Lifting the lid on safe spaces
THERE is a scourge in society that’s ruining education, thanks to our weak-minded youth’s inability to tolerate criticism or time away from their blankie.
They’re referred to as “safe spaces” and they’re why the world is screwed.
Or so the people who misunderstand safe spaces would have you believe.
So, let’s talk about the “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” and what they actually are, instead of what their detractors assume them to be. My wife and I run two safe spaces. The basic idea behind a safe space is that it’s somewhere you can go to be yourself without fear of bigotry.
Sure, we should be able to expect to be safe anywhere we go, but hate, prejudice and fear are everywhere and sometimes that can be exhausting to put up with.
Some safe spaces are just for women, or gay men, or rape victims, or alcoholics, or Christians.
Safe spaces come in all flavours, be they a room at a library once a month, or a church on Sundays.
That’s right, a church is a safe space where you can go and worship freely, and be yourself without worrying some atheist is going to tell you your beliefs are stupid.
There’s a reasonable chance most opponents of safe spaces have safe spaces of their own, even if they don’t realise that’s what they are.
The biggest complaint about safe spaces appears to be that they stifle debate, but that’s simply not true.
Some of the most interesting discussions I’ve seen about gender, sexuality and the politics within the LGBTI community have taken place in safe spaces.
Unsurprisingly, debates tend to be a lot more interesting when the personal sledges and blind denial about the issues are taken out of the equation.
It turns out that when you respect the people and ideas involved in a dis- cussion, that discussion can go a lot deeper and offer more interesting conclusions than when you have to spend the first half of the debate convincing people the issue exists.
Part of the pushback against safe spaces seems to come from people who feel they have never needed one, without recognising that they call for them all the time.
Anyone who has ever said “why do people insist on being so PC?” is clearly craving a space where they can speak whatever offensive and tonedeaf thing is on their mind and have people agree with them instead of pointing out that they lack basic respect.
That “safe space” sounds awful, but if you found like-minded people and hung out together for an hour, you would have one.
Even meetings of the Ku Klux Klan are safe spaces for racists.
Another argument people have is that if you designate some spaces as “safe”, that means all other spaces are “unsafe”. And that’s true. The world at large is not safe. Homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and racism, whether casual or overt, are common.
Who wouldn’t want somewhere they could be with other people who didn’t think they were lesser because of things beyond their control?
Trigger warnings are another thing people get upset about.
“Those poor delicate flowers,” you might say, “not being able to handle a little violence/rape scene/racism in fiction”.
That is often said by the same people who want to ban books to shield children from ideas about sexuality and race, because they don’t understand irony.
Do you know what’s a good example of a trigger warning?
“The following program is rated MA, because it contains sex scenes and graphic violence.”
No one is suggesting we get rid of those.
So what’s wrong with a heads-up of “this book contains a rape scene”, so if someone has a traumatic memory of being raped, they can be emotionally prepared by the time that scene comes along?
Safe spaces and trigger warnings are nothing new.
It just seems that when we call them what they are, people who don’t understand them get upset. Alice Clarke is a Herald Sun columnist and freelance journalist
Alice Clarke THERE’S A REASONABLE CHANCE MOST OPPONENTS OF SAFE SPACES HAVE SAFE SPACES OF THEIR OWN, EVEN IF THEY DON’T REALISE THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE