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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Parents objecting to male nursery staff changing nappies

273 replies

popehilarious · 18/09/2019 16:38

www.nurseryworld.co.uk/nursery-world/news/1168681/parents-uncomfortable-with-male-practitioners-changing-their-childs-nappy

Hope the clicky link works.
The male staff are usually the key workers who would normally change nappies but some parents object.

I'm not a safeguarding expert but presumably the same rules and policies apply to both sexes of staff? How can a nursery as an employer discriminate duties on the basis of sex, or would this fall under the exemptions (ie asking for same-sex person to do intimate care) where the child is female? I'm a bit muddled about this.

My son had male nursery key workers who were great role models.

OP posts:
Lweji · 19/09/2019 09:54

What it has done is make me look at safeguarding very very carefully.

Exactly. Anywhere, safeguarding is the key, not avoiding an entire sex altogether.

deydododatdodontdeydo · 19/09/2019 09:56

Shame they cant put their money where their mouth is though.
It's just words...that's all it ever is

Are you completely unaware of the anti-paedophile viligante groups???
I'm astounded you haven't heard of these groups that ensnare paeodophiles online, meet them in person then hand them over to the police.
It's wilfully disingenous to say it's all talk and men do nothing.

chickenyhead · 19/09/2019 09:59

No women vigilante groups though?

Why is that...let me think...

KUGA · 19/09/2019 10:01

Great shout KellyHall.
Agree totally.

twinnywinny14 · 19/09/2019 10:04

Whilst it is true that the majority of abuse cases are by men, it is not ALL men and there are case when women are the abusers too. For me it comes down to the fact that we need to open our eyes to child abuse but not assume that everyone and anyone is a child abuser. You cannot go around making assumptions about people because of what the majority of them do, that is not right. So if men cannot change girls nappies can women not change boys?? Personally I think it is ridiculous and narrow minded to insist that male staff cannot provide care to young children. What year are we actually living in?

SarahTancredi · 19/09/2019 10:06

Of course I've heard of the groups.

But just because men get to swoop in at the end and act the hero well they doesnt negate the fact that they dont always do much to prevent their own children getting into situations. They dont give up their time or hobbies or take a day off work to avoid passing the kids about do they.

deydododatdodontdeydo · 19/09/2019 10:06

No women vigilante groups though?

Actually they are sometimes involved.
One of the groups I was reading about had a woman near the top, coordinating. She may have even been the one messaging the paedophiles, but it was men that went round to do the "arrest".

deydododatdodontdeydo · 19/09/2019 10:08

But just because men get to swoop in at the end and act the hero

Okay, I get it.
"Why don't men do anything?"
They do.
"But but but...".

They dont give up their time or hobbies or take a day off work to avoid passing the kids about do they.

Yes they do.

Lweji · 19/09/2019 10:20

to avoid passing the kids about do they.

Is that what you think putting children in childcare is?

SarahTancredi · 19/09/2019 10:28

No i dont think child care is passing kids about.

I do think that sometimes its often the mother who has to cobble something together when school has an.inset day, the child is too sick for nursery, and grandparents can only take til 3 o clock or whatever rather than the man take a day off or not go to their very outing hobby fir one day means that there is some unnecessary dropping off and picking up and different times or different places.

Mums having to call on neighbours or pouncing on someone as they walk past the house to take their kids to school and the resulting pick up panic etc

Because there seem to be many many threads on MN where it's made unnecessarily difficult when the mum is really ill or the child is really ill because the husband wont give up his time

Drogosnextwife · 19/09/2019 10:31

But here we are back again , to women having to justify and have some approved list of reasons as to why they are wary of men.

Exactly, it does get tiring having to battle against woman and men to justify why people will be more waryof men, especially when they are put in a position of trust with and extremely vulnerable children. You have to justify why some people wouldn't want to take that extra risk when it comes to the most precious things in their life.
People shouldn't need to justify why they feel that way, they feel that way because it is statistical fact that most child csa cases happen at the hands of men.
Also I would imagine that there aren't very many cases of csa in nurseries because there are so few men working in nurseries compared to woman. I would be interested to see what the stats are when nursery workers are split 50/50 men and women.

Lumene · 19/09/2019 18:29

If it was the other way round & women were being discriminated against there would be uproar!

Maybe, although I have never met any women fighting to be able to change more nappies. No nappy changing is my idea of positive discrimination.

Mysterian · 19/09/2019 19:01

No nappy changing is my idea of positive discrimination.

Yes, the people being discriminated against should thank the person doing it for labelling them a probable paedophile. There are some bloody ungrateful victims about aren't there?

Lumene · 19/09/2019 19:03

Nursery wouldn’t have employed him if they thought anything dodgy could happen

Well obviously. Yet sometimes dodgy things happen nevertheless. If childcare employers could eliminate all abusers in advance there would be no issue.

Lumene · 19/09/2019 19:10

Most of the youth stabbings, that is such a concern at the moment, are committed by kids who are not white, so by your twisted logic....

So women wary of the possibility of Male abuse are like racists? Interesting perspective.

june2007 · 19/09/2019 19:14

Where do you stop? No male doctors, Carers, Surgions, nurses, nursery nurses, swim teachers, scout leaders, any teachers. ? Because all of those jobs rely on a certain amount of trust and have been used in the past by abusers to get access yto the vulnarable. This is why we have safeguarding. And women do abuswe and also facilitate abuse.

Lumene · 19/09/2019 19:21

Yes, the people being discriminated against should thank the person doing it for labelling them a probable paedophile. There are some bloody ungrateful victims about aren't there?

Err who is calling anyone a probable paedophile? No one. Some people have shared some statistics relevant to safeguarding and sexual abuse.

Some men are campaigning to be able to change nappies I personally would be happier not doing so. No relation to your additional comments at all, you are just making stuff up to argue with.

Mysterian · 19/09/2019 19:25

Some men are campaigning to be able to change nappies - nope, some men want to be allowed to do their job and to be treated fairly.

LordRandallXV · 19/09/2019 19:38

Having read the article again, I think it is profoundly dishonest for the discussion there not to acknowledge the facts about male violence. Yes, women abuse, too, but men abuse 50 times more often.

If we're talking solely child abuse then you're likely right, but with intimate partner abuse the jury is out ad many more recent studies in fact show women to be more abusive to their partners - they suggest that the difference in results is because men are less stigmatized about speaking up nowadays and because female violence has tripled in the last decade to an all time high.

chickenyhead · 19/09/2019 19:40

I'm not aware that 2 men a week are being murdered by their intimate partners. What is the source of these facts?

Lumene · 19/09/2019 19:44

Mysterian I dare say they do. And also they are campaigning to be able to change nappies among other things according to the link the OP posted: one of their campaign goals is:

“Legislation/guidance to end gender-discriminatory policies on intimate care in early years.”

Whatever that means.

Lumene · 19/09/2019 19:45

Studies such as which LordRandall?

LordRandallXV · 19/09/2019 19:45

Two women a week is a drop in the ocean out of the 32 million (likely more now) women in the UK, despite obviously still being horrific. I'm talking about non fatal violence and life destroying bullying/victimisation which is infinitely more common.

I can post the studies from the other thread but don't want to derail.

LordRandallXV · 19/09/2019 19:52

Women are more likely to be verbally and physically aggressive towards their partners than men suggests a new study presented as part of a symposium on intimate partner violence (IPV).

Analysis showed that women were more likely to be physically aggressive to their partners than men and that men were more likely to be physically aggressive to their same-sex others.

Furthermore, women engaged in significantly higher levels of controlling behaviour than men, which significantly predicted physical aggression in both sexes.

Dr Elizabeth Bates of the University of Cumbria explained: "This was an interesting finding. Previous studies have sought to explain male violence towards women as rising from patriarchal values, which motivate men to seek to control women's behaviour, using violence if necessary.

"This study found that women demonstrated a desire to control their partners and were more likely to use physical aggression than men. This suggests that IPV may not be motivated by patriarchal values and needs to be studied within the context of other forms of aggression, which has potential implications for interventions."

Women more likely to be aggressive than men in relationships

June 26, 2014
British Psychological Society

www.google.com/amp/s/medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-women-aggressive-men-relationships.amp

The study, which challenges the long-standing view that women are overwhelmingly the victims of aggression, is based on an analysis of 34,000 men and women by a British academic.

"It's a complex argument but we do get more women aggressing against male partners than men against female partners," said Dr George. "The view is that women are acting in self-defence but that is not true - 50 per cent of those who initiate aggression are women.

His research is backed up by historical records which show that men who were beaten by their wives were publicly humiliated in a ceremony called a "skimmington procession". The procession was named after the ladle used to skim milk during cheese making.

Women are more violent, says study

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women-are-more-violent-says-study-622388.html?amp

The article summarised the latest official statistics and research on domestic violence, providing evidence that most domestic violence is two-way, involving women as well as men.[2] This was regarded as a breach of policy, because, on its own website, RAWA says its domestic violence policy “is historically framed by a feminist analysis of gendered power relations” which, contrary to the international evidence, denies women’s role in domestic violence.

The problem is often more complicated, and may involve both women and men as perpetrators”. Based on the findings of an analysis of more than 11,000 American men and women aged eighteen to twenty-eight, the letter concluded:

"When the violence is one-sided … women were the perpetrators about 70% of the time. Men were more likely to be injured in reciprocally violent relationships (25%) than were women when the violence was one-sided (20%). That means both men and women agreed that men were not more responsible than women for intimate partner violence."

After analysing the data, which contained information about domestic violence reported by 11,370 respondents on 18,761 heterosexual relationships, the following conclusions were reached:

- A woman’s perpetration of domestic violence is the strongest predictor of her being a victim of partner violence;[7]

- Among relationships with non-reciprocal violence, women were reported to be the perpetrator in a majority of cases; [8]

- Women reported greater perpetration of violence than men did (34.8 per cent against 11.4 per cent, respectively).[9]

Based on the information available, the authors concluded:

Our findings that half of relationships with violence could be characterised as reciprocally violent are consistent with prior studies. We are surprised to find, however, that among relationships with nonreciprocal violence, women were the perpetrators in a majority of cases, regardless of participant gender. One possible explanation for this, assuming that men and women are equally likely to initiate physical violence, is that men, who are typically larger and stronger, are less likely to retaliate if struck first by their partner. Thus, some men may be following the norm that “men shouldn’t hit women” when struck first by their partner.

Women Can Be as Violent as Men

quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/09/women-can-violent-men/

Design/methodology/approach

The paper's approach is to re‐examine NISVS data, research on the impact of IPV on male victims and the system's response to it.

Findings

In the last year, males are more often the victim of intimate partner physical violence, psychological aggression and control over sexual/reproductive health.

Social implications

Increased domestic violence education directed at women and services to men should lead to a reduction of DV against women as well as men, since woman aggressors frequently are themselves victimized subsequently.

US National Survey: more men than women victims of intimate partner violence

www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/17596591211244166/full/html

chickenyhead · 19/09/2019 19:52

Some key statistics:
From April 2014 to March 2017, 73% of victims of domestic homicides (homicides by an ex/partner or family member) were women. This contrasts with victims of non-domestic homicides, where the majority of victims were male (88%) and 12% of victims were female (ONS, 2018).
From April 2014 to March 2017 four in five female victims of domestic homicide were killed by a partner or ex-partner (239, 82%); of which the vast majority of suspects were male (238). 45 male victims (45%) were killed by a partner or ex-partner in the same time period; 7 of the suspects in these cases were male, and 38 were female (ONS, 2018).
One study of 96 cases of domestic abuse recorded by the police found that men are significantly more likely to be repeat perpetrators and significantly more likely than women to use physical violence, threats, and harassment. In a six year tracking period the majority of recorded male perpetrators (83%) had at least two incidents of recorded abuse, with many having a lot more than two and one man having 52 repeat incidents. Whereas in cases where women were recorded as the perpetrator the majority (62%) had only one incident of abuse recorded and the highest number of repeat incidents for any female perpetrator was eight. The study also found that men’s violence tended to create a context of fear and control; which was not the case when women were perpetrators. (Hester, 2013)
Over 80% (83%) of high frequency victims (more than 10 crimes) are women. (From a study of data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, a nationally representative household survey.) (Walby & Towers, 2018)
In the year ending March 2018 the large majority of defendants in domestic abuse-related prosecutions were men (92%), and the majority (66%) of victims were recorded as female (13% of victims were male and in 21% of prosecutions the sex of the victim was not recorded) (ONS, 2018