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.
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
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.
If you think a save space is a public social media group with a bunch of anonymous users, you already went pretty wrong.
