On the Proper Use of Safe Spaces

[ysabetwordsmith]

So people are picking on college students again for needing safe spaces. I think the world would be a better place if we picked on people less and supported people more. In that interest ...


* Safe spaces are good for everyone. They provide an accepting, open atmosphere where people can be themselves. They soothe frazzled nerves and prevent people from overextending themselves until they make bad decisions, snap at someone, dissolve in tears, or have a panic attack. It is better for people to learn the early warning signs of trouble so they can stop before bad things happen. This kind of self-regulation is a necessary skill for a healthy, happy life. Have a quiet room where people can relax and recharge. Think of it as a circuit breaker for people, so that a sudden surge doesn't wreak havoc.

* Lots of people have had crappy experiences. Rape, child abuse, PTSD, poverty, chronic illness, all kinds of shit -- most of it invisible from the outside -- means that people need to manage their resources. They don't always have the energy to cope with something uncomfortable, because life has already beaten them bloody. That means either they hole up and avoid stressors, or they go out and take the damage, both of which are bad outcomes. If you think that college makes it okay to hurt people, or that folks with a rough past don't deserve an education, go fuck yourself.

* What a safe space does is make it possible for people to push their limits MORE without hurting themselves in the process. It respects agency. People can tolerate more stress when they have the power to stop if it gets to be too much for them. This supports further growth. Conversely, if you force people past their limits, that makes them feel helpless in addition to doing more damage, which reduces their ability to cope with future challenges.

* Along with safe spaces, people also need coping skills. The people most in need of them often don't have them, because the same things that fuck people up in the first place tend to interfere with healthy development. Not everyone is lucky enough to enter school with all the resources they need. School is for learning, not beating up on people because they don't already know things. So, teach coping skills! Make sure students know where they can get self-help information and a counselor if they need that. Put coping resources in the safe space. This means that people can use the safe space to regroup, rather than trying to avoid challenging topics forever.

* I have cleaned up after way too many teachers who didn't care if their lectures hurt people. I have had total strangers bawling on my shoulder because somebody thought it was a grand idea to show slides of dismembered corpses and then make fun of anyone who was upset by that. When people are in pain, they are not learning. As in physical exercise, there are soft and hard limits. If you think it's okay to torment your students, you should not be teaching. It's okay to push soft limits, if you have someone's consent; it is not okay to break hard limits. That kind of mistreatment violates the social contract between teacher and student, making it impossible to do your job. So don't be a dick.

* Here's how I address this stuff as a writer and a teacher, because I handle nightmare fuel like genocide, rape, cannibalism, torture, etc. I let people know that we're going to be discussing intense topics and a general idea what's coming up. If they need to leave, they can. It's up to them whether this is something they can work with today. If not, here are some alternative assignments you can choose that will cover similar concepts for the class outline but allow you to avoid your worst triggers. For those choosing to participate in today's discussion, plan ahead. Have a shortlist of coping skills if you start to feel upset: close your eyes, take a deep breath, play with a fidget toy, doodle in your notebook. Leaving is farther down, and should not be your first option, but use it if you need it. Do you want to be alone then, or do you want someone to help you ground? You can come back and try this again another day if you wish. We will be talking about difficult subjects in an open, respectful manner. We will deal with whatever comes up, without shutting down the discussion. If you make it through the material, great. It comes with resources for further learning. Here are some things you can do to address the aftermath (if we're discussing a historic issue) or work on solving the problem (for current issues). Don't just shovel out challenging ideas without giving people the tools and techniques they need to understand and deal with it. Lay the foundation before you start putting heavy things on it, or you will have a pile of wreckage to deal with and it will not be fun or productive for anyone. But if people trust you because you have taken good care of them and handled the hard stuff well in the past, they will follow you through the valley of death and it will be awesome.

* Don't turn away from the difficult things in the world. Don't throw other people under the bus. Instead, face challenges directly and help each other to overcome them. It is okay if you need help, or if you need more than one attempt to scramble over a particular hill. Keep trying and don't give up. Also keep an eye on each other, so that you can give and receive support, because helping others can make you feel better. A lot more problems get solved that way, with a lot less heartache in the process.

Comments

[johnpalmer]

I learned a long time ago that when you make a choice to bear discomfort, it makes it much, much, much easier to bear. So having a safe space means you can handle the distressing topic, because "if this gets to be too much, I know I can go somewhere safe and comfortable."

That link also has one of the worst uses of the slippery slope I've seen. "It's not that safe spaces are inherently bad, though I'm arguing that they are. It's how they'll be misused, and you know they will be!"

Oooh, scary shit there. College students might make mistakes. That's never happened in the history of education until "safe spaces" were invented!

[stardreamer]

Sounds to me as if someone is confusing the "helicopter parent" culture that prevents kids from learning how to take care of themselves with measures intended to enable people to take care of themselves.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That's what I think. A challenge here is that this stuff is all stacked together. If you protect kids from everything, then they don't learn the skills necessary for adulthood. Then suddenly people are bitching that the young adults are infantile and useless and displeasing. Well, you should've thought of that before you did the mental equivalent of footbinding, dumbass society. It's not the students' fault if they didn't get a healthy childhood. It's also not their fault if someone hurt them on purpose and now they're limping for a while.

Sure, some people will abuse a safe space. They also hit each other with library books and fuck without condoms. The point is to teach people how to use tools properly. If they didn't get it at home, they damn well better get it at school or we'll be stuck with people who don't know what they're doing.

[clockworklady.livejournal.com]

I agree. Coping skills and having a counsellor available who isn't horrible is sorely needed.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

A good counselor is worth their weight in water. A bad one, toxic waste. 0_o So too, coping skills can be positive or negative. People need positive ones.

[clockworklady.livejournal.com]

I think that's the same with teachers, too. I will happily acknowledge my good ones and even my good-enough ones, but the terrible ones can steal years of growth and joy away by teaching toxic lessons- I hardly know why, you can't use those things after you steal them.

[calcifermagnet.livejournal.com]

Thanks for a link to the NY Times Article... it was rather bizarre. It seemed like the real article is "college students today are infantile (get off my lawn!!)" tied together with a theme "we'll choose safe spaces as a theme, then define it to mean whatever I want".

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> Thanks for a link to the NY Times Article... it was rather bizarre. <<

Glad I could help.

>> It seemed like the real article is "college students today are infantile (get off my lawn!!)" <<

Oh, if they think it's bad now, wait until they get the kids who've grown up locked inside because their parents were afraid to let them go to the fucking park for fear that police would murder the kids or kidnap them. If you don't raise kids, because you don't know how or didn't want them or were working 80 hour weeks to keep food on the table, then you wind up with very tall children. You have to teach them how to be adults, and that's not happening as much anymore due to resource gaps.

>> tied together with a theme "we'll choose safe spaces as a theme, then define it to mean whatever I want". <<

Yeah, that's never a good thing.

[mdlbear]

That op-ed was disgusting; it (deliberately, I suspect) conflates exposure to challenging new ideas with exposure to PTSD triggers. :P

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

The problem is that those two can be the same thing. Or new ideas can make people decompensate badly even if they don't have PTSD, if they have no fucking coping skills. I cannot count how many times teachers have dumped huge, scary ideas into the public air with exactly zero support. Well of course people freak out. But most of them will just quietly shut down, zone out, and not learn anything because the idiot teacher didn't do their job right.

College is like working out. You have to know what you're doing, warm up, exercise appropriately to your current level of expertise, and preferably have a good coach. Because if you don't, you're going to rip something. Look at the dropout rate of colleges. Those are students who either weren't served by the material, were too battered to continue, or couldn't afford to keep going. Not a good thing.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

You know, it's one of my dreams to create a micro-nation that's just one large safe space. For some people society is implacably hostile.

Then there's people who deride the very notion of a safe space.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> You know, it's one of my dreams to create a micro-nation that's just one large safe space. <<

I'd go for layers, because no one thing will be ideal for everyone. I'd prefer to see respect and open discussion as prevailing ideals. But there should be protected space for damaged people, and venues for safe confrontation for people who enjoy that sort of thing. A lot of the larger parks in Terramagne have a soapbox with seats in front of it where people can exercise their free speech. They just aren't guaranteed a captive audience.

>> For some people society is implacably hostile. <<

Sadly so.

>> Then there's people who deride the very notion of a safe space. <<

Which is why we need safe spaces.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Well, no nation is just one thing... there would be different spaces for different functions. But the idea is to create a protected area. Kind of like a wildlife preserve for people, with a range of habitats within it. To use an analogy. Although to extend the metaphor, it would need rangers.

Because it would have it's big game hunters, emotional predators who hunt for sport.

Re: Thoughts

[cissa.livejournal.com]

The idea that "honest confrontation" is ALWAYS ideal is crazy-making. No, it's not. Power differentials, energy differentials, and basic bullying mean that REQUIRING this is a form of bullying.

Sometimes we need safe spaces. Sometimes passive-aggression is a better counter to naked aggression than going head-to-head- like Daoism: be water, flowing around the stone.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> The idea that "honest confrontation" is ALWAYS ideal is crazy-making. No, it's not. Power differentials, energy differentials, and basic bullying mean that REQUIRING this is a form of bullying. <<

That's why I'm bothered by the increasing requirement for campus sexuality classes. You go to a class that claims you always have the right to say no to anything sexual -- except that class, where you can't say no to a detailed discussion of sex stuff with a roomful of not-very-mature college students who mostly don't want to be there. For a lot of students, that means their choices are let someone hurt them again, or go without an education. By all means, offer the information, attach a bribe to it to encourage more participation, but if you make it a requirement then you're forcing people into a sexualized situation which is not okay. You should not have to talk about sex at school or work.

>> Sometimes we need safe spaces. Sometimes passive-aggression is a better counter to naked aggression than going head-to-head- like Daoism: be water, flowing around the stone. <<

True.

Re: Thoughts

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Very true, about the required classes. Its tricky. Some of the people who would opt out are exactly the people such needs to try to educate... but triggering is not good, ever. And how to tell the difference?

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That's why I'd go for bribery. Attach a social, not academic perk and you will get a lot of students who come for a party or free pizza. "Now that you've gone over the parameters for responsible interaction, we have a singles dance party in Ballroom A, a buffet in Ballroom B, and study partner mixer in Ballroom C..."

Re: Thoughts

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Perfect!

I pretty much always support bribery as a motivator. :)

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Yep. Because if you force people to do things, you're teaching them that might makes right. That hurts some of them, encourages others to hurt someone else, and makes all of them distrust you and take it out somewhere else.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

A lot of people see safe space as a weakness. Or they're jealous of it because they had to work out their trauma without support. I tend to get eye-rolly at trigger warnings taken to extremes (a warning for violence and the only thing is the word "violence") but I acknowledge not every one has my level of cynicism. ([bad thing of your choice]? Must be a day ending in Y)

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> A lot of people see safe space as a weakness. Or they're jealous of it because they had to work out their trauma without support. <<

I've seen a lot of that. And that right there is a key reason why we have such a high rate of mental illness: people are penalized for seeking help, or it is simply unavailable.

So hey, which would you rather do: tell students they can leave and visit the safe room if they need to, or deal with violent our tearstruck outbursts in class that disrupt everyone's learning experience?

>> I tend to get eye-rolly at trigger warnings taken to extremes (a warning for violence and the only thing is the word "violence") but I acknowledge not every one has my level of cynicism. ([bad thing of your choice]? Must be a day ending in Y) <<

Agreed. That's a bad habit carried over from America's worse-than-useless movie rating system. I favor the tagging structure used in many internet archives and activities, where there are a few that almost everyone warns for (major character death, rape, child harm) and beyond that a lot that are common warned for (past abuse, canon-typical violence). Then you need to know your audience to get their unique triggers; I had someone ask me to flag "asking for help and getting it" which a lot of people agreed was ... not necessarily a bad thing for them but not something they could handle on low spoons. When you've got examples like that, it's not hard to learn how to do effective warnings.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

And Goddess bless the teacher (headmistress at a very small private school) who saw what reading Anne Frank's diary was doing to me in 7th grade and let me read "My Antonia" instead. ("Diary of a Young Girl" is the only book that has ever flat out broken me. I'm in my mid-50s, and I still can't read it.)

[clockworklady.livejournal.com]

That teacher did the right thing- it sounds like she was someone who wasn't scared of sensitivity.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Mrs. Turner was one of the best teachers I ever knew, including college, grad school, and law school. By the time I realized how special she had been and tried to contact her to thank her, it was no longer possible - but hers is the example I try to live up to.

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Enh, I'm skeptical about safe spaces, but that's because I've been ejected from them because my EXISTENCE was considered to be triggering. (One LGBT safe space kicked me out for being multi; the other tossed me for refusing to use gender-binary pronouns. One of them was a suicide support chat too, which pretty much cured me of any inclination to go to suicide support lines.)

On the whole, I found them only useful if you happen to conform to the exact identity labels they were made for. Getting kicked out, usually quite abruptly, tended to be a nasty surprise; at least trolls, I EXPECT to be douchey, and I can fight back.

--Rogan

Alas!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> Enh, I'm skeptical about safe spaces, but that's because I've been ejected from them because my EXISTENCE was considered to be triggering. (One LGBT safe space kicked me out for being multi; the other tossed me for refusing to use gender-binary pronouns. <<

The pronoun issue is made of especially pure stupid.

>> One of them was a suicide support chat too, which pretty much cured me of any inclination to go to suicide support lines.) <<

And this is why we have a dearth of help-seeking behavior: because when people go looking for help, very often they get smacked for it, and that kills the urge very quickly.

>>On the whole, I found them only useful if you happen to conform to the exact identity labels they were made for. Getting kicked out, usually quite abruptly, tended to be a nasty surprise; at least trolls, I EXPECT to be douchey, and I can fight back.<<

I am sorry to hear that what I wrote about Stan and Lawrence's experience was so accurate. :( Safe spaces are supposed to be safe, but they just ... aren't, always.

[tomtac.livejournal.com]

Great title. Safe places have a place and time, as the bible says.

"Yes" to supporting each other, being thoughtful of other people's trauma, and training people to handle difficult topics.

"No" to shutting down communication on difficult topics, and calling speakers out on bringing difficult topics up.

And I wonder what now happens if there are "puerile" universities (the article used that word) in the U.S. as opposed to more adult universities in other areas? How does one get training in handling the kind of conflict in discussions that will happen during the course of a lifetime?

[Edit: I'd say such "puerile" colleges, having taken the place that used to be held by high schools, should no longer be considered "higher education".]

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I was lucky enough to be able to go to a women's college, which meant I mostly avoided many of my triggers- the ones that I found when I had to take a class off-campus.

And even when stuff happened on-campus- like, my Latin class was 3 women and about 15 to-be-priests, most of whom seemed to think we were there for their sexual experimentation before they took vows- just having Sr Agnes as the teacher, AND being on my home turf, made it easier.

In general, St Kate's was a pretty safe space. And I SO needed that!