The vast majority of people accused of mistreating the elderly in nursing homes are women, yet this is a subject very few people are willing to openly discuss. Back in the early 1970s there was a television program that exposed abuse inside nursing homes. What stood out to me as a child was that they never seemed to catch a single man committing these acts. It was always women. I remember watching those episodes and noticing that many of the female attendants were shockingly aggressive and cruel toward vulnerable elderly patients. My mother, who strongly identified as a feminist, would send me to bed whenever I started pointing out what I was seeing.
 
Even today whenever footage surfaces of abuse inside nursing homes it is often a female staff member attacking an elderly patient, many times an elderly man who is physically incapable of defending himself. One video that stayed with me showed a nurse brutally beating a 106 year old World War I veteran. The man could barely move and yet she attacked him as though he posed some kind of threat.
 
What makes these situations even more disturbing is the attitude some people seem to carry, the belief that because they are women there will be no consequences for their violence. Many act as though it is completely unthinkable for anyone to physically resist them or fight back regardless of how abusive they become.