Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

If Only Bigots Have Boundaries - How Will Safeguarding Be Possible In This Brave New World?

64 replies

EmbarrassingAdmissions · 07/07/2021 09:08

If Only Bigots Have Boundaries - How Will Safeguarding Be Possible In This Brave New World?

There's so much gaslighting and minimisation. "They're just bodies." "Don't look." "Don't go there." "You're a bigot."

If only bigots have boundaries - and bigots are to be suppressed, deplatformed, sacked, and harassed for their boundaries and educated into dismantling them - how do people who identify as non-bigots hope to retain safeguarding in any meaningful way?

Or do children, women, and vulnerable people not need safeguarding any more?

Did someone solve that while I wasn't looking? Because it feels like a societal level decision in which I was neither consulted nor involved.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Original poster
EmbarrassingAdmissions · 08/07/2021 17:16

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

If Only Bigots Have Boundaries - How Will Safeguarding Be Possible In This Brave New World?

It won’t be possible, OP, and I think that’s the whole point. A lot of men want sexual access to children, and women tend to stand in their way. Breaking women’s boundaries removes an obstacle.

I wonder if "bigot" is yet another term women need to accept as a synonym for not being a doormat or subservient to the preferences of others.

I am not a support human who exists to validate others.

I have my boundaries and preferences.

It does raise the conundrum of why we have institutions that give authority to social conventions to protect vulnerable people if those institutions are failing to conduct due diligence on proposed radical changes to those protections and simultaneously denying that there should be a careful deliberative process to assess them and their impact.

I haven't read John Rausch's book because it is geared more to a US perspective but I am struck by his argument, and that of people like Jonathan Haidt of the Heterodox Academy, that there is a need for a plurality of voices and ideas if there is to be a robust 'constitution of knowledge'.

www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-constitution-of-knowledge

OP posts:
thinkingaboutLangCleg · 08/07/2021 16:42

If Only Bigots Have Boundaries - How Will Safeguarding Be Possible In This Brave New World?

It won’t be possible, OP, and I think that’s the whole point. A lot of men want sexual access to children, and women tend to stand in their way. Breaking women’s boundaries removes an obstacle.

AlfonsoTheMango · 08/07/2021 15:00

@Ifyourefeelingsinister

I agree op. Wanting single sex spaces isn't bigoted, and safeguarding is about mitigating risks to keep more vulnerable people safe. If this offends certain sections of the population, they need to consider why their sense of offence overrides the safety of women and children.
It's not their sense of offence but their sense of identity that overrides the safety of women and children.
Beamur · 08/07/2021 14:44

I attended some safeguarding training a while ago for some voluntary work I do. The training was good but the trainer was very good indeed. During the training it emerged that a very specific problem had genuinely arisen, all protocols followed but it had not been possible to ameliorate the risk as this specific scenario was so unusual.
The trainer listened, went back to the organisation and a change was made to the rules to accommodate this. That would never have happened via an online form.
I think it's become something for a lot of places that you tick off and it's done. It's much more useful if there is an opportunity to learn in both directions.

endofthelinefinally · 08/07/2021 14:39

It is all so dumbed down and stereotyped now. I did my firstchild safeguarding training aged 18, over 40 years ago. We had to read the Maria Colwell report before the lecture. It is indelibly imprinted on my mind.
Online stuff I did before retirement just doesn't compare.

BatmansBat · 08/07/2021 13:51

I think online learning could be a part of it. The lack of discussion around it and how to spot warning signs - and a lack of independent thinking.

I remember fondly two online learning sessions.

a) One was about money laundering. The video featured a man with a dodgy accent and a suitcase full of money.

b) the other was about sexual harassment. If someone works for you and you tell them that they have to sleep with you or loose their jobs, that is sexual harassment.

I don’t know what muppets make these training sessions. If safeguarding training is on par, then I am not surprised at anything.

Pommie69 · 08/07/2021 13:44

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

TonkaTrucker · 08/07/2021 10:08

Obviously a good understanding of safeguarding is important for health and social care workers etc. But think how many there are, the NHS is one of the biggest employers. Yes every staff member should be aware and educated and it's individuals speaking out etc that can make a difference, but isn't the point it should be the structures/environments that prevent harm so that it is not on fallible individuals to police situations themselves. Because people have biases/are unreliable/get tired/tell themselves comforting stories/use denial etc etc. That's why designs of services/buildings/working patterns/access are all considered in safeguarding.

I mean to answer the OPs original question, in the brave new world these are stripped away and its down to self-defence/group protection/vigilantes surely? Where women and children and naturally disadvantaged. A dystopian nightmare of abuse, trauma and death.

endofthelinefinally · 08/07/2021 08:32

I was chatting with a group of health care workers at a social event recently. The conversation was about how quickly and easily to click through online training without really having to read or think about it.

Original poster
EmbarrassingAdmissions · 08/07/2021 08:27

eg compulsory safeguarding training in the NHS that all nhs workers must complete, it is another online learning programme that must be ticked off.

Yes - it's almost as if it's treated as a test to be passed rather than something you need to absorb into everyday practice. Not helped by the extraordinary range of people who have to take all of those modules, no matter what their activities.

OP posts:
FannyCann · 08/07/2021 08:21

I wonder if one of the reasons for poor understanding of safeguarding is the rise of online learning? I'm not sure if the type of lecture referred to by @Shedbuilder even happens anymore? Certainly at a more general level, eg compulsory safeguarding training in the NHS that all nhs workers must complete, it is another online learning programme that must be ticked off. Usually an hour, maybe two for some in more relevant posts. I find them anodyne and unchallenging and certainly lacking any lasting impact that can be achieved by an inspiring lecturer.

quixote9 · 08/07/2021 04:13

That's just a lie. No one is excluded from the service (the swimming pool). Males are excluded from the female spaces and vice versa. Yet the reaction is like they can't get where they want/use what they want and I think it's really telling. It's not about participating in public life. It's about invading private spaces.

Exactly. It's all about them and their validation. Any assaulted or traumatized women be damned. They don't count.

I remember reading that after a transwoman started using a changing facility (I think in Seattle? didn't bookmark :( ) the women stopped using it. The twitter post was about how to force those women to use it regardless because an empty changing room with a female sign on the door wasn't doing it for the transwoman.

littlbrowndog · 07/07/2021 18:01

People who dismiss safeguarding are one of the reasons we need safeguarding

From John on Twitter

IvyTwines2 · 07/07/2021 17:54

[quote Beamur]I've posted this link on another thread.
This is what happens when safeguarding fails. 60,000 children got abused. The article is more about the financial settlement (which will bankrupt the organisation)
www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57692428[/quote]
"Back in 2012, the Los Angeles Times newspaper uncovered about 5,000 files detailing allegations against scout masters and troop leaders who had been deemed "ineligible volunteers".

Compare and contrast with yesterday's LA Times editorial supporting male access to spaces where women and children are naked, quoted in the Wi Spa thread.

Beamur · 07/07/2021 17:50

Predators will find ways to get to vulnerable people. Removing or weakening safeguards just makes it easier.

Beamur · 07/07/2021 17:48

I've posted this link on another thread.
This is what happens when safeguarding fails. 60,000 children got abused. The article is more about the financial settlement (which will bankrupt the organisation)
www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57692428

Tinysalmonswimminginastream · 07/07/2021 17:44

Assuming that a different way of looking at the world = 'don't care about safeguarding' or assuming that all people must be perverts because some who share a characteristic with them are perverts, is just plain wrong.

Why do we even have single sex spaces in certain situations then? Why is my DH, who is definitely not a danger to women and is a lovely man, not allowed in female changing rooms?

Original poster
EmbarrassingAdmissions · 07/07/2021 17:44

Have I missed an outline of how safeguarding might be retained or reimagined?

Would some institutions and practices be retained (UK setting)? If so, which ones?

If some are to be deprecated - does anything replace them, and if so, what?

Is there a proposed new framework for safeguarding? Will it be based on a deliberative process with relevant stakeholders?

OP posts:
AfternoonToffee · 07/07/2021 17:42

And a suggestion that only bigots have boundaries is beyond the fanciful

You might want to take that up with Mishy who made the original suggestion.

Tinysalmonswimminginastream · 07/07/2021 17:41

Assuming that a different way of looking at the world = 'don't care about safeguarding' or assuming that all people must be perverts because some who share a characteristic with them are perverts, is just plain wrong.

That's what safeguarding is! You do assume all people could be perverts.

That's why, even though I am part of the sex class that only commits 2% of all sex offences, I still had to have a DBS check to get my job and at my place of work there are rules in place about being alone with children in certain situations.

trollopolis · 07/07/2021 17:36

I assume you are in favour of abandoning the DBS system because it's 'just plain wrong'

No, you are dead wrong about that.

Assumptions are often snares, and a major inhibitor of useful, effective action. And a suggestion that only bigots have boundaries is beyond the fanciful

IvyTwines2 · 07/07/2021 17:15

The two most popular terms of misogynistic abuse that have arisen in the last 5 years, Karen and T*RF, both describe women who assert their normal, everyday rights and defend their normal, everyday boundaries.

MrGHardy · 07/07/2021 16:48

They always turn everything around. Them denying someone boundaries pretty much is the definition of bigotry, so what do they do, turn it around and say no, the bigotry is having boundaries.

Reminds me a lot of Trump, he also accused others of everything applying to him.

Original poster
EmbarrassingAdmissions · 07/07/2021 16:09

I feel a little akin to Joyce Grenfell in her character, the Vice-Chancellor's wife, in the section where she speaks to the anarchist and worries about the drains because "Plumbing is central to the better life."

OP posts:
Shedbuilder · 07/07/2021 15:52

@PaySeeWhiTa

I'm a doctor. I share a 'characteristic' (well a qualification) with thousands of well-meaning medics. I also share it with Harold Shipman. I have various checks and balances put on me because of the latter. One of those is access to means. The method he chose to murder vulnerable people with would be a lot harder for me. Even if I wanted to. That's safeguarding. We can't see inside people's heads and note who has the murderous intent, but we can see situations that would allow that intent to turn to action and do our level best to change it to make it least likely. Restrict the means. Single sex spaces is an example of this.

I also dislike how the conversation seems to end up talking about female spaces as the target service. For example, a swimming pool with male and female changing facilities. The 'debate' talks about how men who identify as women or whatnot are 'excluded' by keeping the facilities single sex. That's just a lie. No one is excluded from the service (the swimming pool). Males are excluded from the female spaces and vice versa. Yet the reaction is like they can't get where they want/use what they want and I think it's really telling. It's not about participating in public life. It's about invading private spaces.

Great post and I really like your take on the service aspect of swimming pools etc.

I come back time and time again to the question 'What kind of man wants to enter a woman's changing room and strip off in front of women and girls?' Because none of the reasonable, respectful men I know would dream of it — partly out of fear of accidentally exposing himself. Any man who wants to use women's single-sex facilities is automatically the kind of man who shouldn't be in there.