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  • Writer's pictureRadical Queer Scholar

Regarding Safe Spaces and Free Speech

Updated: Apr 12, 2019

CN: free speech, safe spaces, privilege.


"Safe Spaces" exist for marginalized and oppressed peoples as means to find solidarity, support, actual physical/mental/emotional safety, access to resources and basic needs they would otherwise be denied, and sanctuary from their oppressors. Safe Spaces are not a construct that intends to censor or criminalize for what people say, they are not built to explicitly be exclusive nor wholly inclusive. They are made for a very clear and specific purpose. Safe Spaces exist for groups of similarly identified peoples who are oppressed, especially those who face a detriment to their human rights and needs and their actual safety.


A Queer Safe Space on a Campus is intended to include anyone under that umbrella and to provide for them that which I have previously listed. So that said, depending, "allies" may be excluded - and that is 100% acceptable. Allies do not get to call themselves allies nor do they deserve a space among those they claim to be allies for. An ally's job is to make the space around themselves safe for others, to be an activist and/or a supporter of the oppressed. They have no say anywhere else otherwise, in regards to those oppressed groups.


A campus is intended to be a place to learn and debate ideas - but what is important to understand, and especially in this space as Leftist Feminists, the post-secondary institutions are a construct of the systems that the oppressed own power in. Post-secondary institutions may work to be progressive, may provide safe spaces - but they are not safe. Many, if not most, uphold systems like the patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, classism, misogyny, transmisogyny, and a plethora of other -isms and -phobias.


So that said, because a campus is not a safe place for minorities, Safe Spaces are required for those minorities. Safe Spaces are not intended to be a place of debate or discourse - least of all between the oppressors and those they oppress. Queer people do not need to fight for their rights to exist in every single place they occupy, and yet we are forced to anyways. A Safe Space dedicated to us offers us a modicum of reprieve, alongside the other items I initially listed.


If you feel hurt, and that is if you are cis and/or hetero, that you are excluded from a Queer Safe Space - that's on you to reconcile. Not us. And no, that is not an infraction upon your "right to free speech".


SpeechBubble

The right to free speech, if we are speaking regarding North America, simply means the government cannot punish you for what you say, through whatever medium that is. The government cannot technically censor you. However, there are exceptions because you are not free from punishment for perpetuating discrimination, bigotry, hate, discriminatory violence, etc - intentionally or not.

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