Dignify: Thermometer or thermostat?

From Dignify CEO/Founder Helen Roberts:

“Do you want to be a thermometer or a thermostat?” my friend asked. “Thermometers report on the temperature around them but thermostats change it”. How do we approach the temperature of the culture around us? Is it something we report on, tolerate, whether with approval or disappointment? Or are we up for the challenge of being change-agents? Dignify is going for the latter.

In June 2021 Ofsted reported that sexual harassment is normalised in the UK’s secondary schools. The culture-classroom our young people are learning in is a toxic concoction of sexual harassment, and objectification. Ofsted’s inspection was in response to the outcry following Sarah Everard’s murder and the escalating testimonies of students, on a website called Everyone’s Invited, who experience sexual abuse in schools, colleges, and universities.

As young people seek ways to fit-in, be-accepted, and be-normal, is this really what we want them to learn? The ‘how-to’ of their relationships? Young people deserve to enjoy healthy relationships now, and in their future. Imagine what will happen across communities when young people graduate into ‘adulting’ – living out their learning of sexual harassment and objectification as normal?

As thermometers we can tutt, cry and complain. But nothing will change. Tutting tolerates and condones no change. I think young people deserve a courageous community willing to be thermostats with, and for, them.

That’s why Dignify is talking about healthy relationships, how to defy the social norms of objectification and the harmful impact porn. Porn is not responsible for all the problems in the world. It is not even responsible for all the sexual objectification, harassment and abuse that has been normalised in our culture. But the correlation between the normalising of pornography consumption and the normalising of sexualised, abusive behaviours should not be overlooked. It fans the flames of sexual objectification.

The sexual harassment culture is made up of the collective impact of the private attitudes and behaviours of millions of individuals. But Dignify is not just going to report on that. We’re choosing the thermostat route! To find out how we are working to change it check out www.dignify.org

This blog was written for Wellspring Church by Helen Roberts, CEO/Founder Dignify