The latest fallouts in GC world

Safeguarding is a significant part of every working day for me. The principles surrounding safeguarding are cut and dried, good local policies can be (should be) clear and unambiguous. Despite this, and even with this, the reality on the ground is that keeping children and vulnerable adults safe is complex, messy, and full of grey areas.

For example, at a societal level, there is a lot to be said about the language used re ‘gender related distress’ over 'transgender children’. However, when you are dealing with a young person who has stopped eating or feels petrified to leave the house and is making sense of their distress and overwhelm as being entirely attributable to them not being able to tolerate others perceiving them as the sex they are, the terminology argument changes. It’s best to use whichever helps them feel understood, only once they feel understood will they be open to exploring wider or different explanations for their distress.

I bring the above experience to the table when making sense of why Wes Streeting might be referring to ‘trans kids’ rather than gender distressed kids. I imagine he is trying to balance competing needs to challenge a harmful ideology with the need to connect with vulnerable people’s view of the world so they do not feel alienated from the processes in place to protect and support them.

I suggest that anyone who is framing this as a cut and dried issue either isn’t on the front-line, or isn’t working effectively on the front line.

To understand safeguarding, you have to understand that unless the tutor tells everyone in the room during safeguarding training, there there WILL BE people in that room taking the safeguarding training, who are only taking the safeguarding training to get close to kids, then they don't understand safeguarding either.

Everything else has to fall under that lens.

Everything should be 'if I had to stand up in a court and defend my actions, did I do enough to observe, protect, flag up and refer?'

Everything should be around 'does someone have eyes on the kids/vulnerable people and collegaues for their, and their own colleagues sake'.

Is there a defined referral system? Does everyone know what behaviour is acceptable and what isn't? What are the professional boundaries that everyone needs to stick to? How do we ensure everyone has eyes on at all times? How do we move around the site to ensure we cover the whole area? What happens when something needs flagging and who do you flag to? Who else can assist in making a decision? Is there a review when something is flagged with all the team? Is the policy still fit for purpose? Do any procedures need amending? Do we need to bring another body in? Do we have to report an external agency and who to? Honestly, I could go on for hours about what questions to ask.

Honestly, the whole team needs to be reviewing any out of ordinary behaviour and doing something and documenting what they have done.

In fact, they also need to be aware of perfectly ordinary behaviour in some instances as well.

Remember when they were looking for Holly and Jessica, the news crews were asking everyone to look out for anyone behaving weirdly. I remember shouting at the TV 'No, everyone will be behaving weirdly, look for the person behaving normally'. Cue, the man who did it, on the news, perfectly calm.

Although these days, courts are not about keeping paedophiles away from kids it would seem. Which makes it even more important to keep your own policies at the forefront of everyone's minds.

So for Genspect, they could easily have not promoted books by AGPs, could have not invited an AGP to their conference on a free ticket, could have stipulated 'Business Dress only', could have hired a safeguarding expert onto their board to look at their policies and could have just accepted that for a conference where teenagers actually were, promoting AGP men is actually dangerous as it legitimises AGP men. But they didn't even consider any of that to be an option, didn't learn and have still not hired someone with some expertise in this area.

I used to run a very small training company, and our safeguarding policy and processes were longer than the council we used to get funding from. And that was a decade ago, long before the boys in girls changing rooms was a thing. Or before the advent of tiny cameras in mixed sex facilities.

Genspect's is one page of A4 and Stella is the Safeguarding Lead. Stella who doesn't even understand Safeguarding and tweets what she tweets about those who raise Safeguarding as an issue in this arena. Calling us Ultras.

Lisa Muggeridge on You Tube is a good place to start from her videos about 6 years ago. If you really want to get into the weeds.

Anyway going back to safeguarding, I think it's quite possible that I don't understand it very well. I'm not in that field and the last training I had that touched on it was years ago. Is there any recommended reading - preferably nothing academic - that might help me get up to speed?

I had a bit of a soft spot for JCJ until the Radical Notion episode when, in my opinion, she crossed a line. I've still seen things written about her that make me quite uncomfortable so I can only imagine how she must find them. I'm talking about comments that have little or nothing to do with her writing so I can only assume the point of them was to cause upset.

And the notion that "ultras" aren't doing anything beyond posting on X (which, incidentally, Jane Concise Jones has described as her "workplace" and criticism as "workplace harassment.") I'm part of several activist groups and the women I know are e.g. trying to influence things locally, protesting outside venues, and meeting their MPs. Just because there are no shiny selfies from parliament or conferences with "names" doesn't mean that things aren't getting done.

Upthread, I also saw a skewed narrative that Jane has been the victim of extreme abuse. Yes, some of the memes were unpleasant and upsetting, but it's not exactly like waking up with a horse's head in your bed, is it? I've been sued four times, lost my post, had police involvement for a litigious stalker (everyone knows who), and in the middle of it all my wife dropped down dead and a distressing narrative of domestic abuse was propogated by certain "feminists" who weaponised the death. So I'm thoroughly uninterested about a few memes and more provocative comments because that's all they are: provocative at best.

If Jane is a victim, it is only of her own machinations.

Here she is on Megyn Kelly's podcast, Megyn has over three million subscribers

I'm sure it makes some people feel better to pretend KJK is completely obscure, but it isn't true.

She's on the Australian broadcasting company, Australian sky news, in the Star Observer, the Age. Here she's in the mail, the Guardian,The Telegraph.

Hardly sunk in obscurity.

For those who don’t believe me: try asking one of the figureheads directly about it. And ask someone else to do the same. Compare the lines each of you gets. You’ll see what I mean.

@Datun

And I hardly think being plastered all over the news in Australia is being sunk in obscurity. But perhaps you're not aware of that case?

FYI: She isn't plastered all over the news at all.

The new latest falling out in GC world looks to be between feminists and podcasters, aka podcast bros. This exchange in the screenshot is in reference to the woman who was penetrated by 100 men in a day and the feminist analysis that she is a victim of porn culture and exploitation.

I tend to think this too.

I think that right now a direct attempt to repeal it will create some legal entanglements that will be time consuming and expensive, and create a lot of pushback not only among activists, but a lot of people in the public who now have goodwill to many elements of the GC cause. It's even possible that a legal case or legislation might fail.

On the other hand, by making it toothless,it will not only protect from many of it's issues, it will become far far less appealing for people to get it - it won't give them anything, individually or in principle. The face of the whole GI movement is likely to change significantly over a period of time.

So fewer people will want one, and people will stop caring about it. Given a bit of time, repeal might make sense then, and will create little pushback.

Would they have been elected if they weren't conservative?

You seem to think being willing to have a woman as the most important political leader in a nation only counts if it is a left wing woman. And presumably puts in the kind of policies that left wing people would like.

This is the kind of thinking that alienates large numbers of women from feminism, and people from the left. Women are allowed to have their own political views, and a bunch of self appointed activists don't get to usurp that or say their political successes don't matter.

To some extent, but I think you are very naive if you don't see the way these all have become polarized left right issues, and largely in a way that is almost the opposite of the way they used to be understood.

The left now not only seems to want to suppress policies they once supported, they often don't seem to remember that 5 minutes ago they were arguing for the same kind of thing.

I'm sorry if you feel people have shouted you down, but if you are going around implying those who don't agree that is the best approach don't care about safeguarding children I am not surprised you aren't getting a good reaction.

In every post you seem to be making an assumption that anyone who doesn't think the best idea is now to call for repeal take that view because somehow they think it's a great law, and like what it does. Which is a really strange thing to think.

And now we learn, from the totally reliable source on this thread, that the NHS would probably have carried out the Cass Review anyway so there was no need for politicians to get involved.

The pushing of a biased narrative as fact

The inability to engage with people and rebut counter arguments

The oversensitiveness

The pettiness

The not even condemning violence or ever admitting she has any point in anything she does at all

I do find these KDS posts truly fascinating, @MrsOvertonsWindow

Nice. Making up a condition name for people who disagree with you.

😁

Every week it seems we see more poor souls with KJK derangement syndrome. Fortunately it's a rare condition, given the state the NHS is in but goodness, don't they demand a lot of attention?

Yes, so obscure she lives in people’s heads rent free.

Twice in Australia, and I can think of two or three times here but I have not watched the live streams now for a couple of years.

What happens is that either they try to steal the microphone or equipment or they just spout mantras and miss an opportunity to have a discussion. Or when they do try to have a serious moment, they give misinformation and expect people to not challenge it.

Usually the extreme trans activists are loudly protesting though and why should someone who has just been trying to drown out women’s voices be expected to make proper use of the time.

The irony that KJK is "obscure"

She gives women a platform. She doesn't give a flying fuck what political party they belong to. It's irrelevant.

And I hardly think being plastered all over the news in Australia is being sunk in obscurity. But perhaps you're not aware of that case?