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.

Thanks, Lisa.

Children without protection of kinship relations have historically been commodity for sex or labour

The trafficking and abuse of children who are refugees is well documented and yet has been consistantly ignored and downplayed.

Just prior to the Brexit referendendum there had been the beginnings of a sea change of public atitude with support for Alf Dubs ammendmedment. The govt had changed its position, then came Brexit and the momentum was lost.

Independent article:
"More than 120 child refugees missing in UK after being trafficked from France, report finds
Government urged to bolster cross-border child trafficking prevention after report shows children are being exploited by traffickers promising to get them to Britain – and then going missing"

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/child-trafficking-refugees-missing-uk-france-nspcc-calais-dunkirk-a8369816.html

This is probably going to be my last post on MN. I have been deleted twice on another thread for the same thing as Lang (despite clearly stating I was not conflating paedophiles and TRAs but highlighting how paedophiles are exploiting trans rights by posting on SM in support of trans rights in order to promote ‘paedosexuality’).

We are not allowed to mention that paeodphiles are actively exploiting this ideology in order to normalise paedophilia. This is a bridge too far for me for a parenting website.

My personal feeling is that if they are going so far as to delete any mention of how paedophiles have planned to, and are now carrying through that plan to, exploit this then ultimately what HQ are doing is protecting paedophiles under the guise of ‘dealing with transphobia’ based on reports from unknown people on the internet.

I’ll not be party to that, I wasn’t going to come back at all but I have been mulling over whether people should know...

I really enjoy your posts, Offred - I think our perspectives have a lot in common and you articulate them better than me! - so I hope you decide to stay. But I completely understand if you don't.

What. The. Heck?

Surely, surely the safeguarding issue is the one to break the camel's back? I keep thinking that about each breach forward this craziness makes, but dear lord, surely people can't just let safeguarding be bulldozed out of the way?

I think I might have a little cry.

I think a parenting site ought to think very carefully about whether or not shutting down discussion of pedophilia and potential related risk to children is ever a good idea of "in the spirit of".

Offred - I would be so sorry to see you go.
It really is a scandal of growing proportions that groups of adults are deliberately and openly undermining the safeguarding of children yet Mumsnet (who I have considerable sympathy for as I believe they are under the most extreme threats and pressure) feel that they have to silence women who are calmly and clearly analysing and evidencing the dangers to children.
Unbelievable.

Offred I love your posts and will be sad if you go, but I do understand where you're coming from because the MN stance is totally indefensible and actually really quite sinister. If posters on a parenting website can't discuss things paedophiles might do to gain access to children then the world has truly gone mad.

I would also like to know exactly why the people reporting comments right and left are so determined to stop that conversation from happening that they'll do whatever it takes to strong-arm MNHQ into shutting it down.

This evening the Sunday Times is reporting that 38% of people would back a new right wing pro brexit party, with 24% explicitly saying they would back a far right anti immigration anti Islamic party.

What this got to do with this thread?

I'd sadly say, all too much.

The Rochdale scandal arose off the back of institutions being too blinkered about political correctness at the expense of safeguarding. Which is exactly what the Human Rights Select Committee said in their report yesterday.

This is all terrorifying.

The effect of such a large far right movement to women's rights doesn't bare thinking about. As for trans rights, well obviously it's a cracking idea to attack women, pointing out the historical political blind spot which led to a far right backlash in Rochdale, whilst ignoring the very real and growing threat to all rights, and certainly the very existence of trans rights.

I fear we are all on the brink of something incredibly nasty which won't end well for a great many of us.

Offred, you are among the truly informative and memorable posters on mumsnet, please don't go.

I personally think the Rochdale scandal and similar grooming scandals had more to do with how undervalued girls are rather than with political correctness gone mad.

This is very sad @MNHQ. You must allow people to express their concerns about child exploitation otherwise bad things happen as we seen time after time. Are you old enough to remember PIE?

I personally think the Rochdale scandal and similar grooming scandals had more to do with how undervalued girls are rather than with political correctness gone mad.

I think the scandal had two distinct effects politically though, which to this day remain unaddressed properly.

The seed was sown that Rochdale was about political correctness and that has poisoned the well in a lot of communities thinking. Rights were not for them. They were not getting the benefit of them. Rights might exist in principle but in practical terms they didn't have access to them because they were poor. Thus were as good as worthless.

The girls had no value to a certain part of society which viewed them in a particularly ugly fashion. That also was taken on board politically and sits within the 'liberal elite' belief as a narrative that anything liberal is not for them as they don't fit into that particular stream of thinking too.

It's this sense of being politically invisible to power that's been harnessed and channelled by the far right.

There are lots of women on the left and centre who do see and recognise this; precisely because they understand the problem of being invisible to power too. They don't share the views of the far right, but they do see why the situation has arisen. And feel powerless to stop it.

Please engage @MNHQ or you appear actively complicit. At least attempt to defend yourselves.

Having another backroom chat are we

Materialist, I watch with interest to see if you post, does indeed fail to stand as you predict.

We are watching and archiving for history @MNHQ on which side we will be in the right of.

Don't go Offred

I will stand up with you in asking MNHQ why they are deleting people for asking questions about male behaviour towards women and children.

Great post Materilalist

Floorplan, if the battle for rights is lost, history won't give a shit. What MNHQ did or didn't do will simply be erased. Those who bare witness will not necessarily be free to speak. That we assume we will always be free to give testimony to the annuals of history, is a weakness in itself. Denial of the past and rewriting of history are political tools to distort the politics of the present and future.

It's absurd not to be skeptical of a movement led by adult males that argues for relaxing the safeguarding of children around males.

An incredible abrogation of responsibility.

As for insinuating that transpeople, Transwomen in particular are a danger to girls and women, that’s speculative at best based on ignorance of the facts. Transpeople in general are more likely to be the victims of an attack rather than the perpetrator

Really?

Really?

Really Really?

Really truly?

Your statement is false.