rEvolutionist wrote:Safe spaces are a different concept. I've got no problem with safe spaces at all, as long as there are still some "unsafe spaces" in which ideas can be challenged more robustly by those of us who don't feel oppressed by certain concepts.
Perhaps until this is given some thought, it would make sense.
There are unlimited "safe spaces" in this world, whether in general life or on college campuses. Go to your dorm room and tell everyone else to stay out. Reserve a conference room in a building or a library. Rent space here or there. Buy a house or building. Or, do anything else within private property that you like. Form a club any kind and exclude others.
Public places, however, cannot be coopted and declared "safe spaces" for some. if a group decides to take over a library and exclude black people, or white people, that is not the creation of a safe space. That's a crime.
And, calling it "safe spaces" in this context is a joke. Being exposed in a public place to "ideas which challenge robustly" is not a lack of safety.
There is a public building in my city that go to regularly. Out front, on the sidewalk there are always a series of people I walk by. There are some apparently poor people begging for money. There are other apparently poor people making little flowers and other crafts looking for money and they'll give you their little "corn husk rose" in return. There are political persons making speeches from time to time declaring this or that policy to be good or bad, or stumping for a particular politician. And, then there is my least favorite of all, the nutjob evangelical preachers with fucking bullhorns talking about Jesus and telling everyone to convert and be saved or be left damned for all eternity.
I hate having to hear all that shit while waiting in a security line to get in a building. It sucks. But, you know what, it ain't my sidewalk. It ain't my "safe space." So, I could, if I were a lunatic, get my own soapbox and present my counterarguments, but I choose not to. I don't however, have a right to "feel safe" from these ideas that I find distasteful.
There is nothing good about silencing these people in the name of safe spaces. Nothing. If the State does that, then the State creates an orthodoxy. These people can express their views because the political establishment thinks that their views aren't triggering or unsafe. Other people, however, have to shut their holes and go to designated unsafe spaces because their views are "challenging" and -- gasp - offensive.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
