On Safe Spaces

"My freedom ends where your safety begins."
                                               --how a teacher explained freedom of speech in 7th grade

I’m a big believer in safe spaces. Having to navigate somewhere that isn’t my house takes a lot of effort; I only noticed just how much effort once I left school and stopped having to spend 6 hours a day in a strange-to-me place. But I’ve always felt most comfortable in my house–my bedroom, especially. Maybe that’s why I like stories about people trying to protect their homes from outsiders.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly constitutes a safe space–what safety even is. Because I’ve seen that the safe space can turn into an oppression-sword real fast. Like when a cissexual feminist isn’t “comfortable” around trans* women because they don’t fit her theories:

“I am not comfortable being my radical feminist self amongst transpersons. Reading transperson accounts online and in books does not help it either–in fact, it heightens my inability to speak freely. How can I, a gender abolitionist, feel comfortable speaking out against gender and its manifestations in the company of a transperson? ….. I think gender is woefully destructive and I put it to blame for so much of what pits us against our bodies. But what I am arguing for and about smacks against what transpersons feel is their reality and experience. In recognizing their daily trauma and very real oppression they receive I don’t have the *guts* to sit in a room and speak the truths I feel about gender with a transperson.”

–Pisaquari, “RadfemPhobia” (hat tips: Lisa and Queen Emily)

My bedroom is an important safe space for me because spending time in it gives me the energy to leave. Since leaving school, I’ve done all kinds of things that I didn’t have the time, energy or ability to do beforehand:

• go for more walks (especially alone)
• help count turtle nests on the beach during mating season
• do my own grocery shopping (my mom drives me to the store, but I find everything I need myself…for the most part).
• volunteer at a small video game store, testing devices and cleaning thumbsticks
• learn about UNIX
• volunteer writing reviews of video games and cult films
• see plays (season tickets, baby!)
• start learning how to write grants for the library
• start learning about disability rights, transgender/transsexual issues and feminism
• work on this blog
• work out at the YMCA

These things aren’t easy, and they certainly aren’t always comfortable. For instance: navigating the playhouse is still new and weird to me, though it gets easier with time. But if my safe space protected me from any and all discomfort, thereby stifling my growth and development as a person, it would be a very harmful space, indeed.

Similarly, I hope this blog is a safe space. I don’t always read other people’s tone of voice well, and understand criticism much better in text than in speech. I chose this format not because it makes me feel good, but because it will allow me to actually listen to and learn from critiques and disagreements.

So when I see calls to give white author Amanda Marcotte a “safe space” from which to respond to criticisms that she failed to cite other people’s work (particularly women of color) in an article she wrote about immigration, I think: “Huh?” When people ask that those raising concerns about the racist comics introducing the chapters in her book to hush up so she doesn’t feel attacked, I’m like, “What, now?”

“Safety” does not mean “freedom from disagreement.” It means the freedom to be, to do, to think and discuss. Which makes some people’s behavior of late all the more disgusting.

I’ve seen white editors of a feminist press barge into a woman of color’s blog and demand that she tell them why she doesn’t like them. (For the story, see Prof. Black Woman’s Why Seal Press if Off the Syllabus).This blogger now feels unsafe in the space she created. (Read her fairwell at Sylvia/M’s Problem Chylde). I’ve seen a woman of color who’s done years of blogging about immigration and other issues make make that work private to protect it from those who’d use it for their own ends. I’ve seen a cissexual woman spew transphobic, racist crap on a trans* woman’s blog–and hide behind a psuedonym to do it. Thanks to Monica Roberts and Phyllis Frye, I have seen a huge organization (the Human Rights Campaign) call the police (the police!) on a small number of non-violent trans* people who were protesting a fundraising dinner.

I guess the people who deserve all the “safe spaces” are those who’ve always been safe.

As a white, cissexual person who’s passed for straight, I’m safe everywhere I go. In fact, as Jessica Hoffman points out in her Open Letter to White Feminists, I am so safe that I can trust the police to help if I’m the victim of a crime, domestic violence or random acts of perviness. Although they may brutalize innocent people of color like Sean Bell (via Holly at Feministe) or 12-year-old Reinaldo Rodriguez, I’ll be safe. And my government will protect my country from all sorts of brown people, whether they’re a Muslim family or a Mexican woman. People may get beaten, raped and killed, but I’ll be safe.

And that’s all that matters, right? Because all people are equal. It’s just that some people are more equal than others.

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* Regarding the word “trans *”: I’ve borrowed this from Drakyn, who says: “I prefer to use the asterisk because there are so many possible variations on labels and identities.”

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