What is a safe space?

Last month, a lot of discussion was prompted by a statement by the dean of University of Chicago opposing censorship, trigger warnings, and safe spaces. I’ve already briefly argued that the inclusion of trigger warnings is completely off-base. The inclusion of safe spaces is harder to judge. “Safe space” means a lot of things to different people, and I just have no idea what the dean thought he was criticizing.

Safe spaces under different names

In my personal experience, “safe space” is most frequently used as a description of queer student group meetings or conferences. Basically, we intentionally build an environment where people feel more comfortable sharing their experiences. This means starting meetings with an explicit agreement of confidentiality, as well as other agreements designed to head off conflict. Often these agreements have cutesy names, like “Step up, step back”, “One mic, one diva”, “Use ‘I’ statements”, “Don’t yuck my yum”, and “Ouch, oops, educate”, although I think the names might be regional.

I have mixed feelings about the explicit agreements, because they take up time and seem unnecessary. In my experience, atheist student groups also set up safe spaces, but they never call it by that name, nor are there any explicit agreements. Atheist groups also intentionally build an environment where people feel more comfortable being openly critical of religion. Many atheist students act very confident, as if they don’t need a safe space to speak their minds, but when you get to know them better you realize that some of the same students keep it very quiet around their families.
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Please don’t pick up the phone

I haven’t entirely been following this, but David Smalley wrote an article saying that petty disagreements were killing the atheist movement. PZ Myers disagreed, and it got hashed out in the Dogma Debate podcast. I have a lot of trouble listening to podcasts, so I mostly heard about it through Trav.

One of Smalley’s points is that we should resolve conflicts more amicably by “picking up the phone”.

Let’s pick up the phone and have conversations when we disagree. If you don’t have their phone number, send them a private message asking to get on Skype to talk it out.

PZ Myers argues that many of our conflicts are too substantial to be resolved over the phone.

My own reaction: calling my phone to talk about an internet disagreement would be hella aggressive. Sending me a private e-mail is also aggressive. I am astounded that people who want more civility sincerely advocate such nasty tactics.
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Please disagree with me

I started out as a skeptical blogger many years ago, and when I started identifying as ace I moved into ace blogging. Thus, I’ve had many occasions to notice cultural differences in the respective blogging communities. One observation is that atheists/skeptics tend to give voice only to disagreement, while aces give voice only to agreement.

This does not mean that atheists/skeptics only ever disagree with each other, while aces only ever agree with each other. Rather, both agreement and disagreement are present, but the two groups have different ideas about what is worth expressing.
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Student groups and volume

Fellow blogger Crys has a good series on cultural differences, particularly between Italy and other countries. Something I like to think about are cultural differences between atheist groups and queer groups.

Back when I was an undergraduate, I joined both atheist and queer student groups. The most obvious difference between the two was that the queer groups were very quiet, and the atheist group was very loud. Queer groups would often have awkward moments of silence, where everyone was hoping someone else will choose to speak. The atheist group was full of interruptions, even when we’d try to impose moderation.

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Who shows up, and who doesn’t

Atheist communities tend to be male-dominated, and that means that the women who show up tend to be atypical in some way.  Those women have some personal background, some personality trait, that lets them cross the barriers that keep most women out.

The same is true of many minority groups.  Atheist communities don’t have many Asian Americans, so the ones who show up are atypical.  There aren’t many vocal aces, so the ones who show up are atypical.  I showed up, so I am atypical.

Here’s something you may not have known.  Atheist communities are dominated by men, but ace communities are dominated by women.  Men make up 12% of the online anglophone community.  I have data!

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Explaining atheism for aces

Since I’m best known for being an ace blogger, perhaps a few of you expect me to explain asexuality, preferably in an easily digestible blog post, preferably in listicle format. Pffff, wait your turn. Have you considered that I have ace readers, and the ace readers want to hear me vulgarize atheism instead?

What is atheism?

Atheism is defined as the lack of belief in gods. This definition, of course, is a political fiction.
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