What About the Menz Indeed

[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]

In what is one of the most deplorable examples of "What About the Menz" I've ever seen, Milwaukee County's chief mental health official, John Chianelli, decided to placate violent male psychiatric patients by housing female patients in the previously sex-segregated locked ward. When the integrated ward resulted in a surge of sexual assaults against the female patients, Chianelli then defended the decision as a "trade-off."

Three Milwaukee County supervisors turned up the heat Monday on the county's top mental health official, calling for the firing of John Chianelli over mishandling of patient assaults.

Their remarks follow a report Sunday in the Journal Sentinel in which Chianelli defended housing female patients with dangerous male patients to quell male-on-male violence, according to written account by Supervisor Lynne De Bruin. Chianelli called it a trade-off that resulted in more sexual assaults of female patients, according to De Bruin and two other supervisors.

…Chianelli described the rationale for the county's mixed-gender wards as a "trade-off" that avoided more fights common to all-male wards but increased the chance of sexual attacks in mixed-sex wards, according to De Bruin's letter.

"Going to gender-based units trades violence for sexual assaults," based on his review of psychiatric literature, Chianelli told the panel, according to the letter.

A "trade-off." Sure. Spoken like a true believer in the idea that no one gives a fuck about female psychiatric patients, anyway—so might as well hand them over to the male patients who will be less inclined to be aggressive toward one another if they've got vulnerable, unprotected women to rape. Heaven knows we wouldn't want those men hurting themselves, or each other, or one of the facility staff. You know, people who matter.

The profundity of my contempt is bottomless.

[H/T to Shaker Julie.]