CW: discussion of misogyny, discussion of fascism, mention of Nazis
[2024-09-29 note: This was previously posted on Cohost, on 2022-11-09 at https://cohost.org/ireneista/post/240258-no-safe-space-is-saf but the irenes.space URL is the permanent one.]
no safe space is safe for everybody
you always have to choose
good praxis can make those choices less frequent and less painful, but you have to know, in principle, who the space is for, who you would prioritize if a conflict came up
otherwise the choice will be made for you, and generally in favor of oppression more often than not, because oppressors, on average, are better at acting like victims than victims are at clarifying that
you cannot, for example, have a space that is safe both for women and for people who regard it as a major pillar of their identity that they make cruel jokes about women. that's one that will definitely come up, so in any community building effort, you need to know, going into it, which one you want to favor.
done well, that doesn't mean that people automatically win disputes by virtue of their marginalized status, and in fact places that try to do that usually end up... yes, favoring oppression, for the reason I gave above. all it means is that you have to have made that choice about what the space's priorities are, and everyone charged with enforcing it has to be on board with that.
it also doesn't mean that you need a complicated system of rules; we have more thoughts on formal rules in social spaces and how they generally get weaponized and do more damage than good, but that's another post
also-also, we started with an example where many people will probably feel that there's a clear-cut "right" choice, but it isn't always that way. our favorite example is that, in our experience with mental health support spaces, if you're building a support community for people with PTSD, there are certain other conditions which you're going to end up excluding, because no matter how hard you try, people need different communication styles.
you can create the most affirming, inclusive culture imaginable, but somebody is going to find that culture stifling and not be able to stand it. that's not the fault of the community leaders; it's inevitable
this probably sounds pretty academic, but here's what makes it a really practical concern that you need to care about sooner rather than later: Nazis and their allies
see, there are people who make it their mission in life to go around disassembling communities. there are pretty well established playbooks for it at this point. it isn't actually all that hard to fight back... as long as you know what you're fighting. as long as you understand, and believe, that yes there is loyal opposition out there who will lie fluidly, play your friends against each other, use your own stated values against you in any way they can, all for the boring and banal purpose of destroying things
we've had the displeasure in our travels of running into a few of those people; in a couple cases we even got confirmation of intent. we feel fortunate to have that. normally, you won't know for sure what's going on, so you just have to adjudicate things based on the best information available. everything you do in running social spaces needs to work **regardless** of whether the people involved mean what they say or not. it's not enough to get the right outcome; the process by which you get there needs to be one that embodies justice.
by the way, before we wrap up, this was going to be the post in which we just ported over our old Nazi furries thread from the other site, but we decided not to do that because this is a furry-heavy audience so it felt weird to be talking about that culture as if from the outside. summary: Nazi furs fuck off.
when we say community leader, we don't just mean people who have formal power. we mean anyone who has the respect of the group, who has social influence and the ability to steer things. that potentially includes everyone reading this, if you choose to see yourselves that way. in the long run, anyone who gets involved in community affairs and makes it a habit to listen to others, has quite a lot of power to steer things.
so - as a community leader, be intentional about who you want your social space to be for. think about that from the outset, so that the choice isn't taken out of your hands.