Safeguarding girls and protecting women post Jimmy Saville & #metoo

[SpareRibFem]

I don't understand, there was a lot of hand wringing after the revelations about Jimmy Saville became widely accepted. #metoo there was more handwringing about the need to listen to women when they are telling you something that makes you uncomfortable.

Saville was allowed to get away with what he didn't because he created an aura of fear and people would afraid of the backlash if they spoke up. Those that did suffered.

We were promised something like that could never happen again...

And yet now despite many women and girls saying they feel afraid and uncomfortable sharing single sex spaces with someone with a penis weren't told we're bigoted and verbally abused for saying that. Our employers are contacted and told we're bigots, we're doxxed.

And organisations like girl guides are going still further in saying it must be kept a secret when girls are being forced to sleep and change with a male bodied teen with a penis (& teen levels of hormones) and I'm not even allowed to identify what sex that male bodied teen with a penis is on a public forum

Girl Guides are taking that approach despite the knowledge that abusers use secrecy and shame to their advantage.

Just like with Saville anyone who excesses concerns is shouted down and accused of being the person in the wrong by the powerful. There is a culture of fear now. Celebrity voices in particular (thinking people like Munroe Bergdorf, Stephen Fry and long list of others) are given more weight to shout down women's concerns. Male bodied people feelings are paramount despite almost all sexual abusers being male bodied (and most of the tiny tiny number of female bodied sexual abusers working with and being in thrall to a male bodied abuser)

Did we as a society learn nothing from Saville & the multitude of other abuse scandals that women and children/girls should be listened to, that celebrities voices help hide abusers, that telling girls to keep secrets from their parents about the presence of penises in their bedrooms and changing rooms and showing them they will be blamed and abused if they transgress and tell someone creates an environment where abuse can flourish.

[TellsEveryoneRealFacts]

I know - weird isn't it?

[Offred]

I’m pretty confident saville wasn’t protected because of an atmosphere of fear TBH...

Saville was protected because he cultivated friendships with people in power and because what he was doing was known about and understood to be acceptable by those around him but particularly by those powerful friends who protected him. I doubt they were afraid of him, I suspect they were/are like him...

These are standard tactics for abusers, they ally with the likeminded and they groom everyone else.

[SpareRibFem]

Offred fear of speaking out was a factor Dame Janet Smiths report opens with

'Jimmy Saville engendered an aura of fear around him and the BBC culture meant staff felt unable to speak out or dismissed complaints'

[Ineedacupofteadesperately]

It's terrifying. Almost like the secret policies being pushed through are the pushback to light being shone via #metoo.How dare women & children speak out.

The thing that worries me most is the secrecy & the fact this is being done by stealth. Even for probably the least important things like changing rooms - e.g. M&S. Fine, they want unisex changing rooms? Ok, but why are they still labelled as single sex because that is what 99% of their shoppers will assume womens and mens means. Why not have prominent signs explaining that the are now segregating by gender identity, not sex. So, masculine, feminine & if they're truly on board with the ideology surely a non-binary option? Why lie about it all if they believe in it so much?

If a teenage girl sees "womens" on a changing room she will assume it's single sex. She may choose not to go in if she knew it was unisex. Womens' right to say no is being taken away.

Of course women will self exclude from public spaces if the truth is known (GG,YHA, M&S, swmming pools and the rest) but at least we'll have a choice. When I'm on my own without female children I'll go in the mens because with self id policies thats where the ones who respect womens boundaries will be.

[Offred]

I’m sure there was fear but IMO it was fear of the BBC (and the police etc) rather than strictly of Saville and I think it is nice and convenient for all the complicit institutions to play the dead man as horribly evil, supremely powerful and totally to blame.

Obviously he was horribly evil, very intimidating and totally to blame for what he did, but the organisations cannot hide behind fear of him re their complicity IMO - that’s a whitewash....

It’s also important to note that ‘influencing the influencers’ and the tipping point re when narratives act as universal truths based on herd mentality is important here...

[Offred]

Sarah.

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

Sarah - it sucks that happened to you.

[SpareRibFem]

💐 Sarah far from derailing your views are critically important here.

Offred I meant fear in the broader sense, not just fear of JS but fear of how he could destroy the life of anyone who complained or said 'something isn't right here'

[Baroquehavoc]

Sarah

[SpareRibFem]

To make it abundantly clear lots and lots of (mostly) men let Saville do what he wanted, the (mostly) women and girls who expressed concerns were dismissed and kept quiet out of fear. As well as the children I'm thinking people like the nurses who tried to protect child patients from him but no one listened

[LangCleg]

Sarah.

You are right, right, right, a thousand times right.

[Baroquehavoc]

I've just watch Hannah Gadsby's show on Netflix, and one of her comments that struck a chord with me was having to maintain men's reputation. She explained beautifully how maintaining men's reputation is seen as more important than their victims lives.

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

What's more horrifying to me is that all those f*king agencies and people supposedly paid and employed to "safeguard" children are complicit in the wholesale dereliction of their duty by putting children in harms' way by not doing any, i.e. zero, impact statements, in any organisation, of the consequences of relaxing sex-segregated spaces.

There has been no organisational learning since Savile. Predators stalk their targets where children and vulnerable women collect. So what are they doing to safeguard them? Answer: relaxing the historic safeguards. That's a huge DARVO the size of a mammoth.

This is an international scandal of epidemic proportions. It's as though women and children don't exist - or exist only for their use and abuse by men.

[bigKiteFlying]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-44740362

The "misogyny hate crime policy" has been piloted by Nottinghamshire Police.

But university researchers were "shocked" by the volume and nature of the incidents among people surveyed.

Examples include sexual assault, which had been experienced by 24.7% of survey respondents, indecent exposure (25.9%), groping (46.2%), taking unwanted photographs on mobiles (17.3%), upskirting (6.8%), online abuse (21.7%), being followed home (25.2%), whistling (62.9%), sexually explicit language (54.3%), threatening/aggressive/intimidating behaviour (51.8%), and unwanted sexual advances (48.9%).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44751327

tens of thousands of women gathered in Seoul on Saturday calling for a crackdown on spy cam pornography, in one of the country's biggest ever female-only protests.

Perpetrators film or photograph women with hidden cameras in public spaces.

Although distributing pornography is illegal in South Korea, the videos and pictures are shared widely online.

Organisers say women live in constant fear of being photographed or filmed without their knowledge.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37338712

These include:

In 2015, BBC Radio 5 live Freedom of Information requests showed more than 5,500 alleged sex crimes in UK schools had been reported to police in the past three years
In 2014, 59% of girls and young women surveyed for Girlguiding UK said they had faced some form of sexual harassment at school or college in the past year

In 2010, a YouGov poll found 29% of 16- to 18-year-old girls had experienced unwanted sexual touching at school
The YouGov poll also found that 71% of girls had heard the terms "slut" or "slag" used towards them at school.

Additional research last year by Girlguiding UK found anxiety about sexual harassment was having a negative impact on three-quarters of girls and young women, affecting what they wore and how they felt about their bodies.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41836303
Among these were nearly 4,000 alleged physical sexual assaults and more than 600 rapes, figures from Freedom of Information requests showed.

At least a fifth of offences were carried out by children on children, but details of the rest of the assaults are not known.

They clearly know there are still problems for women and children - they're doing reports on it ^^. Yet in discussion programs time and time again safeguarding concerns are dismissed - it's wilful blindness as far as I can see.

[Offred]

Yes, but it is crucial IMO to recognise that it was not just a fear of Saville but a fear of the fact that organisations like the BBC and the police were actively protecting him and intimidating the people he harmed.

That was such a significant lesson to take from the whole Saville thing... That people could not go to the organisations and expect protection and if they tried to anyway they found that the organisations protected Saville and harmed them further.

I do not believe it is likely that this is because the organisations were in fear of Saville, it will be because they were like Saville themselves. Even if the BBC were financially invested in the Saville brand they could have chosen to quietly make him go away rather than consistently pushing him forward as a bigger and bigger brand...

[Offred]

And yy re the lack of organisational learning from Saville... This is why I am so irate re ‘everyone was afraid of him’... Bullshit they were... Total bullshit...

[Offred]

And also yy re Nanette and ‘men’s reputations’

[CaptainKirkssparetupee]

Saville was protected because he cultivated friendships with people in power and because what he was doing was known about and understood to be acceptable by those around him but particularly by those powerful friends who protected him. I doubt they were afraid of him, I suspect they were/are like him...

This!
High up people like him who were in power then covered it up and high up people like him who are in power now are still covering things up.

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

bigKiteFlying

I think that deserves a post on its own - I was going to do one about misogyny and the Notts Police pilot - the stats are horrifying but great to see them quantified.

[Baroquehavoc]

I agree that JS didn't have any power, he was one of many DJ s and TV personalities. He was replaceable.

I don't think many thought what he was doing was a big deal, maybe they thought he was pushing the boundaries a bit, but his victims weren't important to anyone with the ability to stop it.

[Offred]

Yes, and it just so happens that the very same region of the U.K. is involved in a number of other dodgy situations now re sex work, trans agenda and child abuse....

The same police force Saville boasted about protecting him...

But yeah, everyone was afraid of him and couldn’t help it!