Safe Space

[Shedbuilder]

Interesting Radio 4 programme about the concept of safe spaces, questions of fragility and an impassioned plea towards the end by Frank Furedi for more judgment, not less, and more questions and criticism, not less.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000zcb3

Interesting to get an idea of the craziness of trying suppress dissenting and dissonant and critical voices.

Also potentially very useful for lesbians and women, who — if we follow this woke line of thought — could demand safe spaces for lesbian-only and women-only events.

lesbian-only and women-only events.

Which would be viable if these were accepted as single sex rather than contested categories that include everyone.

I think we could argue that male-bodied people would compromise the safety of lesbian and women-only spaces. If trans people require safe spaces, why don't lesbian women?

See, this is what I don't get. The aim of "safe spaces" now includes being emotionally safe. This is accepted almost as sacrosanct, and extends to people being excluded purely on the basis of who they are and not due to their behaviour. Female survivors asking for female-only spaces in rape crisis centres and refuges are asking not only for a physically safe space but also for an emotionally safe one. And yet this request is so far beyond the pale that even just asking it gets us labelled in various horrible ways.

(I realise the two don't really compare, because female survivors have a need for a female-only space on the basis of their experience and involuntary trauma responses, which make using a mixed-sex space for the purpose of recovery an impossible ask.)

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

lesbian-only and women-only events.

Which would be viable if these were accepted as single sex rather than contested categories that include everyone.

Anything describing itself in these terms gets an immediate all out pile on to ensure that female people are not allowed to exclude male people.

Those events, if they are allowed to go ahead through not putting up any resistance, invariably end up centering male people's enjoyment of being in women only/lesbian only spaces.

Which as a woman and a lesbian, just removes the whole point of my going to such an event in the first place.

This is why now many lesbian groups run underground. It's the only way they manage to stay female only.

But it's a change in the dialogue. If transwomen are genuinely woke then they will appreciate female needs for female-only space. And if not, why not?

Has anyone listened to the programme? I thought the wokerati calling for safe spaces were allowed enough rope to hang themselves.

I've just played the Safe Space card in RL. I belong to a lesbian walking group. Someone who admits they've only recently joined posted this evening wondering innocently whether the group needs to consider being more inclusive and opening itself to pansexual and queer people.

One brave GC member said very firmly that the group was founded by and run by same-sex attracted females and that there were loads of other groups that pansexual and queer people could join.

The newbie started arguing back, so I jumped in and said that safe spaces were really important for minority groups and that I thought it was important that same sex-attracted women should have safe space to be themselves without having to negotiate around other peoples' sexuality or beliefs. And the newbie not only responded 'I get your point, of course lesbians need safe space' but also sent me a heart emoji.

Because if you're insisting on Be Kind, you have to be kind to lesbians too.

Well played!

Otherwise I think it’s going to continue to be safe spaces for all except women, with women expected to facilitate them.

If you listen to the programme and those speaking in support of safe spaces and them being ones where everyone is welcome and everyone can have a voice, and being "inclusive", you realise that they're not talking about everyone at all, but are instead talking about a subset of people who have a particular set of views and set of values. Don't share those views and values and you can expect to be attacked.

Have your safe spaces but understand that they are exclusionary spaces which by their nature make some people feel unsafe. Which means there should be a question mark over them being publicly funded or whether this approach should be permitted to take over public spaces.

This isn't a criticism of the programme, it did make an effort to present people speaking both in favour of and against safe spaces.

Yup I heard this programme, accidentally, as I was cupboard clearing at the time. It was as @nauticant said. They talked the talk, 'free to say anything' etc, but in practice they were excluding everyone except the woke. One (and only one) contributor mentioned that safe spaces were possibly excluding (or did he say limiting?) ,but this was ignored and not taken any further.
Most of the contributors seemed to identify themselves as trans something or other, so I think you get the picture...

There were several people who were very critical of the idea of safe spaces, including Jonathan Pie and Frank Furedi, a female arts critic and a self-declared transgender non-binary person who pointed out that safe spaces tend to fragment and get smaller and smaller as one by one people are discovered to be not safe for one reason or another.

The people standing up for it were Daniel Kramer, former Artistic Director of the ENO and former partner of Simon Callow, and a woman who (I was negotiating a very busy roundabout at this point) runs a theatre space for people who don't want their performances criticised. There was also a surreal conversation about triggering: apparently Romeo and Juliet is so triggering for some young people (they die!) that the audience had to be warned with posters and pre-performance information and mental health facilitators on tap. You couldn't have made it up.

I didn't hear who it was who said "Only a paranoid culture would want a phrase like safe space". I get what he meant in that some of the people they were talking about in the programme didn't want to be criticised or triggered or for women to wear purple tops, yadda yadda yadda ...

But when women are asking that women and girls who have been raped are helped and treated by women in women only spaces does that make us a paranoid culture? It's not paranoia it's real . I don't think that subject was mentioned in the programme so maybe women as a whole are not even considered in the discussion.

If you listen to the programme and those speaking in support of safe spaces and them being ones where everyone is welcome and everyone can have a voice, and being "inclusive", you realise that they're not talking about everyone at all, but are instead talking about a subset of people who have a particular set of views and set of values. Don't share those views and values and you can expect to be attacked.

Exactly. It seems to me that people who actually genuinely care about social justice beyond posturing and wanting to be a member of the right tribe are rarer than hens' teeth. And I think it's getting worse, because the genuine people are being pushed out by the ideologues.

But when women are asking that women and girls who have been raped are helped and treated by women in women only spaces does that make us a paranoid culture? It's not paranoia it's real

Exactly. And that's why 'safe spaces' based on feelings are not a substitute for human rights and safeguarding.

As a general point about intellectual safe spaces. I'm participating in a course at present where there is an emphasis on "safe spaces" when commenting on each other's work. (This is not in an 'arts' area.)

In some cases, this means that we can not comment constructively on the calibre of somebody's work. We can only say what we approved of for something and not that we think it didn't stick to the brief, answer the question, or even present a correct analysis, or give an appropriate summary of what is already known in this area.

This is not helpful. An intellectual safe space has previously been somewhere where you could explore ideas and refine them as others challenged them. If we can't challenge them, then we're not helping research in that area.

If/when people submit this work to a journal, they will probably get a desk rejection. In the event of it progressing further, reviewers will do what we didn't and either reject the paper or state that there would need to be extensive corrections and revisions.

There has been a shift in the understanding of safe spaces that helps almost nobody in some areas of endeavour.

There used to be a simple set of rules around criticising other peoples work, such as 'focus on the work not the individual who created it'. I used to think that giving and receiving criticism was a useful skill set to learn for the wider world.

There has been a shift in the understanding of safe spaces that helps almost nobody in some areas of endeavour.

I'm thinking of a guy on Twitter who recently said he was leaving Scotland because he didn't feel safe anymore. If he really is so fragile he don't feel safe because women and girls want privacy in the bathroom and same sex care after being raped what hope is there for him to live an any way balanced life

The more I hear about this stuff the more it confirms my view that it's out and out narcissism - we can't tell the truth - we have to say they're wonderful/special/misunderstood or else we're being phobic; we have to allow (welcome?) them into what should be our safe space; we have to give in to their demands or potentially become criminals merely for asking for what should be our right; we have to walk on eggshells; we call them she/whatever they wanted to be called then get screamed at because today it's he/mx/some other word nobody's heard of.

They are not allowing us to know how to behave because if we get it right they can't complain and play the victim.

In view of the serious threats to his safety, no doubt David Paisley has already left Scotland. Right?

The current status is not clear:

twitter.com/fem_mb/status/1432867384000487431

Ha ha, brilliant

That's interesting, I've just looked him up. He tweets:

"Every time you fill in a form, or tick a box on a survey, or try on clothes when out shopping, or change at the gym, or use the loo in the pub. That's self ID. You do it all the time."

Funnily enough I was filling out a form earlier today that asked how I identify and it gave a list of options. I ticked 'other' and said "I am a woman". I don't identify I just am.

If trans people require safe spaces, why don't lesbian women?

Oh you sweet naive woman! Eny fule kno that it's not only women who are lesbians ...

It's like 'be kind' and 'intersectionality is important' and 'inclusion'.

They only apply to some people.

And sex isn't a thing and no one can tell what sex anyone is, but you can be certain if you're biologically female they don't apply to you.

Safe spaces and trigger warnings are not what PTSD charities advocate. And they would know about actual triggers.
They teach how to deal with seeing a red car when a red car is what killed your best friend etc. They don't advocate for a world with no red cars.
Even female-only spaces for rape and abuse victims - we know that they are temporary respites, places of healing, but nobody is calling for the total exclusion of men from public life (well, women's shelters aren't, anyway).

The notion that people should self-police after finding out what exactly an individual does and doesn't like is a bit similar to the finding out about pronouns and the finding out about identities - it puts a lot of emphasis on compliance where there really is no expectation of it in reality.
These people are setting themselves up to get hurt because nobody actually cares that much about their inner psyche. Not because we're all heartless, we are too busy/they aren't close to us/their demands and expectations are unreasonable.
Surrounded by peers who claim that not being pandered to on multiple levels is equivalent to abuse means they are never going to be able to relate to others who aren't interested in purity spirals or groupthink.

Which in turn leaves them more open to cult-like control. It's sad to see, really.

After a day of BBC programming about 9/11, some of it excellent, in the context of the re-conquest of Afghanistan by the Taliban, the idea of safe spaces, being spaces where certain ideological views must be followed while others must be suppressed, seems incredibly self-indulgent.