From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces
May 14, 2017 6:13 PM   Subscribe

 
"We question the degree to which safety is a reasonable or appropriate expectation for any honest dialogue about social justice."

Glory! Neither god nor truth is a respecter of persons. Put some skin in the game.
posted by eustatic at 6:55 PM on May 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


In the Queer Asian American spaces I've run, one of the community agreements we put up was 'Brave Space' along with a bunch of other community agreements to make it a safe space. We encouraged people to come out and speak their truths. Bookmarking to read this later, how interesting.
posted by yueliang at 6:56 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thank you; that was really interesting and I'm going to keep thinking about a lot of those ideas. I especially liked the reframings of the common groundrules.
posted by lazuli at 8:21 PM on May 14, 2017


So the foundational paragraph is to misdefine "safe space", and the rest of the article is to argue against that misdefinition? Okay. Kind of makes every argument and every source they choose to include automatically suspect.
posted by kafziel at 8:24 PM on May 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


So the foundational paragraph is to misdefine "safe space", and the rest of the article is to argue against that misdefinition? Okay. Kind of makes every argument and every source they choose to include automatically suspect.

What should they have said?
posted by Sebmojo at 8:34 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Few deleted; flag the trolls, don't feed the trolls.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 9:33 PM on May 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


I appreciate this concept - it could have been useful in some discussions of privilege that I've been part of, if/when the participants were really willing to engage with it.

"Brave Space is usually a novel term for our students or participants, especially those who are familiar with the idea of safe space, and frequently piques their curiosity. In response, we often ask participants why the think we use the term brave space instead of safe space, with the goal of involving their critical lens immediately."

Seems like the novelty of the term/concept is pretty important in getting people to engage critically instead of going "oh yeah ground rules safe space whatever we know this already" and proceeding with the status quo. I wonder if that was the case back when "safe space" was a new term? What will happen when "brave spaces" become common - will we get yet another reframing to catch peoples' attention? (I'm pretty sure this applies to other terms and concepts as well. Surely someone has charted common courses of development...)
posted by sibilatorix at 9:40 PM on May 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Stephen Pinker's term "euphemism treadmill" kind of applies, I think.
posted by lazuli at 9:44 PM on May 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


What should they have said?

They should have thrown out their entire thing. They're arguing that safe spaces are bullshit based on false definition, using as their support a case study they deliberately ruined by introducing their false definition. Insisting throughout that safety is coddling to dominant forces and preventing dialogue.

A safe space is not a place free from confrontation, disagreement, or discomfort, as this article presupposes. That is the lie told by bigots when arguing against them. A safe space is a place where marginalized people - originally LGBT, but expanded - can go knowing that bigotry, hate speech, harassment, and bigoted violence will not be tolerated for even a moment, and be met with harsh rejection. A place where it is safe for them to exist, because nobody will deny them their right to exist. THAT is the "traditional language of safe space" that they're saying is irrelevant. And their rules for formulating a "brave space" completely fail on that front, offering only that typical liberal failure of discourse that confuses a civil tone with civil content, and demands that gross, violent repression be met as though it had a place at the table, so long as it's offered in a calm voice.
posted by kafziel at 10:09 PM on May 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


In the realm of indie roleplaying games, safe space roughly translates into "nobody gets hurt" and brave space roughly translates into "I will not abandon you"

The I will not abandon you (IWNAY) vs. nobody gets hurt (NGH) thread from the Fairgame archive

"I will not abandon you does not equal nobody gets hurt.

"In IWNAY, the social agreements are:

"I as a player expect to get my buttons pushed, and I will not abandon you, my fellow players, when that happens. I will remain present and engaged and play through the issue.

"I as a player expect to push buttons, and I will not abandon you, my fellow players, when you react. I will remain present and engaged as you play through the issue

"In NGH, the social agreement is that we know where each other's lines are, and we agree not to cross them.

"Both are reciprocal systems. If one person is pushing buttons and the other is supposed to just take it and not respond, the button pusher is a bully and the relationship is abusive...."
posted by otherchaz at 12:32 AM on May 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


They should have thrown out their entire thing. They're arguing that safe spaces are bullshit based on false definition, using as their support a case study they deliberately ruined by introducing their false definition. Insisting throughout that safety is coddling to dominant forces and preventing dialogue.

I agree that's not what they're supposed to be, though I think they're saying that's what they've become, and that it needs to shift.
posted by lazuli at 6:43 AM on May 15, 2017


I see these as two interrelated concepts. You cannot make the whole world a safe space; and yet, to make the world safe, the world must be actively confronted, rather than reacted to.
posted by eustatic at 7:02 AM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


At the risk of oversimplifying, I'm seeing "safe space" as an invitation to consider how I listen and respond to others, and "brave space" as an invitation to consider how I express myself. If I was writing a facilitation guide this morning, after only a first scan of the article and these comments, I think I would look for a synthesis. We need some form of both.

As something that's maybe related as a layer under this conversation, I think of Adam Kahane's work on "Power and Love" (Youtube TEDx).
posted by mrettig at 7:05 AM on May 15, 2017


You can have both.

The point of a "Safe Space" is to have a place where you can just be, and not have to be brave or defend your identity as a human being. Even the strongest, bravest, most impassioned defenders of their humanity need a time to just take a fucking break and not constantly be on defense.

Why is this so hard to grasp?
posted by SansPoint at 7:16 AM on May 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


This is Chapter 8 of a book called "The art of effective facilitation: Reflections from social justice educators", so it is about spaces for social justice facilitation. Picking out this chapter as a stand-alone document strips away the context, making it seem to be about safe spaces in general. Obviously, as several people have now commented, it's not about that.
posted by Koheleth at 1:55 PM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's in the book as chapter 8, but it's not chapter 8 of a book. The chapter IS a stand-alone document, because the book is just a curated collection of isolated articles. The editor states in the preface, they put out an open call for submissions online and assembled the book out of the articles they got. This article was not written with the contents of any other part of the final product in mind.
posted by kafziel at 4:03 PM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't know, it seems pretty clear to me that they're talking about social justice facilitation practices.
Still, we recognize that brave space remains a relatively new framework with ample room for growth and refinement. Our evidence of its efficacy is primarily anecdotal. We believe qualitative and quantitative studies would be useful in measuring how brave space is experienced by participants in social justice education efforts and how it influences their learning and participation in these settings. Further, we welcome your additional philosophical and theoretical analysis of the framework as articulated here, as we know that others will see and understand the strengths and shortfalls of brave space in ways we, as yet, do not. We look forward to continued engagement with you in our shared journey to develop ever more efficacious social justice facilitation practices.
I do agree it would have been useful for them to distinguish between that and, say, a library's version of a safer space, though.
posted by aniola at 5:47 PM on May 15, 2017


I don't know, it seems pretty clear to me that they're talking about social justice facilitation practices.

Yes, it's clear. The call for submissions to the book came from the Commission for Social Justice Educators.
According to the book's preface, "This book was developed to complement [previous] texts by communicating a personal voice that explores a particular kind of social justice practice--social justice facilitation--and the multiple approaches to executing successful facilitations."
posted by Koheleth at 6:49 PM on May 15, 2017


(and can I just say, I really enjoyed the bibliography. Archive.org for the win.)
posted by aniola at 7:20 PM on May 15, 2017


Yes, they're talking about social justice facilitation practices, and they're saying that safe spaces are detrimental for social justice facilitation. What I'm saying is that safe spaces are necessary for social justice facilitation, because any kind of hate needs to be met with absolute rejection period in any process, and the brave spaces they're describing are worse than useless, because they enable and prop up abuse and hate.
posted by kafziel at 7:41 PM on May 15, 2017


They seemed to be doing a train-the-trainers thing, though, with broader implications than just "how to run a safe space." More like "How to train other people to run a safe space," and that requires more teaching, in ways that won't just shut everyone down.
posted by lazuli at 9:43 PM on May 15, 2017


kafziel, what do you think of this one?
posted by aniola at 10:00 PM on May 15, 2017


More like "How to train other people to run a safe space"

And actually more like, "How to train RAs who may or may not be members of marginalized groups how to have cultural competence when dealing with their advisees, in a manner that respects everyone's experience so that they can learn how to do that, in 90 minutes."

I think there can (and probably should) be a separation between what I think of as "safe spaces" -- run by members of a particular marginalized group, and pretty much excluding non-members, where no BS is allowed -- as more of a safe-haven sort of idea; and something like this "brave space," where you've got a mixed group of people and learning needs to happen and "safe" is really not quite the right paradigm for that.
posted by lazuli at 6:46 AM on May 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


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