How Bullies Stole Safe Spaces
The language of protection has been taken from those who most need it
One of the most perplexing things about watching culture evolve (or devolve, if you prefer) over the last ten years is the way in which what was once the vernacular of fragile, socially-challenged teens on Tumblr has become mainstream. Tumblr, if you’re unaware, is a website that originally acted as hub for young people in fandoms - Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Steven Universe and so forth - that morphed into the hub of warped internet activism, spawning meme phrases like ‘triggered’, ‘microaggressions’ and, of course, the sanctified ‘safe space’. Once mocked as parlance of hyper-fragile Tumblrinas, these terms are now used without irony by politicians, educators and business leaders.
I recall at university, circa 2014, sitting with a friend chortling at a Reddit page set up to harvest and lampoon the most ludicrous and regressive Tumblr posts of these confused young adults convinced they were social justice warriors - a phrase that caught on and became a label of mockery, shortened to SJW. In this crazy, hilarious, online utopia dystopia, practically everything was racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, invalidating or triggering. Laughably offensive concepts like ‘stare-rape’ (being looked at lustily without your consent) were crimes on a par with actual rape. Self-diagnosing oneself with an array of rare mental disorders was all the rage. My friend despaired at the pathetic ‘progressive’ worldview the website exposed but I was more optimistic, even sympathetic. At the end of the day, these were clearly kids or young adults in a lot of pain. At least they were trying to encourage positive social change, in their own misguided way. It’s not like these petulant, stunted individuals would ever have influence in the real world.
Lolz.
It’s no laughing matter though, not now. Around 2015, maybe it was. The South Park episode ‘Safe Space’ was the most biting and accurate piece of satire about it, exemplified in the still- excruciatingly-relevant song ‘My Safe Space’ (these days, they’d be at least four extra verses). The song is performed by Cartman, a stroke of genius. Eric Cartman, as anyone who is a fan of the show will know, is one of the most vile, bigoted, sociopathic characters to ever grace the small screen. In making him the quivering snowflake rather than the antisemitic, sexist (and occasionally murdering) bully viewers were used to, the writers hit on a dangerously accurate note: some of the most vocal ambassadors for fragility culture were and remain, in any other context, playground bullies and unhinged narcissists. It’s the perfect cover. You get to beat up the clever kids (namely, the clever women) and paint them as the bullies while doing so.
Apparently though, not enough people understood the joke, that ‘safe spaces’ being designed to protect those within them from mean words and troubling ideas as opposed to say, actual life-threatening violence, was a concept as exploitable as it was stupid. And make no mistake, they have been exploited with success Eric Cartman himself would be proud of.
A few days ago, I watched a documentary film about the sex and gender conflict called 'Adult Human Female' (click for link). I watched it on YouTube sitting at my kitchen table. Originally, I had planned - along with one hundred and fifty or so other women and men - to view the film communally on a much larger screen in the Gordon Aikman lecture theatre at Edinburgh University. A previous screening planned in December had already been thwarted by censors (I find the phrase 'Trans Rights Activists' too disingenuous) and history repeated itself last Wednesday, down to the security staff doing precisely nothing. Unless you count Principal Peter Mathieson's inbox being torn a new one, the aggression and intimidation was typically one-sided…from those reportedly made to feel ‘unsafe’ by the presence of women wanting to watch a film they didn’t approve of.
Joyous scenes from the protest
The aftermath was predictable. Mathieson, to his credit, has released a decent enough statement in solidarity with those who support academic freedom (and, lest we forget, reality :) ) and has committed to disciplinary action towards those who forcibly obstructed the venue (mostly men, mostly masked #queerjoy). EUSA, on the other hand, the Edinburgh University Student Association, has stood with the censors. Their tiresome, paint-by-numbers statement of “We support in academic freedom BUT blah-di-blah…” did have one eye-catching bit, which said the screening of Adult Human Female clashed with their ‘Safe Space Policy’.
It’s one thing listening to smarmy authority figures use these terms cluelessly, it’s something else to see it written into policy - even student policy. ‘Our Safe Space Policy’ sounds like something straight out of South Park, as is the fine print which you can read here. It’s as flabbergastingly dystopian as you might think, with intellectual coercion, shaming, censorship and emotional control bound up in glossy language of inclusion and diversity. More pertinently though, it directly undermines and contradicts the right to freedom of academic expression as sworn to in Mathieson’s statement. So, Peter (if I may) on the off-chance you are reading this, denouncing the EUSA ‘safe policy’ might be a good place to start if you’re serious about saving Edinburgh University’s reputation.
There’s another side to this which isn’t highlighted enough. What about those who do need safe spaces - women who have been beaten and raped, children trapped in abusive homes, women in the Middle East living with the threat of acid attacks and honour killings, girls sold into marriage as young as six, gay men and lesbian women living in countries that deems their sexuality illegal and punishable, refugees fleeing war…the bastardisation of ‘safe space’ as now meaning ‘safety from emotional distress’ rather than physical threat isn’t just insulting to them, it’s harmful. It diminishes these experiences, encourages a cognitive confusion around what ‘violence’ really is; rendering it impossible to triage life-threatening circumstances that require immediate sanctuary over the hurt feelings of a cosseted, upper-class they/them. If to be ‘unsafe’ is relative, it’s the whiniest brats nearest the microphone (or, as with the Adult Human Female protest, karaoke machine), who will claim priority over and over again.
Considering progressivism is obsessed with ‘cultural appropriation’, one might think a similar outrage might be expressed at the deplorable appropriation of the language of trauma. ‘Trauma’ itself has largely lost all meaning, used interchangeably with unpleasant experiences of feeling invalidated. I resent having to get this personal but I do have an axe to grind here. I live with post-traumatic stress disorder due to actual violence - the kind that kills. While ‘trauma’ has some flexibility as a term depending on context, PTSD comes about when the brain is made to experience fear and stress to such a high extent it more or less rewires itself around the trauma for protection. When the trauma occurs again and again and again, you end up with complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), which is my official diagnosis. I mentioned at the beginning that the idea of being ‘triggered’ was popularised by Tumblr. What I meant was the current bastardised definition was popularised by Tumblr. Once upon a time, ‘triggered’ had a serious definition for those who lived with life-inhibiting trauma. For example, a veteran reduced to terror by the sound of fireworks that remind them of bombs going off, or a person who survived a terrible fire being paralysed from panic at the smell of smoke, and so forth.
Having had my own memories of violence and entrapment ‘triggered’ a number of times by news footage or street intimidation and having battled through the overwhelming sensory panic and anger, accompanied often with retching or self-harm compulsions, I now actively avoid using the word. I opt instead for ‘unwell’ or ‘distressed’ as the new meaning of ‘triggered’ - to be anything from mildly disarmed to severely offended - has tarnished it too much. I feel foolish, foolish describing my symptoms in language that was originally conceived for people with my condition. To be totally honest, I’ve caught myself using ‘triggered’ in the flippant, ironic sense a number of times. I concede that makes me part of the problem but it wasn’t me who changed the language, and when language changes what choice is there but to adapt or perish? It’s stolen, end of.
In a culture where identity-based victimhood has gained enormous currency, it is no surprise that all the wrong people have successfully colonialised the ‘safe space’. The squeaky wheels get the grease and no group squeaks harder than the gender cultists. Weaving heavily questionable stats about suicide and homocide in between word salads of love, hate, identity, validation and affirmation has confused masses of nice-but-dim people that they are the most marginalised and dehumanised group in society. A big problem is that, generally, people who know what it is to be at the mercy of life-threatening violence do not make a habit of crowing about it, whether out of pride, trauma or safety needs. In many cases, such as a fleeing domestic violence, speaking out publicly would be dangerous. The safe spaces, real safe spaces, that protect abused and vulnerable people - the shelters and centres and health services - are necessarily tucked out of sight from public eye, and along with them, the plight of those who use them. When genuine trauma survivors do tell their stories, unless they spin it towards an inspiration narrative, they will be delicately ignored, as the harrowing reality that their tales force the average person to face is too depressing. The struggle of those who claim to be ‘assigned the wrong gender’ who just want to ‘be themselves’ but can’t because of evil TERFS, is much more palatable to the armchair do-gooder (of which academia appears to comprise about 98% of).
The reason ‘no debate’ is the mantra of the gender cult is because debate is about words and words have meanings, and close scrutiny of how definitions are being manipulated (never mind the non-existence of logical argument) might result in those precious safe spaces being prised back to those who actually need them. Having conquered ‘safe spaces’, ‘trauma’, ‘triggering’ as verbal concepts, the most recent phrase to having its meaning violated is genocide (as in: ‘there is a trans genocide happening’ in the form of mass invalidation, thought-crime and removal of entitlement to on-demand surgery for children). As someone whose family descends from Poland, whose ancestors knew actual genocide, I ought to be inconsolably offended. I’m not though, in fact, I’m almost optimistic. Such disgusting hyperbole is proof that this movement is having to resort to new lows to keep even useful idiots onside. Once ‘genocide’ loses meaning, where is there to go?
Where indeed.
Words are not violence but they have power and, right now, that power remains (albeit precariously) with the ‘progressive’ authoritarians. If we want to reclaim sanity, we have to reclaim language. Otherwise, once language has been pillaged to it’s limit, we may well be facing literal violence.
How Bullies Stole Safe Spaces
This hit a real chord with me especially around the perversion of real trauma to serve their narcissistic ends. As someone who has been on the end of narcissism and true trauma (same diagnosis as you), I have also had my experience undermined by the claimimg of language. I can no longer describe my pain without sounding like a whiny teen. Especially around the word "triggered" which conjures up an image of that meme where a teens face is contorted in contempt as thei spit vitriole at the person who has offended them. "When genuine trauma survivors do tell their stories, unless they spin it towards an inspiration narrative, they will be delicately ignored, as the harrowing reality that their tales force the average person to face is too depressing." - this is my experience also and it compounds the (real) trauma people are living with. It takes courage for people to tell their story and then they are dismissed. So, I just wanted to say. I see your courage in sharing this.
Nina - I rarely comment on anything online - but I just wanted to commend you for writing this blog, and to say 'thank you'. Because
(1) the way you write is just so clear and powerful it really is superb; and
(2) the subject(s) on which you write really could not be more important
Please keep it up. Your courage and integrity shine through each piece you write. And I do so hope that your voice will be heard and echoed loudly enough, and your sentiments and message shared widely enough, that it may help curtail - and hopefully bring a peaceful end (which can't come soon enough) - to the madness that you have characterised so brilliantly here.