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Yep, the whole point of a safe space is to have someplace where you can actually discuss stuff without getting a bunch of representatives of the internet hive mind immediately jumping in with the straight white male perspective.
This isn't to imply that straight white guys don't have important things to say, but their perspective isn't the most helpful when you're trying to have a discussion about issues specific to, say, Asian people or women or some other group.
Note how often certain types of replies come up in any discussion on the internet. When people talk about college degrees, some people will instantly jump to the idea that STEM degrees are worth more than humanities degrees, and some people will automatically talk about trade school. When people talk about Star Wars, someone always instantly jumps to the prequel movies and how bad they are. When people talk about Islam, someone always brings up terrorism. And so on. Open discussions, especially discussions among people who are young and lack perspective on the world, tend to be very predictable.
Now, imagine that the immediate response to a topic coming up is something that is either mildly offensive to you or something that derails the discussion. If you're Asian, for example, discussions about Asian American issues that are open to everyone tend to get derailed by white people explaining how they're not part of the problem or how such-and-such isn't an important issue. If you're a woman, you'll instantly get men telling you that their problems are just as bad as yours or else minimizing your complaints (e.g., if your compaint is that you're sick of men ogling you when you work out).
Or, for more offensive examples, look at most online discussions of news stories that involve Asian people. Within the first few comments, you'll always run into something racist, sometimes something blatantly racist. Most online discussions about events that involve women will turn into men deciding whether or not they wish to mate with the woman involved.
This sort of discourse is exhausting!
It happens over and over and over, and eventually, people figured out that the only way to prevent it is to lock straight white people out of the discussion once in a while. It hurts them a bit, too, because straight white people aren't used to being denied access, and they're not used to being told that their opinions aren't valued.
Well, then need to toughen up a bit. Their opinions aren't important for the same reason my opinion on Lebanese cooking isn't important -- I have absolutely no experience with the subject, so I have nothing to add to the discussion. The difference, though, is that I don't go around pretending to know about Lebanese cooking techniques, so no one has to actively ban me from those discussions.
This isn't to say that straight white people are always wrong when they talk about these issues. Plenty of them have taken the time to learn what's what, and they can and do often take the time to discuss it with others. Even then, though, they're still reporting on someone else's experience rather than sharing their own experiences, so their discussions have their own appropriate contexts.
Meanwhile, it's incredibly valuable to ban those who only enter discussions of, say, women's problems in order to declare that women don't actually have any problems and that some man is more familiar with women's experiences than women themselves are.
And as an Asian person, I like the opportunity to discuss things without a peanut gallery of young white boys jumping in to make racist jokes, which is something that gets old really quickly.
Ok, just making sure that safe space means white males not allowed. Got it. So racism and sexism is ok in one direction but not the other.
"In educational institutions, safe-space (or safe space), safer-space, and positive space are terms used to indicate that a teacher, educational institution or student body do not tolerate perceived anti-LGBT violence, harassment, hate speech or disagreement, but rather are open and accepting to opinions aligned to their own, thereby creating a safe place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and all students."
So basically, it's a bunch of people who all share the same ideas and opinions sitting around agreeing with each other? Sounds like a useless waste of time and resources, and not something I would subject my child to.
Real life is learning how to work with people you strongly disagree with, and education should be focused on new ideas and perspectives.
Ok, just making sure that safe space means white males not allowed. Got it. So racism and sexism is ok in one direction but not the other.
Glad you could whitesplain that for me.
This is the exact thing that I'm talking about.
When you're watching a football game, you don't like to have to explain every ten seconds why that team is kicking the ball away or why the referee just threw a little yellow flag.
In the same way, people who actually know something about racism get tired of stopping to explain, every ten seconds, what racism is. You clearly don't know.
When you're watching a football game, you don't like to have to explain every ten seconds why that team is kicking the ball away or why the referee just threw a little yellow flag.
In the same way, people who actually know something about racism get tired of stopping to explain, every ten seconds, what racism is. You clearly don't know.
They'll never get it. Even when they become a minority.
"In educational institutions, safe-space (or safe space), safer-space, and positive space are terms used to indicate that a teacher, educational institution or student body do not tolerate perceived anti-LGBT violence, harassment, hate speech or disagreement, but rather are open and accepting to opinions aligned to their own, thereby creating a safe place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and all students."
So basically, it's a bunch of people who all share the same ideas and opinions sitting around agreeing with each other? Sounds like a useless waste of time and resources, and not something I would subject my child to.
Real life is learning how to work with people you strongly disagree with, and education should be focused on new ideas and perspectives.
A: At my last classroom (it's now a lesson on the Net) for EEOC, I found myself in a tight place when I brought up a "what if" and then had to present that "what if" to everyone in the room. It was my idea for initial attack on a new insurgence group to have the strike team comprised of ethnic groups usually found as custodians and dress them similarly. This would allow them to achieve a level of invisibility to many so that when witnesses are questioned afterwards, they wouldn't remember seeing such people. The presenter, on the side, said a defense to this would be to interview the custodial staff as well since they would notice outsiders.
The presenter pointed out that such thinking was appropriate for the area it was in, an undergrad terrorism course (in 1994) in the CJ department, but it perhaps might not be appropriate in another department.
B: So to the question at hand, one might want to ask how free thinking do they want people to be? How willing are we to allow others to study psychology (one of my courses was Methods of Propaganda) say, or literature (in the book Han Solo's Revenge, the droid takes cover by joining the work crew since no one ever notices those) to learn how to manipulate people, be it for CJ, business, or mass communications?
Or even worse in that I may be listening to someone talk and gathering information to develop "weapons" (be it offensive, defensive, support, or detection)....and I do have some defensive tactics that LGBT based. One ought to recognize that it can go both ways and ought to appreciate the Little Frozen Sparrow story. That is, long story short that not everyone who agrees with you is necessarily your friend.
In the University, we are in a thinking place but do we realize just how far our thoughts may go?
C: In acting, I have developed what I call a "sanctuary point". This is a quality about this or that character where when I am playing them, if I find I'm about to break character, I can "flee" to this aspect of who I am playing and use that to maintain stability until I am ready to step out again. The original character of the sanctuary point was a woman who had gone through a nerve gas attack so if I started to slip in my mental control, I could play that part of her, that part of her history.
So perhaps here we ought to be teaching students how to find safety mentally, in any place, at any time, instead of saying it must be a physical structure.
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 12-29-2015 at 05:32 PM..
"Safe Spaces" just started out as a way for people who are in the minority in some way to have at least one place campus they could go and not feel marginalized. It used to be just a meeting of a club or a room in a dorm or something. The idea was not to avoid conflict all together, but to get a break from it and maybe vent among people who would understand (or at least respect) your perspective. Maybe even plan how to combat campus attitudes/policies they found detrimental.
The irony is, I'm sure say the Campus Republicans club meeting operates as a "safe place" for right leaning people on left leaning campuses, they just don't call it that. LOL
I think Safe Space dorms and whatnot are too much. Instead, we need to teach college students how to have respectful dialogue. You are supposed to be able to debate ideas in college, even stupid ones.
The College Republicans are a safe space for Republicans. The football team is a safe space for football players. These are private organizations with no claim to represent everyone's interest and can do what they want. When a group of students demands that an entire university become "safe" for *them*, they are demanding (without knowing it) that it become unsafe for other people with opposing or different views, and therein lies the problem.
Good luck to these whiners when they get out in the real world. What are they going to do then?
Demand "safe spaces" at their jobs because no one else understands the micro aggressions they suffer from every day?
Demand "safe space" roads and highways? They just got honked at and flipped off because they're a gender/cultural minority? Not because they pulled left to make a right turn (crossing in to the other lane) and didn't put their blinker on. Not because they were driving 50 in a 65 MPH zoned highway, not because they rode their brakes and when they came to a full stop for a worm in the middle of the road, they got rear ended….
What's the point of hiding amongst your own in a "safe space"? How does that help "teach" others how you feel? Or is the purpose to just whine and feel sorry for yourselves and then come up with a list of demands that when presented, for the rest, seem to be straight out of left field.
I think these "safe spaces" are really "let's feel sorry for us, together, spaces". Group think, group "poor us" and a lot of "no one understands" conversations going on. How does that help those who are the perceived "causes" of why they feel the way they do? I think it's easier to do it "in private" so you don't have to hear how ridiculous you sound to the outside/real world/others.
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