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.

So many incredibly astute and powerful points are being made on this thread. This enables me to make sense of and connect so much. *
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Understanding is the first step in empowerment - but in order to understand, things must first be seen, revealed and exposed.

Thank you Red for the following: Do not underestimate the role of apathy and lack of empathy in this dynamic, combined with gross naivety and ideological idealism and superiority.

Of course you can, Sarah!

Look: I'm not saying anything new or clever. This is what safeguarding is. Don't put a child into a situation where they cannot tell the difference between an abuser and someone who is trying to help because they are doing the same things. This is why we don't have confidential disclosures. This is why we have multi-agency working.

Also relevent to ask why is so much of the focus/resources of so much TRA individuals and organisations on women raising issues of safeguarding, safety, boundaries, dignity etc rather than on the physical violence, verbal aggresion that people who are transgender / questioning their gender identity (including children & young people) experience.
What might be the consequences of this?

Posie Parker asks in a speech at 'We Need to Talk about Sex", Bristol Jam Jar earlier this year.

"Does my 11 year old daughter have the right to go into a female changing room and not see an adult penis?"

You may be shocked to know that the automatic answer is not 'of course she does'.... Fear of male violence is not transphobic" (continues)

This:

You might not be an abuser but this is what abusers do when they are grooming young people. Check the techniques, don't mirror them, and offer support in a different way

One of the most important things I've read on here. It takes me back to an argument I had with a lovely but naive friend. We both belonged to an online discussion group - adults and teens - about a hobby (all innocent, above board). One of the adult members was having a tough time and someone decided to have a whip round to get her a small gift to cheer her up and let her know people cared (a small item connected with the hobby). I discovered my friend had met up with one of the teens - a teen who did not know her in RL and had no way of checking her bona fides - in a coffee shop in the shopping centre to collect a couple of quid from her.

I went ballistic. Friend could not see what she'd done wrong - namely that she'd encouraged a teen to go along with behaviour which in another context could be grooming. She got quite shirty with me even though she has a teen of her own and should know better.

You have to act in such a way that a third party can point to your behaviour and say "see, that's how a decent adult who understands boundaries behaves."

I think there is another point here thats rarely raised.

There are groups of generally socially liberal minded people reaching the same point of concern from very different angles.

You firstly have the trade unionist movement.
You then have those coming from a child protection background.
You also have scientists and those from a medical background.
You have traditional old school feminists movement.
You have the lesbian community.
You have people like me who come from a more political history type academic background.
There is also a slightly more right wing, but still liberal centre right grouping which is distinctly pro free speech as its core value.
And then (perhaps most curiously) you have other non mainstream online communities and voices such as @YourAnonCentral making noise on the subject. (which you'd generally place far left)

These groups do have certain commonality and overlap, but there are some pretty damn big differences in there too. They all pro-human rights and free speech in one way or another.

The fact they are diverse is a problem. There isn't a unity here.

In terms of labelling these groups as socially conservative and bigotted, its hard to reasonably do with a straight face and an ounce of credibility yet this is what is happening. Its flies totally in the face of the core beliefs of so many of these people.

There IS a socially conversative more religious and right wing movement which is also making noises, and they are being used to discredit the integrity of all the others. Their priorities are unique in not being about rights nor free speech and being much more authoritarian in nature.

For me one of the big questions that MUST be raised is why you do have so many very different groups are asking questions and have concerns about the removal of mechanisms which have a proven track record in helping protect the vulnerable in society?

Every one is going through a different process and path to the same place and none are receiving a response which is satisfying their primary worry adequately.

What is it that is raising red flags all over the place?

Proponents of genderist ideology seem to believe that none of the rules apply to them. Not the laws of nature, not child protection procedures, not evidence-based practice in a medical context, not other peoples' sexual boundaries, not solidarity in a trade union context. All sorts of people are becoming concerned because they're seeing established rules and procedures which govern professional practice and social organisation in a wide range of settings ridden over roughshod

Proponents of genderist ideology seem to believe that none of the rules apply to them. Not the laws of nature, not child protection procedures, not evidence-based practice in a medical context, not other peoples' sexual boundaries, not solidarity in a trade union context. All sorts of people are becoming concerned because they're seeing established rules and procedures which govern professional practice and social organisation in a wide range of settings ridden over roughshod

They are blind to context, which is what happens when you have a movement spearheaded by narcissistic activists who can't see a single thing outside of themselves (this is where postmodernism comes in because it gives them a lexicon to obscure the mememe of it all).

I've raised the safeguarding points I've made here so many times and been screamed down by transactivists - You vicious bigot! You think all trans people are paedos! - because they can't conceive that I'm talking about anyone else but them.

It doesn't matter how many times I say FFS, you useless idiot. I'm trying to protect the trans children from paedos - they can't hear me. Because if I'm talking, it can't be about anything but them.

The narcissism and victim culture suits corporates like Stonewall as it provides a rolling narrative which acts as a smokescreen.

Do I think an abuser will be trans? Possibly. But just as likely that it will be an opportunist who isn't. It doesn't make how you identify your gender, if you are lowlife scum bag of rarely equalled despicableness.

What is highly likely is that trans people will either be victims or blamed and faced with an almighty backlash because no regard was given to safeguarding.

But yes, its evil women persecuting trans people, rather than seeing the bigger picture which has such huge potential to harm women, children and trans people.

I'm continually surprised by the way that my 2-year-old seems better able to represent, empathise with and respond appropriately to other people's' distress than some adults

Proponents of genderist ideology seem to believe that none of the rules apply to them.

Why would they?

They can literally rewrite their own history through their name, birth cert, driving licence; nobody can ever point a finger at their bad behaviour or they cry 'It's because I am trans you bigot' and a get out of jail free card.

The TRAs never condemn trans people's bad behaviour - they say that for example, trans people beating up a man on the tube 'I want to see the other side first'..as if something warranted a guy being kicked over and over again by angry trans people. And the story gets reported as 'women' and of course the MRAs pile in with 'see, women are violent too - this is why they deserve to be hit'.

It is fucking outrageous.

I hope they take notice, Sarah. I really do.

What I'm not sure about is how much the DBS system depends upon the applicant being honest on their application that they have a previous name to include on the form, or what systems exist behind the scenes to ensure that relevant information in the name of, say, Huntley, will always be presented when a search for, say, Smith, is conducted

It seems to be difficult to get an answer to this one.

I know my mum got phoned up with questions about a previous name she used but didn't put on the DBS form. For a while in the 90's she took my fathers name even though they weren't married.

Women have always been the truthsayers generally and closing us down, along with other whistleblowers, is where the harm starts.

Women as whistleblowers, very good parallel. Thanks woman.

I'm off the forum, sorry to hijack for a moment.
I work with women who have been sexually abused in childhood. I knew all about JS, West Yorkshire police, and knew Anne Cryer who tried her best to raise issues back in the day.

I've had warning from the mods here about breaking NEW guidelines for suggesting that someone on the forum was here for "the rapey stories." I made no mention on the (now closed) thread of how they describe themselves. I see that person as MRA or some kind of predator type.

However, the irony is that: I am apparently being anti trans rather than being warned for troll hunting under the OLD guidelines. (Which I'd accept.)

No one has actually told me HOW I am breaking NEW guidelines specifically, the whole lot got posted to me.

I have made my views known to the mods.
Will return to lurking, just closing account. You are amazing people.

I know a trans woman who hit an older woman with a brick severely injuring her, the woman was never the same after. The trans thought she had been mocked as she walked past and came back with a brick.

James Patrick @ j_amesp
Sadly we’ve reached a point where people simply can’t effectively translate the world around them in order to identify real risks. And, at a time when our defences and regulatory structures have failed, this can only end one way. Aided and abetted by poor punditry.

This tweet ISN'T about trans issues at all.

It's about how democracy has failed and the media has failed in its job to hold people to account.

Patrick has been ahead of the game for sometime on how fake news has been weaponised and how it's undermined democracy. He was initially thought of as crazy, but he was one of the first to pick up on the scandal of how Facebook had been misusing data. Today they have been fined.

My point is that what we are seeing is a revolution in progress, where old institutions are destroyed. And we are turning authoritian. We don't know how it will end but all safeguarding frameworks disintegrate in this process of such a revolution. The media, the courts, the law. And our opportunity and ability to vote our way out of oppression, as democracy is underpinned by all three. As that happens those with inherent power rise to the top and start to dictate to minorities who don't have that inherent power. This has already happened within the LGBT community.

Authoritianism NEVER safeguards the vulnerable. It exploits them. They are the foundation of what it is built upon. Human exploitation and suffering for the benefit of a select privileged few, and those who enable them.

Our current crop of authoritians are ultra capitalists to whom nothing matters but money. They are a international network who behave a lot like a mafia ring. Gender stereotypes to control the population whilst also rinsing them of money, fit very nicely into the plan.

There might be no scandal in this context. Because people stop caring and view it as an everyday acceptable thing in society, which the vulnerable deserve for being weak. And the media stop reporting it, out of fear.

Thank you, Red. Please keep continuing to highlight that there is nothing progressive about what is going on.

I fear we are out of time for a scandal. We needed one six months ago.

The media is acting like a weather vane not a teller of truth.

Just a reflection:

Being on 'the wrong side of history' tends to mean you were a victim of tyranny, rather than an oppressor. Thus you should perhaps be suspicious of those who us the term rather than see them as great progressives cos its not got a brilliant precident to fall back on. History is written by those who live, not those who die.

In this context, it becomes much clearer that its a concealed threat rather than a declaration of being a moral guardian to be on 'the right side of history'.

Red I fear we are out of time for a scandal. We needed one six months ago.

It's depressing, but I think you might be right about this. The framing of the consultation reflects the prevailing winds and it seems more aimed at getting rid of safeguarding, not strengthening it.