Backlash against a hugging grandparents consent ad

[IwantToRetire]

(The ad, one of three, is part of a campaign called We-Consent, run by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC).)

Extract only:

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said the videos were "produced by DRCC at low cost using volunteers and are not part of a government advertising campaign".

Meanwhile, Dr Eoin O'Malley, an associate professor at Dublin City University, said he believes the advert is the latest example of the state overreaching.

"You are seeing people pushing ideas that are beyond mainstream," he said.

O'Malley said that the importance of consent is reasonable to most people, but that the video is too extreme.

"The idea that there needs to be an ad telling grandparents that they shouldn't hug their grandkids, that they should look for permission in advance of that, seems absurd to most normal people.

"The Irish constitution is very clear that the family is the primary unit for teaching children and for raising children, and so to some extent this is kind of going beyond that."

However, the campaign has its defenders too.

Academic Dr Órfhlaith Campbell said it is not an attack on grandparents but instead aimed to highlight the importance of consent.

"The ad is highlighting differences in children's needs and the imp (sic) of consent. It is not campaigning against grandparents. Dear god in heaven!!!" she wrote on X, external.

An account named Danny Boy said it wasn't "discouraging grandparents from hugging children" but was "encouraging children to speak up" if they feel uncomfortable.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c83vqn6zwrx0o

I remember this being a very active discussion a few years (decades?) ago so am surprised by this reaction.

Why am I not surprised at this.

Grandma wanting a hug (which in all normal families she'll not do if asked) = something that needs a million pound ad campaign against.

Penises in women's toilets - no-one's allowed to comment at the breaking of the law and impact on any female children in there AND the lowering of boundaries around consent that men in women's spaces IS. It's all FINE.

Child should have the right to say no to Grandma's hugs, sure, but can she say no to adult male cock in her changing room - of course not! She MUST put up with that, her consent to THAT doesn't matter.

Which is worse?

IIRC Posie's initial response to this madness was 'why should my 12 year old daughter be forced to to see a stranger's cock in the changing rooms / toilets'. It's indecent exposure and it's been decriminalised (also see Wayne Couzens who did it at McDonalds and the police failed to do anything despite McDonald's staff reporting and then went on to kill Sarah Everard shortly afterwards, which maybe he wouldn't have done had he been stopped for this crime).

I don't think anyone has a problem with the normal teachings around consent in schools etc but what is this ad achieving? Why are normal people - the vast majority of whom teach their children this anyway - need to be treated like delinquent morons at a cost to them (if taxpayers money) of a million quid. They might quite like a few more resources in schools instead, thanks.

I bet I can think of 100 things easily off the top of my head that would benefit children more in terms of safeguarding than more than a million quid on an ad on this topic which doesn't even show a male overstepping the boundary. When men commmit 98% (or is it 99%, I forget) of sexual crimes.

Have you watched the ad @IwantToRetire ? It's in mainly the Grandmother who is seen as overreaching boundaries. The grandparents are portrayed as doddery old people who are so out of touch with reality and the 'modern' way of thinking that they don't know how to function in normal social circumstances.

The idea of consent in this ad reminds me of the 'be kind' line. Of course consent is important, just as we should be kind, it's obvious and who could argue with that, but there is something deeper and more sinister going on here. If I lived in a country that genuinely looked after their children and had laws in place to protect them and this was something that needed to be said I'd think fair enough. But funnily enough, grandmothers aren't generally a threat. And what paedophile would in theory be stopped by watching an ad anyway!

If it's supposed to be aimed at the kids then surely the kids should also be told they have the right not to have to use preferred pronouns for people, that they have the right not to have to refer to their male teacher as 'Mx" and that they have the right to object if they see a man in their bathrooms or changing rooms. This is not whataboutary. This is putting the ad in perspective to the reality we are living in. Children don't have the right to object to men in women's spaces, they're expected to 'be kind' and call people whatever they demand. They can't object to men and boys in their sports and have to compete and change alongside them and yet the government acts like 'Granny' is the main cause of concern. It's a distraction tactic for more important issues that they are refusing to address.

Whether you think it's bizarre or not that people are objecting to it on this forum, it seems lots of other people are in agreement. The ad has roundly been condemned worldwide and it was pulled from RTE in less than 24 hours due to complaints.

And just to say - for the grandfathers raping children, do we think this ad will help? Do we think a prolific paedophile who has got to the age of being a grandfather without being caught, is suddenly going to look at Grandma wanting a hug and go 'oh, maybe raping my grandchildren is wrong! THIS is what I've been waiting on all these years not to be a monster!". Maybe the million quid could go on more prison places so paedophile rapists get more than a few years in prison and are then released to often abuse again?

It's not going to help the child more than creating a positive relationship with a teacher to whom they can disclose the abuse. That's more likely to happen if there's more budget for teachers and TAs so teachers actually have the time to spend with the quiet, miserable child in the corner. Which a million quid might help.

It's utterly performative and politically driven and will help no children or adults and stop no abuse.

Also I can say for a fact my child would eye roll hugely at this. She told me that the thought it was frankly creepy there was a strange adult doing the PANTS thing from NSPCC in her school and why wasn't it one of the trusted normal teachers who normally did it? She said 'I thought we weren't really supposed to discuss this sort of thing with total strangers' and 'they said no means no but I didn't want to talk about it in a group with this adult and they made me'. One of Gavin de Becker's points in 'protecting the gift' IIRC is you should tell your children if they're lost to ask for help from a woman who looks otherwise busy and absolutely not accept help from any adult that offers.

It's essentially casting the family as the issue. Which may be where the majority of abusers are from but that's also because most children spend most of their time with family (rather than say Catholic Priests or Jimmy Saville) but the family is also most often the greatest source of protection for children. There is a wealth of evidence that this is true. It's the whole basis of JKR's charity Lumos (helping children stay with families rather than being in children's homes / care). And the government is saying 'we support you in saying no to your parents / grandparents, but you will be forced - by us - to have no consent around a male stranger in a changing room / toilet / hospital ward if we want to put you in that position'.

That million quid could be put towards enforcing single sex spaces.

It's not whataboutery, derailing or even anti feminist to disagree with you IWTR. I don't know how many grandchildren you have or how many times you hug / cuddle children but there's a genuine discussion to be had about this. It's perfectly legitimate to comment on whether the State is unhelpful when it weighs in so crudely on family life and interactions.

As someone who spends a lot of time every week interacting with toddlers and both gives and receives numerous cuddles, many of them are unplanned and develop naturally from what you're doing.

I must admit one of the biggest challenges is retaining my composure and smile as a snot covered little face of a germ carrier looms in for a hug and kiss 😷

Having watched the ad I also think there's a huge dollop of ageist stereotypes and possibly age discrimination going on. The basic message is grandparents are all gross and inappropriate! Yuk!

It's the government / public bodies using public funds telling families how to interact that I think is the main thing that doesn't sit well with me. Authoritarianism.

You can have ads about consent that don't do this.

How would you do it then?

In school. Give the money to schools to deliver this messaging, which they already do (but am sure could always do with more resources to deliver e.g. release time for a trusted teacher to discuss in small groups - far more likely to help children that way). It doesn't need a big fancy ad that will reach a tiny minority of people.

If it gives some kids the courage to tell people they don't want a hug then it's a good thing. Should help some parents who worry they are over thinking.

And there are a lot of weird, old fashioned toxic families out there who insist on hugging and kissing.

Agreed. These kinds of messages so often end up crudely when turned into soundbites like this.
There's a genuine issue about teaching and nurturing our children to develop confidence and assertiveness. Trite films framing grandparents arriving on the doorstep as the issue seem to miss the mark quite widely. Although they do enable a good dose of ageism which many seem to find acceptable.

It's fine not to want a hug from anyone. Sometimes I'm greeted with a big hug / cuddle - and sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I've even held out my arms and been ignored in favour of a cuddle with the dog 😁.

No adult should ever chastise a child for not wanting to hug someone. That's maybe the message - that hugs and cuddles are great when you want them.

Having met women who talked about their experiences being abused as children as well as adults it’s really sad but understandable that some people cannot cope with any sort of touch.

Really an advert showing a close familial unwanted touch would have been better showing a stepfather, these are the men in children’s lives that overall are the highest risk to them.

I agree, there is a nasty tone of misogyny against older women in this advert. Urrrggghh imagine having to hug an old woman. Silly doddery smelly old people.

It is somewhat removed from the actual problem of sexual abuse in families perpetrated by men in the vast, vast majority of cases.

There is some false equivalence being drawn. But I guess they don’t want to feature Grandpa or creepy Uncle wanting a child on their lap or a kiss on the lips as a prelude to worse.

‘Modern grandparents’ whatever that means, don’t need to ask for a hug. Their grandchildren usually launch themselves at their grandparents when they see them - at least mine do! When I’m leaving, I’ll tell them and either they’ll come and give me a hug or ignore me depending on what they’re doing 🤣. My eldest grandson likes to give me a random wave from a distance and blow a kiss, but he also likes to sneak into my bed for a hug in the morning when I’m staying over at his house.
Why didn’t this advert use actors to represent parents or aunts / uncles or other adults? It’s grim to assume a grandparent needs to be told how to approach their grandchildren.

It is. And that a familial act of emotional support and love should be viewed through a lens of suspicion is heartbreaking and insulting.

It also perpetuates the notion of the family as a danger to children. I've been involved in safeguarding for long enough to know that this can be the reality for too many children. But for every family where there is an abuser, there are likely to be other family members who aren't, and are a source of love and support for children. Framing any group as undermining consent is problematic.

I'm old enough to remember the early days when schools started talking to children about abuse. The initial -"don't sit on the laps of adults in case they sexually abuse you" proved to be traumatic for many young children who had never viewed adults in this way. We were unintentionally frightening children in our earnest attempts to warn children of dangers.

There's no simple answer to how you develop confidence and assertiveness in children. We do know that using crude scare tactics so often backfires.

Lots of folk online are running with the race angle too. Hard to imagine that no-one involved in the ad saw that coming.

Sure, a hug should be consensual, but why does it need an ad?

My DD let me know when my older DGD got a bit funny about hugs (having in the past been the one to throw herself into my arms with the most enthusiasm) so I waited for her cues and just hugged her little sister if that was the vibe I got.

The grandparents who will ignore that information and those cues, are hardly going to respond positively to that ad. In fact they'll probably become more entrenched.

I have just watched it though, and it's not quite as bad as I expected. I'm glad that they showed the other kid being very enthusiastic about their hug and their grandparents arriving, so I didn't feel that it reflected as badly on the GPs as I thought it might.

For fuck's sake - how stupid can you be? You wouldn't have to ask for consent before you hug your grandchildren. They will signal consent by throwing themselves into your arms. You may hug them back. Simple.

I would keep a close eye on the people who don't like this ad. What they are making explicit is their belief that if a child doesn't want to be hugged, you should do it anyway.

I don't agree. Children should be brought up learning it is absolutely ok to tell ANYONE no when it comes to being touched.

If you deliver physical contact to a child who doesn't want it, they don't experience it as a loving hug. They are being handled.

This post demonstrates why the ad is needed.

(assuming the poster is genuine and not just on a wind up mission)

Yes, we can debate whether the ad will be effective, whether it can be improved, whether an ad is the right medium for getting the message across.
But it is naïve to think that some people have not yet got the message about consent.

So teachers tell the basic message that all grandmothers are gross?

Perhaps mine was atypical then .Public displays of affection were regarded as a bit ew in my family. They became a bit more tactile in recent years I suppose. But cuddles were definitely reserved more more babies and tiny tots. Giving sweets or small gifts of money was the way older relatives and neighbours showed affection back then. Probably verboten too now come to think of it.

Some reactions to the ad in Irish media:
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/government-scrambles-to-distance-itself-from-ad-telling-grandparents-not-to-hug-grandchildren/a/163474826.html

'The Government is scrambling to distance itself from a controversial ad campaign that told grandparents to seek consent before hugging their grandchildren.'
'Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan posted on X to say that DRCC had removed the video following engagement with his officials. Mr O’Callaghan said the video did not “represent the views of the Government”.
“It was both inappropriate and demeaning to grandparents,” he said.
“While it is vital to ensure that people understand the concept of consent when it comes to sexual relationships, this video did not advance that aim and in many ways was counterproductive.”

DRCC removed a number of videos associated with the ‘We Consent’ campaign due to what it said was “negative attention” on Thursday.
In a statement, it said the videos were made by volunteers and staff “on a low budget”. '

https://gript.ie/what-kind-of-halfwits-think-our-grans-hugs-are-the-problem/
'Contrary to the producers of this latest insult, Grandparents aren’t stupid. They can read their grandkids better than some 25-year old marketing graduate. They already know some children aren’t tactile and like their space. They understand boundaries – and if they don’t, parents can have a word. What they don’t need is a lecture on bodily autonomy with dubious inferences from a State department with too much of our money to spend.'

'Apart from just how downright insulting the advert is, its also seriously misplaced. Of all the problems facing our kids, affection from the people who love them really, really isn’t anywhere in the top 100. This is what happens when we’re governed by NGOs.
Grandparents are clueless about consent? Really? Rates of sexual assault and rape have gone through the roof since my parents were young. Their generation isn’t driving the pressing problem we currently need to face up to. But the State wants them to feel awkward and uncomfortable and sort of ashamed anyway.'

I think many people on this forum don’t live in Ireland so they don’t understand our anger at this ad. Women who have had to campaign against our government and all other main political parties to retain the word mother in our constitution; women who are told we need to let men into our single sex spaces and this is the law; women who are supposed to accept surrogacy as a legal right and not the trafficking of babies. A country that was recently vilified for selling its babies in the 1950s and 60s, now happy for men to buy babies in poor countries to their design, bring them home to Ireland and be called their mother.

Until you have walked in our shoes, please do not tell us we have no right to be angry at their blatant hatred of older women, mothers, grandmothers, all women really.

This is one of those things that sounds right when you write it on a page with upper case letters, but is ridiculous when you really think about it.

It's really JUST FINE for your teenager to refuse to shake hands at his first job interview because he doesn't feel like it?

Young people go off to live in a place like France but won't do standard greetings because they don't feel like touching anyone, and therefore are seen as rude and standoffish.

Grandma has a weird smell so Lily refuses to hug and kiss her after visiting her in the hospital.

These problematising normal social touch and interactions for everyone. Not some kid with autism who people can see they need to give some grace to.

Just regular kids being told that kissing their sick grandma, or even grandpa, is like being sexually abused.

It's not protective against abuse, it's just a way to produce entitled little twats.

If you want to protect kids against abuse, you tell them what abuse looks like and what is inappropriate touch. You don't just make all social touch equivalent to grandpa groping you.