homeless they may use strategies of 'invisibility' to protect themselves, meaning they do not appear in rough sleeping counts or access services. However, many of these women are also be extremely vulnerable. Statistics indicate that 63% of homeless women have experienced domestic violence and 40% have been sexually abused. These are vulnerable women who are often in need of specialist services.


http://library.thinkquest.org/10374/html/facts.html

Families with children are now the fastest growing group of the homeless population, they account for about 40% of the people who become homeless each year. 38% of the people already homeless are families with children.

50% of America's homeless women and children are running from domestic abuse.

http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/GeneralResources/fact11.htm

A 1989 study of homeless women in Baltimore found that nearly one-third of the women had been raped.
Breakey, W.R., P.J. Fischer, M. Kramer, G. Nestadt, A.J. Romanoski, A. Ross, R.M. Royall, and O.C. Stine. Health and mental health problems of homeless men and women in Baltimore. Journal of the American Medical Association 262: 1352-7 (1989).

A 1988 report on homeless women in San Francisco noted the women were being raped and sexually assaulted at an alarming rate, with some women being raped as many as 17 times. To protect themselves from attack, homeless women were known to wear 10 pairs of panty hose at once and bundle up in layers of clothing.
Cooper, C.J. Brutal lives of homeless S.F. women, San Francisco Examiner (December 18, 1988).

[Madspirit]

1. kick...n/t

[wicket]

45. K & R

Thanks for posting this Lee.

:hug:

[Megahurtz]

2. "Strategies of Invisibility"

It's too risky to be a Homeless Woman with Children and access services for very long because if you do you risk having your Children taken away. Especially when you're running from Domestic Abuse.

[Madspirit]

3. kick...n/t

[Forkboy]

4. You're wearing out my K&R keys.

:)

[emilyg]

5. R

[FloridaJudy]

6. K&R n/t

[Elspeth]

7. There but for the grace of God.....

kick and recommend.

[Madspirit]

8. "There but for the grace of God..."

Yup...one would think more people would get THAT but they don't.
Lee

[undergroundpanther]

9. Men need to realize men cause this problem

Men who ARE NOT rapists and who have sympathies with feminists need to get some courage, to step up and get over the "fear of being seen as a feminist supporter" and do what it takes to help defend women from the rapist men.

Make rape become personally risky,and a very BAD IDEA for a potential rapist to try it.Make rape the equivalent risk to the rapist as drinking cyanide. Tell me how many rapists will try to get away with rape if rape was as dangerous risk to their continued existence as drinking cyanide is? Rape rates would drop like a stone.

Rape won't stop until those who are not raped are as outraged about the evils of rape as the raped women are.
Men need to step up and help to stop rapist men. In any way that STOPS the rapists. I don't care if a rapist gets his brains splattered on the sidewalk.. Stop the Rapists..

No more tolerance for the intolerable.
Rape is INTOLERABLE.

[ComerPerro]

13. I find your assertion extremely offensive and very counter-productive

What about other women who aren't doing anything to stop rapists? Aren't they too just as guilty?

[undergroundpanther]

15. Alot of women are fighting

Some women aren't helping tho.Sad but true.

But we need more of the good men to step up too.It's not just as woman's problem.boys and men get raped too.
We all need to stop rape by any means that stops rape.
And what gender are most rapists?
And who can tell a male with a domination problem they are being an asshole easier,a woman would just be dehumanized, another male might be heard..Sad but true.

I have seen the differences with confronting bully men.The differences in responses when you are female confronting a bullying male and when confronting a bullying male being seen as another male, for myself as a trans-man I have seen both sides.

[donsu]

28. you have the 'not me' syndrome

nt

[ComerPerro]

31. you're just as guilty as anyone else.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. What do you suggest, specifically?

How does a peaceful man control the criminal instincts of another? What aren't we doing?

Absent any suggestions, it is tempting to conclude that the intent is to merely spread the blame for criminals among men generally.

[Tsiyu]

23. Society at large shares the blame

But as to your question: What can men do?


1. Refuse to play along with men who demean women, whether by word or deed. Don't laugh at the rape joke, or remain silent when another man talks abusively about women.

2. Do not economically support men if you know they are abusive to women.

3. If you know a neighbor is being abused, do something, even if only providing a safe place to go.

4. Volunteer to help abuse/rape victims or donate to orgs that help these women; donate to your local women's shelter.

5. Support and encourage tough laws for crimes such as rape and domestic violence.

6. Ask your preacher to do a sermon on domestic violence/rape/homelessness, and tell him/her that this is a measure of how much a society values the least of these.

7. Educate yourself on the reality of economic/safety/health status of women in your nation. Which you already do if you chose to read the thread :)

8. Be nice to other people; no matter their status in life. There are people out there going through hell, just down the road from you and me.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

33. If a man you know is a rapist or a domestic abuser, socially ostracize him

Don't say, "Oh, he's such a great guy" and continue to go fishing with him or inviting him to your backyard barbecue. Make it clear that you are cutting off all contact with him, tell him why, and get your friends to do the same.


I've seen cases where a man was known to be abusive to his wife, and yet the other men in his social circle spoke of him as a "great guy" and continued to socialize with him.

What message does that send, both to the perpetrator and to the sons of the men who tolerate his presence?

You KNOW that if he had been proven to molest BOYS, he would be lucky to escape the neighborhood with his life, but if he's "just" beating his wife up, no big deal.

[lumberjack_jeff]

35. In my experience, known rapists and domestic abusers don't get invited to social events.

In my world suspected abusers and rapists get reported to the cops. Social ostracism is the least of their worries, thus the secrecy.

I find that the view of men as collaborators/enablers overstates the degree to which people other than the couple directly involved can judge what is going on. Specifically, it places the blame for our collective ignorance on men exclusively. Also, it is based on a false stereotype that we men get together every friday night to brag about how we beat up on our significant others, and that if only one of us were to say, "that's not nice" domestic violence/abuse would end.

Rape isn't social, it's antisocial. Men who could be suspected to be abusers are assholes - they don't have friends except other antisocial assholes.

Men who tolerate the presence of abusive men send a poor message. Women who tolerate relationships with abusive men do as well. Women occasionally rationalize/decide staying with abusive men for a variety of reasons. Is the male neighbor obliged to substitute his judgement for that of the suspected victim?

One last question; Is not the belief that a woman doesn't know what is best for her, a manifestation of patriarchy?

[mondo joe]

36. I don't know what seedy TV or movie community you have in mind, but I don't

think I have ever socialized with anyone I've known to be a rapist or abuser.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

41. Hmm, then why was a teacher who molested teenage girls

tolerated in my high school for over 20 years, until the 1980s, when some parents finally decided to sue?

During the previous years, we were simply told, "Oh, stay away from him, then."

[mondo joe]

42. I don't know - you might want to ask your parents and the other men and women

who apparently tolerated it.

I can only tell you that in the world I live in, a suspected molestor or rapist would be turned in to the police if possible, and in no way tolerated socially.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

43. This was forty years ago

My parents didn't know about it, but other people's parents did and gave exactly that advice.

[mondo joe]

44. Then they're the people to ask. Did they invite him to barbecues and

family hang outs? Or was he ostracized from the community?

If not, was that the decision of the men? Or the community?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

46. He was not ostracized at all

and I no longer live in the community where I went to high school and in fact, made an effort to put that miserable school and everyone in it behind me when I graduated.

[mondo joe]

48. I can only offer conjecture then.

And I'd suggest it was a different time, with different standards.

But I think the key factor in the context of this thread is that if he wasn't ostracized at all, it wasn't the doing of just the men - it was the doing of the men and women.

I learned that at one time, before her divorce, my aunt's husband sexually assaulted her then teenage-sister. (He didn't rape her, but he exposed himself and pressured her for sex, so she ran away.) Her sister told their mother, who told her to just stay away from him, and not to tell anyone.

In that particular case, it was a woman who tolerated it, not a man. And I'd guess if the men in the family knew what had happened, it would have been pretty damn ugly.

With this example I'm NOT saying women rather than men tolerate rape - but I am saying people of both genders are responsible.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

49. At that time, the responses would have been:

1) Any girl who was molested by him must have done something to lead him on
2) A mother who accused him of molesting her daughter was
a) slandering a fine upstanding member of the community
b) protecting her wicked little slut of a daughter

[mondo joe]

50. Whose responses?

Or are you saying everyone in a time period has the same responses?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

51. In those days, it was ALWAYS the girl's fault

Girls who got pregnant were expelled from school. I never once heard of a boy being expelled for getting a girl pregnant.

The girl was supposed to be the one who had "self control." If she didn't tell the boy when to stop, she was a slut.

[mondo joe]

52. And this was the determination made by.....?

Was it just men?

Was it women?

Was it men and women?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

53. Both

The virgin/whore dichotomy was alive and well.

Here's an indication of how strong the taboo was.

A few years ago, Oregon was debating opening its adoption records to adoptees over 18.

The elderly women (my mother's generation) who lived in my apartment building were all opposed to it. Suppose, they said, that someone came looking for a birth mother who had never told her current husband about the out-of-wedlock birth. Why, the husband might beat his wife up or even divorce her! And her friends would feel betrayed because she wasn't the person she said she was.

I said that anyone who would react in such a way to a youthful mistake wasn't fit to be either a friend or a husband.

And one of the women actually said that a husband had a right to expect that his wife was a virgin at marriage and that he would feel that he had been "sold a bill of goods under false pretenses."

Yeah, I know, it seems like creatures from another planet.

[TheWraith]

24. Yup, that's pretty much exactly the point. NT

[donsu]

29. you aren't opening your mouths!

nt

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

34. What would you like us to say?

[mondo joe]

22. You might as well say "Humans should realize humans are causing this problem".

There isn't a big men's club where everyone with a penis gets in and decides by vote or consensus that some women can be raped. Being a man doesn't give one any more control over other men.

The only degree to which men form such a block is - along with women - as the electorate, which has deemed rape a crime.

[donsu]

30. the males around you - teach you from birth

nt

[mondo joe]

As do the women. Where there are problems of violation of rights, as is certainly

the case of rape, is a societal problem.

Society will have to work on it.

There is nothing magical that good men can do to control bad men, any more than good women can.

[lumberjack_jeff]

39. On the contrary - the absence of males around boys leads to criminal behavior.

http://www.fathermag.com/news/2776-UCSB.shtml

Children reared in fatherless homes are more than twice as likely to become male adolescent delinquents or teen mothers, according to a significant new study by two economists at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Llad Phillips and William S. Comanor based their research on data from random surveys of 15,000 youths conducted annually by the Center for Human Resources at Ohio State University. Their findings suggest that current proposals to provide tax credits and exemptions for single mothers and to collect more child support from absent fathers will have little effect on the problem of delinquency among teenage boys.

"Both measures tacitly accept the father's absence from the home and seek to ameliorate its consequences by increasing the income available to mother and child. However, it requires an increase in family income of approximately $50,000 to counter the father's absence," the economists wrote in a report outlining the results of their study, which were presented at the Western Economics Association meeting in San Francisco on July 1.

Phillips and Comanor designed their study to account for the influence of income, and found that in the case of boys, a minimum of $54,000 in additional family income is necessary to counter the harmful effects of absent fathers. For girls, the figure is much lower-$17,000 a year. The researchers also found that while absent mothers have a negligible impact on male adolescent delinquency, motherless homes are 56 percent more likely to result in teen pregnancy among girls.

"The absence of either parent has a significant effect on the kids having one kind of pathology or another, but the absence of a father tends to have a more significant effect, and it seems to more seriously affect the sons," said Phillips, whose research also indicates that step-fathers may in fact contribute to the problem.

[AnotherGreenWorld]

47. Well said.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

26. Hmm.

"I don't care if a rapist gets his brains splattered on the sidewalk.."

A little murder will clear this rape problem right up.

[donsu]

27. true

nt

[WTF cubed]

10. From Experience... Being homeless sucks no matter who you are. n/t

[AnotherGreenWorld]

18. Agreed. No one really cares though; it just allows them to feel self-righteous--

sort of like pro-lifers with the oxymoron of "unborn babies."

[EFerrari]

11. My reporter friend spent months on the street here

to really dig down and get it. He came up with the fact that the fastest growing demographic among the homeless here were single moms and their kids.

[Kurovski]

12. K&R. (nt)

[ComerPerro]

14. Never thought about it, but homeless women would be ideal targets for rapists

no home, no family, no one to notice, no one to help them...

Add to that lack of access to contraception...

[undergroundpanther]

16. Homeless

women are in grave danger..and it is scary as hell.With the way people stigmatize the homeless it is going to be hard to get 'comfortable'people convinced they created their own success to give up their poverty bashing ego trips to see the human beings being hurt by homelessness and rape.

I hate the just world lie. Because anyone who isn't in denial can see this world is NOT just at all.

[shance]

17. Thank you MS for another important, thought provoking post.

Keep up the good work.

:toast:

[The Straight Story]

19. Kicking for you

hope it gets more replies my friend!

[buddhamama]

21. my first experience with homelessness...

was due to an abusive relationship.

i owned my car, thank goodness- it afforded me a place to sleep- and i had a little bit of money to take with me.

[donsu]

25. know that saying: 'kick them when they are down' well men

don't have any trouble 'raping women when they are down'

cowards

[DU GrovelBot]

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[OzarkDem]

37. Yet NOW advocates for female Iraqi & Iranian univeristy professors

Don't get me wrong, I'm an ardent feminist. But I blame some of the problems women face in the US today re wages, lack of health care, homelessness, etc. on their abandonment by traditional wommen's advocacy groups.

Yes, I really did get an email from Eleanor Smeal the other day about the above topic. Except for birth control and abortion issues, women's advocacy groups ignore issues facing US women.

Lack of focus on real women's issues even affects women in Democratic Party leadership. I recall an event during the last presidential election when Elizabeth Edwards came to town for a women's rally. I appealed for weeks, all the way to DC, to get a speaker to talk about breast cancer during the rally. They refused, but they did feature a guest speaker who railed for 20 minutes against women getting clitorectomies in Africa. Go figure.

Not sure why, but it needs to change. US Feminists need to focus on day to day issues important to women in the US. It would probably boost membership, too.

[Catherine Vincent]

38. That stat on the homeless women and rape is accurate.

A co-worker of mine told me when she was at school playing at the playground, across the street she saw a homeless woman being raped. The woman thought she was in a private spot, so she squat down to use it and this guy came up to her. I asked my friend did anyone try to stop it, she said her teacher called the police and was able to arrest the guy. I don't know if they prosecuted him because they were both homeless.

[femrap]

40. The recent episode w/ Michael Vick

and his horrid treatment of dogs struck me in a pretty disgusting way. Lots of males were sickened by this, but when a women is brutally raped, it's just ho-hum or more likely, 'What did she do to deserve that?' How many athletes have raped and the old boy network stepped up to back their jock??? Or in the military???

I guess dogs are male's best friend.