Members of a service club I once belonged to were asked to provide speakers for our meetings. One of the speakers I asked was the head of a safe shelter in town, a bright and passionate woman. She did an excellent job. Afterwards, she told me it was the hardest talk she had ever given.

The service club was all male. As the presentation progressed, the room became absolutely quiet. There was little applause when the talk ended. No one asked questions, as was usually the case. No one said anything about the presentation at the table I sat at. It was like something was wrong; like I should not have asked the head of a safe shelter to speak.

The next day, I was still bothered by what I perceived to be the shoddy treatment of the speaker. By happenstance, the president of the service club was at a meeting I also was attending. After the meeting, he told me it was sort of an unwritten rule not to have speakers that might make members uncomfortable. He then told me not to worry, the members would get over it and now I knew better.

http://www.saynotoviolence.org/sites..._Factsheet.pdf