My wife yesterday decided to be generous and get me a gift certificate for a massage, in the hopes that maybe trying something like that would help me with the headaches I have to deal with from time to time. Of course, given the issues I sometimes have with being touched by males, as a result of having been molested by a male, she wanted to make sure that this place would allow her, or me, to specify that the therapist be a female. She wrote them an email asking them about that, assuming it would be a somewhat odd request. Much to her surprise, their response was that, unfortunately, this particular issue and the special requests for therapists of one sex or the other because of sexual abuse, or rape, was quite common and they were quite used to that.
Somehow that seems profoundly sad to me…