What Happens When People Disagree in Safe Spaces
Content warning: brief discussion of intimate partner abuse and other interpersonal violence.
A lot of my friends are young, college-educated, politically left-wing feminist, anti-racist and/or queer activists — card-carrying millennial SJWs. I spend a lot of time in Safe Spaces ™. So I think I have a pretty good handle on what often goes down in those parts, and what truth there is to the prevailing stereotypes and speculations.
One stereotype is that in a Safe Space, people aren’t allowed to disagree with one another and everyone has to be Nice. And there is some truth to that — part of the purpose of establishing rules for interaction in a space is to keep conflict to a minimum and preserve a certain amount of friendly, nonthreatening atmosphere. However, open disagreement does occur. It just ideally happens a bit differently, and with less harm.
For instance, in one Safe Space, a person I’ll call Kathy was joyfully telling her friends about a new job she had just been offered. She’d worked hard, was very close to graduating, and this was her first professional position in her desired field of expertise. Several times, I heard her refer to this job as her first “Grown-Up Job,” and after a little while, I said this to her:
“Kathy, I’m happy for you, and I don’t want you to think I’m trying to police your language. However, when you use the phrase ‘grown-up job’ like that, it really bothers me because for a long time in my twenties I was working part-time retail jobs to support myself as a college drop-out. I was no less an adult then than you are now. I understand you don’t mean to imply that I wasn’t, and I am not asking you to stop, I just want you to be aware of how I feel about it.”
She said “I understand.” There was a lull in the conversation, and later people started talking about other things. If Kathy was bothered by what I said, she didn’t say anything to me about it.
This is one example of an instance of mildly offensive speech being dealt with in a way roughly consistent with the values of the social justice community. I say “offensive” because I was, in fact, offended. I say “mildly” because I was not very offended, and the terminology isn’t broadly or pervasively considered offensive in the way that slurs and other hate speech is. There is no official or unofficial rule in any Safe Space that I know of against the phrase “grown-up job” being used to refer to professional, full-time employment requiring specialized education or training. It’s just a word I personally find hurtful, because it connotes a classist stigma against people like me who have had to work menial jobs without expecting to simply grow out of them.
A common social norm in Safe Spaces is that if the social norms are violated, they’re enforced in a compassionate way that relies on everyone’s humanity and desire to learn. Ideally, conflict is not avoided, but resolved peaceably. A phrase that gets used a lot is “your feelings are valid”, meaning that it’s okay to feel mad or sad or proud or frustrated or scared or happy; the full range of human emotion is not only inevitable but worth celebrating.
However, having a valid feeling doesn’t excuse expressing it in a way that hurts people, and that goes for me as well as Kathy. My feelings of shame and annoyance with Kathy’s word choice was valid, but so was her pride and happiness at having achieved an important milestone in her career. She used the phrase “grown-up job” not because she thinks people without similar jobs are immature, but because getting that job helped her feel more grown-up, and as a young woman on the cusp of independence, that feeling was absolutely essential to her experience. If I had just bluntly told her “that offends me”, I would have been just as guilty of violating that social norm as she was, if not more so. So, in order to respect the validity of her feelings, I allowed her ample time to celebrate her achievement, congratulated her, and explained to her the context of my feelings so as not to hold her responsible for my experience.
It’s important to know that nobody in a Safe Space has perfect understanding and compassion. We all make mistakes. I want to make it clear that the norms and scenarios I describe here are idealistic and far from universal. In fact, I have seen conflict avoidance occur more often in Safe Spaces than conflict resolution. If someone says something offensive in a Safe Space, the result is more often that it gets ignored until the speaker has left. That reflects another social norm in Safe Spaces: that nobody is required to call out offensive speech if they don’t personally feel comfortable or confident enough to do so. Sometimes it’s just a matter of habit in the case of individuals who aren’t used to being free to speak their mind, whereas sometimes it’s more important for a person to reflect on their feelings in private than air them openly right away.
Another thing to keep in mind that each Safe Space has its own set of norms and rules. Some have extensive lists of specific words and phrases that are flat-out banned, and use of them will incur immediate and blunt enforcement. One online community I am a part of has such a list, and moderators enforce it with almost robotically dispassionate regard. Some spaces have only a few subjective norms, sometimes as simple as “don’t be a dick” or “think before you speak”. Sometimes, the culture of a space will change to reflect the changing needs of the people using them. I am a member of one group that had no formal rules or leadership until one member began harassing and abusing other members. Appealing to that person’s compassion and explaining the harm their actions did was not effective, so a formal set of rules needed to be established in order to protect the group and prevent future abuses. Every community is different, and faces different threats. A suit of armor won’t protect you from heat stroke, and sunscreen won’t protect you from a bullet. In the same way, different social dangers call for different social protections.
Another idea I want to address is the pervasive stereotype that Safe Spaces exist to protect people from encountering ideas they disagree with, and people seek them out in order to avoid thinking about ideas they disagree with. I’m sure this may be some people’s motives, however, in my experience this is not the primary function of Safe Spaces. In fact, in several of the Safe Spaces I frequent, we discuss ideas we disagree with all the time. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had about racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice occurred within a Safe Space, where I felt emboldened to speak my mind. I knew that, per the established norms of that community, I would not be attacked for my opinions, and disagreements could be handled peacefully. And because I could not simply say “Your ideas are dumb and you’re dumb for having them,” I would have to respectfully explain why I disagree, and accept that I may not be able to convince anyone. It improves my arguing skills. It helps me stay calm. It helps me get used to the fact that disagreements aren’t usually going to result in lost friendships or panic attacks. It helps me feel more confident disagreeing with people in public, open spaces.
Another story from one of my favorite Safe Spaces. I heard two young people talking about a third person who wasn’t present, trying to figure out her behavior. “How could she say she’s attracted to trans men, but then not respect their identities and keep misgendering them?” I thought of a possible answer and told them.
“Some people — not all of them, but some — are attracted to people with marginalized identities at least in part because they see them as vulnerable and easy to manipulate. If someone says they’re attracted to trans men and ends up in a relationship with one, they can use that person’s vulnerability to get their way later. They’ll say things like ‘You should feel lucky that I even gave you a chance.’ They might say ‘If you leave me, nobody else will ever love you.’ And then they’ll get away with whatever they want to do in that relationship.”
This is a real thing that happens. It’s happened to several people I know, and a lot of people I don’t know who have written about the experience. Now, I want to make it clear that I was not trying to make any assumptions about any specific person, but I felt it was necessary to expose these young people to the idea of fetishization as a factor in intimate partner abuse before they encountered it in their own love lives, even though in both theory and practice it’s an idea that they would find disgusting and abhorrent. It’s better for them to learn it from a trusted source whose aim is to protect them from harm than from someone who will leverage their vulnerabilities against them.
And that’s what it really comes down to: presenting ideas and having conversations in ways that are likely to cause less harm, especially for people who statistically are more likely to be harassed, abused, assaulted, and otherwise harmed than the general population. It isn’t ideas we’re trying to avoid, it’s modes of expression, modes that utilize insults, dehumanizing rhetoric, incendiary provocation, or just callous disregard for others’ feelings. Because like it or not, these things do cause harm. The negative effects of stereotypes on the brain is well documented; look up “stereotype threat” if you’d like to do some of your own research. And that’s just one of the many social dangers that Safe Spaces are established to mitigate.
A trend I have noticed among critics of Safe Space culture is the tendency to assume all conflict is rooted in a difference of opinion, as if the most important thing about any given social interaction is the ideas being expressed. If two people are having an argument, and one of them says “you’re hurting me,” and the other says “I disagree,” the fundamental problem is not that they disagree. It’s that one of the people feels hurt, and the other is denying it, thus adding to the injury. The purpose of such an argument, from at least one person’s perspective, is to solve a problem the other person doesn’t even recognize, and they will never be able to solve the problem together if they can’t agree there’s a problem in the first place.
That’s really the worst kind of conflict that sometimes occurs in Safe Spaces: when someone denies that another person’s problem even exists. It violates the prime directive of Safe Space culture: that everyone’s feelings are valid. We don’t go around assuming that other people are lying about their pain, because the harm that could potentially be done by ignoring someone’s pain far outweighs the theoretical harm they could do by lying about it. By adhering to the principle that everyone’s feelings are valid, we aren’t naively denying that liars exist or that sometimes people exaggerate their troubles to get attention. We’re giving everyone a chance to speak with confidence that they’ll be believed, and hopefully, that will result in more truthful expression, not less. If someone really is making up stories of victimization to take advantage of an empathic and nurturing community, that will eventually come to light, in part because someone else will hopefully feel braver about calling out the inconsistencies or inaccuracies of the story. And even if someone is making up stories, the feelings driving the lie are still real to that person: feelings of loneliness, detachment, fear, or resentment that they may be too insecure to confront directly. Someone who lies about being hurt in a specific way is still hurt, just not in that specific way. Compassion for that person may be too little too late, and they may not know how to get their needs met productively, but they deserve at least the chance and the benefit of the doubt at first.
What I often see happening is people entering a Safe Space, and at first reveling in the acceptance and unconditional positive regard they find there, and then seeming to get drunk on it. They’ll feast on validation and sympathy, without giving much back. Eventually, the good will runs out, not because peaceful relations are fundamentally unsustainable but because the relationship is unbalanced. Conflict will eventually result. And sometimes, a person who has been enjoying a lot of acceptance and validation will need to be told “You did something that caused harm, and we need you to apologize and not do it again.” No matter how calmly and gently this news is delivered, some people will not be able to take the criticism. These are the ones who will throw their hands up and say “PC culture is silencing me!” and accuse the community of being intolerant of disagreement. These situations always sadden me, because I hate to see someone recuse themself from a discussion simply because they interpreted a criticism as a rejection or an attack.
On behalf of my various communities to all the people who have felt excluded or censored by Safe Space rules: We didn’t want you to leave. We wanted you (together with us) to learn better conflict resolution skills. Sending someone away is typically our last resort after all attempts at resolution have exhausted us. We’re trying to do better. Will you help?
Someone recently told me that I wouldn’t be so upset at them if I would just engage with their ideas, and ignore all my emotions about them. And I’m here to say, even if that were possible, I wouldn’t do it. I am not a brain in a jar, devoid of nonintellectual stimuli to distract me from pure reasoning. Why the hell would I want that? And even if I did, it’s not possible; we live in a world full of beautiful, vulnerable, mortal people with all their terrible pleasures and exquisite pains, and many of them are hurting right now. I’m going to turn toward that hurt and see what I can do about it, and engage with ideas once we all feel safe to do so. I know several places where we do feel a lot safer, so why not join us there? Just keep the rules in mind, think before you speak, don’t be a dick, and remember that all our feelings are valid.
