When did this board become a "safe space"?

[OmiOmy]

Long time poster here, name changed.

I've recently seen this board as being described as a "space space"? This has happened a few

Wikipedia says The term safe space refers to places "intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations".

Well, going by that, it's hardly a safe space, is it? We have robust discussions here that are rarely seen on other parts of the internet.

I don't know, I feel cross and disheartened to hear the term "safe space" being ascribed to this board as if we're too fragile to cope. Ugh.

Instead I would describe this board as broadly supportive, wouldn't you?

I think there are some individual threads on here which should be treated as safe spaces, and are treated that way by most posters - support threads and the Trans Widows threads. Most of the board definitely isn’t!

I hate the term 'safe space' but I think can be more than one meaning.

It can mean a place where you will never hear anything you don't want to hear/don't agree with or a place where you are safe to discuss things some people may not agree with.

Obviously, I think this board is the latter.

People start bleating about echo chambers when they come here with pseudo scientific bollocks and are robustly challenged on it

it feels like an attack to them because of course they can’t sensibly justify their beliefs because they’re sexist claptrap

they do also find themselves out numbered, which must feel attacking. However women who believe sex is important often find themselves in that position too

i don’t think genderists are actively chased away from this board, they just get asked questions until they are too uncomfortable to stay

whatstheprobdog Oh gosh, really?

It absolutely isn't. I've already talked about people being supportive and protective towards the poster. I'm supportive of her too.

My thing is just about the use of safe space in context of this board.

Centering men means excluding some women, it's not that hard and nothing to do with safe spaces.

I don't think this is a safe space and I mean that as a compliment.

I have seen people disagree on here a lot. And that is even among people who would all be on the more GC side of the debate.

Safe spaces to me are things like support groups for addiction or your therapist's office where you are supposed to be supported no matter what you say

I don't think good therapists support you no matter what you say. And FWIW even in places like a support thread I think that can create an unhealthy dynamic. I've seen more than one support thread where I thought what was really happening was a poster was being supported in continuing very damaging thinking for herself.

Safe spaces could be a useful concept in limited circumstances but total affirmation is rarely a healthy thing.

I think 'out there' <side eye to the rest of the world> safe space is frankly infantilising. Nobody will challenge you, ask you to justify or even clarify wtf you're banging on about. But it's not safe if you want some justification or clarification. It's not safe if you just want to say 'hang on a minute'.

I think we get that here. That's the kind of safety that I want. Even if being called out because of fuzzy logic or similar. Mainly I learn here and, because I've a memory like a sieve, I keep learning. And read wot other posters write that I want to say but never can with such clarity. And, very often, pmsl.

@CrossStichQueen I saw the thread, I have no idea of the ins and outs but I don't think you were coming from a bad place.

<runs away, feeling unsafe, but smiling>

"Safe" is a relative term. It's a safer space to question trans ideologies than many others.

🤣

"Safe space" generally means somewhere you won't hear anything you disagree with.

This is a "safe place" in the sense you are allowed to say things others may find disagreeable.

It's different!

Yes thats what i was thinking

i think that threads that are supposed to be supportive or asking for support should be left alone, i think thats the case on some of the other boards like lgbt children etc but not necessarily on the FWR board

and i don’t like the term safe space used in this context or the term echo chamber 🤔

However I've missed whatever thread it was that's given rise to several mysterious threads this morning! I feel a bit hampered.

If anyone wanted to summarise...

"Safe Space" is now a term used by people to stifle debate, disagreement and encourage group think. Any opinions (like defining two biological sexes) can be defined as "hateful" and see people banned.

People on here should be free to express their views. I've been on too many websites (completely unrelated to gender) and people use the trans issue to deliberately get people banned. I was recently goaded into talking about detransitioners and that resulted in an immediate ban.

MN is safe for people to openly discuss these sort of issues.

That's not exactly what you were told though.

I said I questioned whether FWR is the correct place to support male transitioners, given doing so will potentially exclude the women in their lives from visiting here, which is supposed to be a feminist space

I said this particularly to pre-empt what I think will be the next trend- a wave of heterosexual / AGP detransitioners. When that happens and they are lauded here, what happens to the trans widows who were their victims?

This may not be a female only space, but users of it, in my view, should prioritise vulnerable women over men. I wouldn't have thought that was a controversial view in feminism.

I'm sorry if you felt bullied and I did apologise for misunderstanding your intentions, before the thread was deleted, but you may not have seen it.

To answer the Q - in this climate, this is one of the few places we can actually discuss this to some degree.

The only reason is likely that this is a big Women's forum & the whole thing would implode if they were to seen as being unsupportive of issues that females, particularly feminists feel strongly about.

Have had posts deleted too, but generally speaking we can share here

Those of us who want to discuss the Genderism trend can generally do so here without being immediately banned or run off by other members.

Men tend to not gather here & while the Gender Extremists must lurk here, we are largely left to our own tiny, TERFY corner of the internet

Thanks Finegar.

So she was ticked off for pointing out the detransitioners poor behaviour on Twitter?

I do think it's hard to balance all the various interests and concerns on MN.
Given anything relating to Trans is shoved in the feminism, sex and gender section, that means all discussions happen in feminism even if they are not woman focussed.
So a thread centring a detrans man may be better made elsewhere on the site but that's not allowed. Forced teaming, if you like.

So MN posters are free to talk about a male detransitioner positively and also to point out their problematic behaviour.

Having read Tinsel's post now, I'm going to repeat a bit of mine which I think is relevant-

Anything relating to Trans is shoved in the feminism, sex and gender section, that means all discussions happen in feminism even if they are not woman focussed.

So a thread centring a detrans man may be better made elsewhere on the site but that's not allowed. Forced teaming, if you like.

That's going to need addressing, if Tinsel is right. The feminism section shouldn't be diverted into a support group for detransing men. There's more to feminism than gender criticism, even if that's an urgent current focus.

This is all very similar to when we used to have well known "transexual allies" (ie AGP men) lauded and fawned over here. Thankfully that's slackened off recently as those individuals have generally moved in to other pastures (such as "journalism")

Really it boils down to who do you want here, men who have benefitted (at least at some point) from gender ideology, and who have worn our faces and aped our oppression, or the women who were their victims? You can't have both.

Some people may think that men like trans widows exes have more to contribute to the debate than we do. That's a legitimate choice, but it's not a feminist one.

It does sound a bit like there's some confusion and conflation between 'feminist space' and 'safe space'.

Feminism is by and for women.

That has nothing to do with safe spaces.

picklemewalnuts. You make some really interesting points about forced teaming, I hadn't thought about that and yes, a discussion is probably needed. This is one of the things I love about this board, you lot always make me think.

TinselAngel You did apologise as soon as you realised the OP didn't know about the Twitter exchange. FWIW, I don't think the OP was there to support the detransitioner but that he spoke so well about his experience (and we often talk here about detranitioning here). He is very articulate BUT also his behaviour on Twitter was shocking. I think the OP was right to delete the thread but someone said "safe space" (not you) before it was pulled and I thought "FWR? Safe Space?" That was my impression, anyway.

But it's not really about yesterday's thread. It was just one of the triggers that got me thinking about using the term safe space for this board generally.

I agree that supportive threads should be left alone and yes, this board is pretty unique for being able to gather to talk about issues, without threats of violence etc, no matter how robust the discussion gets.

I don't think FWR is a "safe space" if that means everybody has to be nice to each other, but I do believe that it should be a space that puts women first.