So, I heard about this from my mom today and both the madness behind it and the moral dilemma it causes have been eating at me for a few hours now. To start with, no, the title isn't a joke.

My mom works in housekeeping in a hospital in our area and recently a position opened up. Apparently, three men applied for the position and were denied with claims from the hospital that a "better candidate" was hired. As the title suggests, no women applied for the position and they've either decided to close it or just keep it open and keep trying to find a woman. Now, I don't need to explain that refusing to hire someone based off their sex is illegal, but it should be noted that on top of this, the housekeeping staff are unhappy with the situation as they're being forced to pick up the slack caused by this, with some taking multiple extra days a week.

Now, the moral dilemma I've been struggling with is simple: the hospital has admitted, internally, that they didn't hire any of the applicants because they were all men, which is discrimination and is something that should, rightfully, be exposed. However, the fact is, I simply can't morally do that for a few reasons:

  1. It's a NPO that's already been struggling for a few years now and may go under if punished for this.
  2. It's a hospital in a rural area. The nearest hospitals to it are all about an hour away or more.
  3. The local economy is highly unstable due to the collapse of the few industries in the area within the last decade and no others moving in. It's so bad, in fact, that this hospital is one of the largest employers in our area and the closest large town/city is an hour away.

Because of this, I'm essentially in a situation where I'm seeing an injustice that, if I chose to call it out, could further destabilize two or three struggling small towns as well as possibly cost a few dozen uninvolved people their jobs. Deep down, I hate that society's reached a point where we could be made to compromise our morals and sense of justice to keep society running or destroy communities in order to reverse course. I hate that feminism is essentially pushing for this... But at the same time I feel content knowing that my morals prevent me from doing this. If I did report this and pushed for something to happen, I'd be destroying the lives of people who did nothing wrong. If I made a big deal about this, I'd just become what I hate. If I saw the collateral damage as irrelevant, I'd just end up being like all the feminists defending all the horrible things they do and justifying destroying men's rights. But at the same time, it gives me an awareness of just what we're fighting against.