I once entered a “safe spaces” Discord server with literal flowers and stuff. It looked very innocent and welcoming and it was just for gaming. Turns out, they were making fun of their members on it, fake-crying to mock a depressed user, and kept telling the users to “let them see their cuts”. It was so disturbing. These were literal 18-20 year olds, too, and I was like 13.
anywhere shit gets cliquey it gets toxic real fast - and that goes for ANY and ALL organisations.
safe-space concepts often inherently deals with an “us/them” dichotomy, which is unfortunately fertile ground for things getting cliquey.
it’s not that one must lead to the other, its just that the foundation is there so the risk is higher if it’s not managed properly.
this is why safe-spaces need to be protected from within and without. regardless of whether you’re in the clique or out of it, it hurts everyone in the end.
We have a human tendency to take safe spaces to mean “safe space for me, even if I make others unsafe”.
South Park made a good satire of exactly this, where Cartman immediately realized it meant he could continue being offensive and “safe space” away anything he didn’t want to acknowledge
If you think a save space is a public social media group with a bunch of anonymous users, you already went pretty wrong.
You’re not wrong. But there’s not a lot of other options a lot of times.
Fair enough, it was called a “safe space”
Because people do everything to silence the pain in themselves, even if that means inflicting pain onto other people.
Hmm, makes a lot of sense.
I feel you. Case in point; I just got torn up in an autism community after saying I had some science ideas I wanted an objective take on to determine if they had merit. Apparently I was not qualified to have ideas because I’m not a professional scientist, so it’s guaranteed that my theories are trash right out the gate.
“I’m too afraid to think and share my observations and hypotheses for peer review so nobody should, else I’d feel challenged/incompetent and that’s just too much for my little heart to bear.”
I think it was cruel sarcasm. Better to just move along.
In terms of self harm, the only “safe space” that should exist should be one that helps the person get the help they need - and the only kinda space that actually fits that criteria is often the relationship between a trusted stable friend/family member or a therapist. A space with only people struggling will end up as a toxic feedback loop that pulls everyone down.
Unfortunately, what people call a space doesn’t necessarily correspond to how you will experience it, or even reality. Always trust your own read of things.
