Diva magazine is trans inclusive

[daimbars]

Statement on trans inclusion in a tweet from Diva, the UK's biggest lesbian magazine.
I'm pleased they've made their position clear, and support it.

Bespin I completely get the statement about if you are trans (I assume you are taking your daughters into the female changing room...I'm not sure how to refer to you without transgressing Mumsnet guidelines). Of course you want to do what everyone else in the world does.

But, as a parent of daughters, as you say, how do you risk assess on their behalf, and help them to grow their own internal risk assessment? (Unless we're starting from a baseline of 'everyone's good, everyone's got good intentions?)

As your daughters get older, how do you decide that they are safe to enter what were, previously, defined as female-sex-only spaces? On their own? What judgement calls do you make that it's OK for them to be on their own in female-only spaces?

What guidance do you give to them as to when they should trust their gut instinct on what feels OK and what doesn't? And when they should override their gut instinct in case they're being transphobic in their judgement call about feeling safe?

sponty and AAK I'm always a bit surprised when people refer to me as patient! It's not a characteristic any of my family would recognise in me.

It's quite true my initial reaction to so much of this is *#/@! But I think I've developed something of an immunity.

Ages ago I watched Riley J Dennis claiming the only difference between men and women are chromosomes. And since you can't actually see them, they're irrelevant. So there is essentially No difference.

It was like a vaccination. It was so ridiculous, insane and outrageous. But, there they were. With a following. Being paid.

And since then, many unhinged science deniers have echoed the same nonsense.

Once you accept that kind of unimaginable craziness into your psyche, it's almost like an antihistamine for further insanity.

It itches. Like mad. But I don't scratch it.

Pombear the problem with gut instinct is it can easily be mistaken for prejudice if there is no logical reasoning behind it. A person's gut instinct may make them feel uncomfortable around a person of a different race, or someone disabled. Everyone's gut instincts can vary.

A better way of safeguarding is to look at behaviours. To judge any person behaving suspiciously and to use that as the basis for concern rather than the fact they present a little differently.

That's a terrible way to manage risk assessment or safeguarding, as there has to be someone harmed before you can act, which is the opposite of safeguarding.

A better way of safeguarding is to look at behaviours. To judge any person behaving suspiciously and to use that as the basis for concern rather than the fact they present a little differently.

I disagree. That puts too much emphasis on the potential victim to judge. It removes the protective layer.

Safeguarding, when it is effective, creates frameworks to stop situations arising in the first place. The basic idea of safeguarding is prevention. Layers of protection normally, and those layers often do require exclusion.

So exclusion of males from female spaces is the safeguarding framework. It works.

When you (generic you) start picking holes in it by demanding exceptions or by demanding people look at individuals you weaken the framework. Safeguarding is by its nature partially predicated on exclusion.

My DH cannot become a guide leader, because he’s Male. He cannot access the ladies because he’s Male. He cannot fulfill certain voluntary positions because he’s Male. He, as an individual is not a threat. But he’s Ok with the blanket exclusion of males because he understands that safeguarding sometimes needs exclusion.

As for trashing trust in your own gut feeling, I'm again going to recommend Gavin de Becker's book the Gift of Fear, which is an excellent manual to developing gut feeling and risk assessment.

De Becker used to be head of the FBI, and set up an agency for the protection of people targeted by stalkers. He's not some well meaning but clueless hippy.

It is so disingenuous to keep harping on that fear of men is the same as being afraid of a disabled person or a person of colour.

Almost like the ideology just doesn't stand alone.

A better way of safeguarding is to look at behaviours. To judge any person behaving suspiciously and to use that as the basis for concern rather than the fact they present a little differently.

Excellent. Let's just dispense with all DBS checks. If someone starts taking an unhealthy interest in the children, we'll deal with it when it happens. Judge every single individual on their behaviour, not any kind of formal risk assessment due to evidential reasoning and statistics.

But only if they've committed an actual crime, of course. If they invite all the year threes to sit on their lap and come and have a cuddle and a tickle, that's absolutely fine. It's not a crime.

Or let men run all the guide camps. Let the girl guides sleep in the same tents as the men. All in together. If something happens, we'll deal with it. Hell, let them share the same sleeping bag, if it's chilly. Why not?

Hopefully someone will notice if there is any strange behaviour. Since actual behaviour is the criteria for making a risk assessment now.

No, let's keep DBS checks. DBS checks are unbiased. Gut instinct is biased.

Since actual behaviour is the criteria for making a risk assessment now.

Anyone would think risk assessment are about risks, not the consequences of ignoring them!

In the UK, parents of children, and particularly their mothers, are legally obliged to risk assess by the Children Act 1989. Parents do not have a choice about this. Any failure to assess risk that puts children at risk of harm - no waiting until they are actually harmed - is a statutory ground for removal into care. Such parental risk assessing is an ongoing, ever present, process that all mothers carry out every single day.

People who are only concerned with making society better for them and don't give two fucks about the consequences for anybody else seem to be, dare I say unsurprisingly, completely ignorant about the comprehensive legal framework they are advocating to be dismantled.

Gut reaction is biased for damn good reason. It is so disingenuous to try and stop women acting on a feeling when trying to gaslight based on yours.

Safeguarding is not retrospective. It’s preventative.

Do you know what is retrospective though? Adding new bits to the framework when someone very very bad finds a loophole, exploits it and does something very, very bad.

The entire safeguarding framework, all of it, is a response to the actions of perpetrators after the fact. The framework is looked at and we do some sort of CAPA analysis

What happened?
Why did that happen?
Why did that happen?

And so on and so on, like a persistent toddler you ask ‘but why’ until you get to the root cause.

Then you ask: *how can we stop this happening again?” And then you add a layer of protection. To prevent.

Safeguarding is preventative. It aims to prevent the Very Bad Things happening. Looking at individual behaviours weakens safeguarding. Safeguarding is sometimes excluding by nature. That’s just tough. I don’t have a DBS check, I’ve never had to apply for one so there are thing I couldn’t do until I got one. Tough titty for me. I’m sure I’d pass just fine, but I accept I can’t stroll into a job with kids until I have that bit of paper. It’s not personal, I don’t take it as personal.

I’ll be brutally honest: I don’t trust anyone, any group or any lobbyist who tries to weaken safeguarding, whether or not their motives are kind but misguided, or not.

Working Together (our overarching guidance about safeguarding) is very clear that everyone working with children and families" must be alert to their needs and any risks of harm that individual abusers or potential abusers, may pose to children". Every single Serious Case Review into the murder, death or abuse of a child (or children) that I've read has highlighted issues where individuals failed to identify risks and / or share information.

There should be no attempts to stop women, parents or anyone raising concerns about the safety or welfare of children - on this board or anywhere. The welfare of the child is always paramount.

I’ll be brutally honest: I don’t trust anyone, any group or any lobbyist who tries to weaken safeguarding, whether or not their motives are kind but misguided, or not.

Absolutely this.

The entire safeguarding framework, all of it, is a response to the actions of perpetrators after the fact. The framework is looked at and we do some sort of CAPA analysis

Absolutely. Our entire child protection and safeguarding system - every single process, every single measure introduced - has evolved in response to an abuse crisis. Savile and Huntley being two recent and infamous examples. And it still fails to protect every child, as the recent grooming scandals have shown.

In fact, we are currently holding the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse because our frameworks aren't working well enough.

What decent person, knowing this, would ever advocate for any dilution whatsoever?

daimbars

No, let's keep DBS checks. DBS checks are unbiased. Gut instinct is biased.

Gut instinct is based on subliminal signals and experience. The signals and experience that women have are unique to them being female. It's unique to the consequences of ignoring the signals, like becoming pregnant, for instance. Or not having the requisite physiology to win a fight with a man.

Nonetheless, we don't actually base laws and social protocols on gut instinct.

Safeguarding laws are backed up with decades of evidence and statistics to show that men, as a class, pose a threat to women and children, as a class. The same statistics that demonstrate 98% of sexually violent crime is committed by men. Not women.

There is no evidence, at all, to indicate that this changes if they identify as a woman.

Laws are based on evidence - gut instinct arrives at exactly the same conclusion, based on the same thing.

This is so tiring and tedious.
I can't even count the numerous threads that have been on here over the years, talking about this very fact.

Women relaying experiences. All remarkably similar. And then psychologists, lawyers, and safeguarding experts coming on to explain about the body of evidence and the way these situations are dealt with in our society. And why.

And how to recognise the signs.

The number of acronyms like DARVO which have been coined as a result.

Human behaviour often conforms to a pattern. And when you have 12 million women talking about it, sharing their knowledge, the partterns become very recognisable. It's a stunning piece of social development.

How many women have been unutterably grateful for learning about The Script on the relationships board, for example?

So it's incredibly boring when people come on to try and re-write women's experience and safeguarding protocols, based on their own self-interest and claiming that gut instinct should be ignored.

Not just boring, but familiar. So bloody familiar.

The consistent silver lining to this is that women get to talk about it more. And people are listening more.

Working Together (our overarching guidance about safeguarding) is very clear that everyone working with children and families" must be alert to their needs and any risks of harm that individual abusers or potential abusers, may pose to children".

Think about that.

And then think about the AllSorts guidance, which advises schools to ignore multi-agency working and not inform all involved parties - professional and parental - with regard to SEND children who are questioning their gender.

Gut instinct is based on reading microexpressions and behaviour analysis.

www.amazon.co.uk/Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker-ebook/dp/B0036Z9U2A?tag=mumsnetforum-21

the-eye.eu/public/Books/Radical%20Feminist%20Literature/Gavin%20de%20Becker/The%20Gift%20of%20Fear%20%28123%29/The%20Gift%20of%20Fear%20-%20Gavin%20de%20Becker.pdf

Gut instinct is based on reading microexpressions and behaviour analysis.

Exactly.

Women's radar is finely honed. Because in many cases their life will depend upon it.

I’ll be brutally honest: I don’t trust anyone, any group or any lobbyist who tries to weaken safeguarding, whether or not their motives are kind but misguided, or not.

Absolutely. At this point TRAs are waving more red flags than Morocco's fans at the World Cup.

By all means gut instinct is a useful way of an individual woman to assess potential risks to herself. But why should a women be able to dictate that her gut instinct should be the basis of the law with no supporting evidence?

Laws are based on evidence, yet the only 'compelling' evidence that comes up on on this forum about trans women in female spaces is a case in Japan in 2004 and a handful of cases in the USA.

And yet there are repeated insistence that self iD will lead to these crimes being committed in female spaces. This is based on gut instinct and no evidence.

I've even seen GC posters say 'what is needed is a crime committed by a trans woman...' as they want proof their gut instinct is correct. Which makes it all the more obvious that this is not gut instinct, just simply prejudice.

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If only people fought VAW with this much passion and tenacity.

But why should a women be able to dictate that her gut instinct should be the basis of the law with no supporting evidence?

The law isnt based on gut instinct. It’s based on the verifiable fact that men as a class are a danger to women and children and so men as a class are excluded from certain single sex spaces.

Every aid agency on the planet presses the need for, for example, single sex toilet provision to directly prevent sex crime. Based on sound data.

So it’s not based on gut instinct and it is based on supporting evidence.

What makes you think the law is based on gut instinct?

Gosh, it's like Groundhog Day isn't it?

Daim - why do you think that we currently have single sex spaces? How can you not see that self-ID in effect removes the protection offered by those single sex spaces?