At a societal level

[pickledandpuzzled]

I think we have been thinking about safeguarding wrong. We design it on the basis that a small minority of people are predatory monsters, and everyone else is ok.

Observation suggests that many people are uninterested in the agency of others, and given the opportunity will use others for their benefit. Other people are possessions, trophies, staff.

The article below suggests a huge proportion of men will offend if they can get away with it.

How should we structure safeguarding, if that’s the case? What will a safe society look like, and how do we reach it?

https://apple.news/ArOEhJbJ1R1GNjarVdZJuEQ

two other threads on safeguarding were removed yesterday

I know its probably impossible to say exactly why, but in general way, why were they removed.

I was on one of the threads, and I thought many were contributing from experience of working within that framework.

It fact it did come up that the notion of "bad apples" was exactly why safeguarding often doesn't work.

Just to say I am not at all surprised by the article suggestion of men being opportunist sexual predators.

Thank you for explaining CheckingTheNumbers . It jumped out to me as part of the article that seemed ambiguous in what they were trying to present.
It's a shame figures like that, that include non-problematic or less problematic relationships, are muddying the water with much more concerning trends such as much older men expressing they'd have sex with a minor.

Compared to the sophisticated answers here mine may seem a bit simplistic but I feel attitutes have changed massively, racism, sexism etc have become far less acceptable and many people present a public image that conforms with that but human nature changes more slowly. There's a lot of men out there who would never publically advocate for child abuse or rape in women but who harbour dark fantasies, you only have to look at sexual fetishes to see that what turns some men on the most is the forbidden and child abuse must surely be the most forbidden of all.
As a pp said we have let the genii out of the bottle, the internet gives access to endless porn, young boys from 11 and 12 are seeing things on their phones that previous generations would have seen as private and shocking, by the time they're grown men some guys are so jaded by "normal" porn that they have ED in real life, they can't relate to normal sex with a real woman. Then there's Only Fans, seen by some as a normal career, but just encouraging men to feel that they really can buy any woman they want.
I don't have the answer for this, we can't turn back time, but we need to get away from the culture that says no one should judge, no one should be ashamed because there are times when we should do both of these things

@IwantToRetire yesterday’s threads about safeguarding are of course completely separate to this one, which is about the societal level of abuse and the impact that
may make on safeguarding.
We need to be really clear this is separate. The last two of those were deleted for being threads about a thread, which this is not.
The first thread it was unclear why it was deleted, but the speed of the subsequent deletions suggests that there was close monitoring of the OP. That OP is not here. I’d like to think she has found it and is interested. I’m not tagging her in case it confuses people into thinking the threads are linked.

It seems rather ironic that MN allows random people to report posts and have whole threads on safeguarding removed because those people don't like what women are saying.

How very anti a safeguarding culture.

MN are quite anti-safeguarding in many ways. I note they're quite happy to advertise sex toys to us though. What kind of world are we living in when women discussing how best to safeguard children can be stopped by some random (dodgy by definition) bloke not liking it but we can have ads of vibrators forcibly inserted into such discussions.

Not a good one.

Awaits deletion....

In addition to what you say, @Daleksatemyshed , surely finding so easily online porn that matches any violent or dark impulses you have must validate your attempts to justify your thoughts as normal. Who would have thought there was a mass market for monkey torture, or child abuse? Finding must make you feel all warm and fuzzy and normal. Previous generations would have worried there was something wrong with them.

Sayonara, @pronounsbundlebundle 🤣

The last two of those were deleted for being threads about a thread, which this is not.

Thanks - I didn't know that.

But yes I see this thread as being separate, but was just rather naively thinking it is such a huge and important topic that looking at it in detail is probably better by looking at specific aspects.

Exactly @pickledandpuzzled , they don't have to sit around feeling like weirdos, they find their tribe and think all's well.

vibrators aside, and this place is a business, so thts worth bearing in mind. How do I stop
my son from
participating in atrocities? If I think he’s a lovely ld who won’t film himself doing I peakable things then am I part of the problem? How do I parent the potential for depravity? Help!

Perhaps parenting for empathy rather than ‘success’?
We all see parents who think their little darling can do no wrong, maybe that contributes?

Obviously making consent explicit in all sorts of ways.
Honestly I don’t know.

But we need to rethink what we’re doing

Ensure he has male role models who convey strength and discipline so they are aspirational to him, but who demonstrate deeply moral male codes of behaviour particularly towards women and children.

Preferably this should be his father, or other close relatives, if it's not he'll look elsewhere and he can pick models which are attractive to him because of their strength and discipline and who provide a male code but in a deeply immoral way. This is what Andrew Tate is and why young men are drawn to him. They've been failed by not having strong good men in their lives.

I don't think women can teach boys how to be good men. I think they need men to do this. So women should choose good men to be around their sons.

Boys should learn that men have a real responsibility towards others, and only a weak pathetic man who would be shunned by the men he aspires to be like, would abuse the power he has towards women or children. A good man puts the needs of others above his own. Just as women do but his responsibility is different.

We know the outcomes for boys without fathers is disastrous. Nearly every man in prison grew up without a father. Or with a pathetic excuse of a man for a father.

If you choose a man to be the father of your children who you admire and trust you are providing your son with a model he can aspire to, and your daughter with a model where she wouldn't accept anything less.

Men of course have the potential to be dangerous, but good men have learned that this is never used towards those more vulnerable. These are men we should all want in our lives because we want their strength in our lives and our children need them.

The hand wringing about how awful men are just conveys we (our culture) have done a terrible job raising children. Men are amazing, and we need strong but disciplined men who are dedicated to their families.
But we threw away the code for that.

The Boy Crisis is a great book on this.

I'm really interesting in the idea that safeguarding, and consent culture, are not enough. I am very much in agreement with that and it is something I've thought about a lot.

The reality is that human beings all have various dark impulses, and some more so than others. And some percentage will give in to them at some point. Maybe because they are morally bankrupt; maybe ignorant; maybe weak.

One tool to deal with this is the law, another may be procedural things like safeguarding practices.

But those are limited, and in some cases there are trade-offs. The "safest" possible set of procedures might mean that there is no way for valuable things to go on, so we find a level that seems possible to reach.

Other things are social pressures, teaching normative behaviors, and so on. And we do try and teach, for example, that violence is wrong, sexual violence is wrong, it's pretty widely accepted.

Where we fail though, IMO, is to realize that a lot of what protects us from bad behaviour in society is about developing the whole person. If we want people that don't develop weird sexual fantasies, maybe we shouldn't teach them that sexual fantasies are harmless, no matter what they are about.

If we want people to have self-control and the ability to delay gratification, or go without, maybe they need to learn that across a range of things - consumer culture, snacking, the idea that going without sexual satisfaction is crazy and maybe even weird and unhealthy, video games and social media, working hard for results in school or music or sports seems to be less and less of a thing. Our whole culture is creating young people who will struggle to have boundaries, to be sexually continent, to work hard for delayed gratification, much less to suffer for moral principles.

Such people might know very well that they should not do certain things, but when they are tempted, they are going to be poorly equipped to resist. Not to mention the ones who have internalized the message that they should not be expected to resist something they really yearn for.

Have all the laws and procedures you want, a society of people like that will not be constrained by them.

Yes.
Have we also lost interpersonal skills somewhere? Is the way we live now facilitating the dehumanising of others?

Maybe children aren’t seeing elderly relatives living with the family, or aren’t spending enough time at home with parents and each other, learning to love and be loved.

Are the adults too busy and stressed making money and buying things, so the children aren’t getting what they need developmentally? The cost of housing is putting massive pressure on families.

Are they exposed to so much excitement so young, that thrill seeking is more extreme?

Or is it simply the prevailing culture of seeking personal satisfaction above all else?

Whatever it is, we need to think differently about how we protect ourselves. There’s a post about men trying it on even after years of friendship, and how unsettling it is to know your married male friend was just an opportunistic prick all along.

If we want people to have self-control and the ability to delay gratification, or go without, maybe they need to learn that across a range of things - consumer culture, snacking, the idea that going without sexual satisfaction is crazy and maybe even weird and unhealthy, video games and social media, working hard for results in school or music or sports seems to be less and less of a thing. Our whole culture is creating young people who will struggle to have boundaries, to be sexually continent, to work hard for delayed gratification, much less to suffer for moral principles.
You make a good point. If people are raised to believe they should be the centre of everyone else's universe, that they're entitled to be happy all the time, that the world has a duty to cater to them and fulfil them, instant gratification, no challenge or criticism, individual is paramount then it doesn't seem surprising that those attitudes would end up applied to sexual matters too.

Society has evolved much more quickly than humans have. We now pay little to no attention to the basics of attachment theory, with children being raised by a number of different care givers, possibly within one day. This suits those who make money from is all. The consumer driven culture appears, to me, to be the ideal set up for producing the current mess. We have children with little to no attachment to their own parents, as those parents are driven to work longer hours to survive. We have the rhetoric of the "economically inactive" driving people to work outside the home. This reduces the pool of family able and willing to care for children.
We appear to have walked blindfold into this mess and sacrificed children on the alter of capitalism.

Yep.

Yes, MN is a business, built on women. It's not really good business sense to demonise and exclude women (such as the magnificent much missed LangCleg) for doing a basic part of parenting - safeguarding.

The sex toys COULD be advertised only on appropriate parts of the site, but they're not.

The internet could be better regulated (e.g. with 3rd factor authentication if you want to access porn sites) but it's not, porn is freely available to children. This is a safeguarding disaster and it's an intentional choice to prioritise making money over safeguarding children.

“One in 15 men questioned admitted they would have sexual contact with a child under the age of 14 if “no one found out”, while one in 25 said the same about children under 10“

That is shocking. I remember once talking to a friend who was in the police. They told me most people had no idea about just how many paedophiles there were in this country.

I agree with the poster above who talked about the way society has changed so that children are raised by a multitude of people. I also think they now go to school - ie away from their parents and carers - too early. You used to start school in the term you were 5 or even not until you were 5, but now some children are only just 4. They don’t even do part-days now.

In addition, I think respect has reduced hugely. Children don’t respect adults as much as they did. They don’t learn their place in society or the community. Moreover, the community doesn’t exist in the way it used to. Everyone is out for themselves a lot of the time. This isn’t necessarily choosing to be selfish, it just seems ‘grabbing’ is seen as ok and necessary.

So, when society has become focussed on the individual and what’s best for them rather than considering societal good too, people start to feel entitled. They don’t need to think about other people. In fact not thinking about other people is often lauded. Empathy has reduced, there’s less time for kindness.

Added to this is the revolt against women’s rights. So many men seem angry at women. They’re hardly going to have empathy for women or children. Going out and taking what you want is thought of as cool or sensible. Ego’s are massive, with tedious nobodies having their own YouTube channel. So, the idea that you could potentially do what you wanted to as long as you can get away with it, seems connected.

I agree with the poster above who talked about the way society has changed so that children are raised by a multitude of people.

Its worth remembering that in fact up until quite recently children were brought up in large family groups and quite often from a young age farmed out.

We have no record of the level of abuse that children may have suffered in early centuries, but it is highly likely that it did exist (although childhood could often end at around 12 or 14 if you were lucky)

And equally for many the small nuclear family unit was/is a nightmare as a child or children could be socially isolated from adults that might want to turn to for help.

Children don’t respect adults as much as they did. They don’t learn their place in society or the community.

As it is more likely to be adults who are perpetrators of abuse it isn't clear why children would respect adults. The difference, as shown by childline, many children now know what it right and what is wrong. Its the adults who dont. Would hate to go back to a time when children were to be seen and not heard.

I’m interested in the way society has changed and the impact it has had.

I’m more interested in what we do about safeguarding, given that.

For example, we’ve stopped random passers by being able to access childcare spaces. That’s good on the face of it. However it’s now also a very enclosed space- not transparent. No fear of a parent turning up unexpectedly and witnessing poor behaviour among staff, for example.

Shaming has become a double edged sword- not acceptable in many circumstances, yet mass social media shaming to the point of bullying is widely accepted. So someone can practice their furry, pup play, bdsm kink in public and to comment would be a non crime hate incident. A woman stating males shouldn’t be in women’s sports or bathrooms can be chased around the internet and lose her job. Reported to the police, interviewed multiple times, arrested in front of her children, and have all household tech removed for a year.

There are all sorts of weirdnesses going on at the moment.
Family courts and child contact assumed to be essential even for wildly abusive men.

Given that 1 in 25 men views children under ten as sex objects, and 1 in 15 views 10-14yr olds the same, I can actually start to understand why PIE gets traction. It must seem normal to them. So how the hell do we address that?

Do we actually need an education campaign teaching children and adults that sexual behaviour too young is damaging? Have we accidentally thrown that baby out with the bath water, too?

Agree with all you say there, @pickledandpuzzled Our world is indeed turned upside down.

There was a song of that title - 'The World Turned Upside Down' - first sung in the 1640s. How ironic it is that another version with the same title was sung by Billy Bragg. Sad but true. Here's the original.

And here, a perfect example of what we are up against.

This is a desperately sad story.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/4947378-my-ex-was-a-grooming-gang-member-ama

This video is of men who work for the company that owns PornHub and they were caught on secret camera saying they thought porn was educational and helpful for kids. They obviously have no guilt about working for a company that exploits women and now they see children as a valid target demographic - they even tell themselves they’re helping kids.

As a society, we’ve gone wrong in letting some behavioural codes and societal barriers lapse. I say this as a Lefty atheist, but I think the extreme loosening of societal morality in the latter 20th Century Western world has had an aspect of Chesterton’s Fence to it. We wanted freedom and to remove shame but now we’re starting to see that boundaries and shame can perform a useful inhibitory function and can be protective for women and children at large.

Safeguarding is largely seen as a tick box exercise in many of the organisations I’ve worked in and people have become disgruntled with it as they see it as prudish. I don’t know why people can’t see the value of a holistic approach to protecting vulnerable children and people, I don’t know why people chafe at having to carry out safeguarding measures. I wish it was otherwise.

extreme loosening of societal morality

I am not sure about that phrase but one of the unintended consequences of the (limited) sucess of 70s Women's Liberation, was that the media turned it into a simple women want to have "male" freedoms. And the populist narrative about giving women equality was heavily influenced by men's idea of freedom, and allowed them to bring into full view what had previously been on the top shelves or shared via videos concealed in plain brown covers.

The whole promotion of ladette culture, through to 3rd wave feminism and its abject acceptance that somehow porn and prostitution was a freedom women should embrace.

Which of course is ironic (well worse) because much of the theory and practice of women's liberation was built on the exploitative experience women had had as part of the hippie alternative era, where again men had assumed that in challenging societies restrictions the aim was to establish a society in which men could behave in a totally unrestrictive, uncensored way.

Consiousness raising worked really well for women who shared that experience, and held give them confidence as individual women to challenge men in their own lives.

But unfortunately men were totally untouched by any of this, and were able to continue to live as though there was no challenge to male dominance.