curlicuecal:

Entitlement, Safe Spaces, and “Sitting With Fear”

Forever ago, I ran across an article on privilege and the inability to “sit with fear” that has really stuck with me. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, trying to put something into words that has been bugging me and I think it’s starting to crystallize.

The idea is that we live in a society where privileged people rarely have to deal with being afraid or uncomfortable and so they learn to think they have a right to always feel that way and that right trumps other people’s needs. So we see “being around [x race/ethnicity/class] makes me feel unsafe; feeling this way harms me; I have a right to feel comfortable in my environment”

We see this expressed most strongly in the more privileged groups: white people unaccustomed to being a minority or being around minorities, straight men unaccustomed to feeling sexually or physically vulnerable or to receiving unwanted sexual attention from men, etc. These are people that primarily feel safe–people that have rarely hought twice about wearing what they want onto the streets, raising their voice in ways that might be perceived as threatening, or calling the cops for assistance and assuming the cops will be their allies.

This leads to the harmful conclusion that people have the right not just to BE safe, but to FEEL safe.

On the other hand, most members of less privileged groups have at least some, if not lots, of experience “sitting with fear.” We will be in environments where we do not feel comfortable or safe. We will experience vulnerability. Not all the time, not everywhere, but often enough. Some of these times we will actually be in danger, some we will just feel less than safe, but regardless, by the time we are adults we have extensive experience and a well developed toolkit for how to process fear.

Sometimes, when situations are genuinely and unnecessarily unsafe, we will work to change them. Other times, when our feelings of discomfort have to be balanced against the competing needs and feelings of other groups we will work to find compromises or build a variety of spaces. And when multiple needs really can’t be reconciled or when our feelings of vulnerability exist only as feelings not based in reality we know how to sit with our fear.

Here’s the interesting bit :

I see, increasingly, people buying into the privileged fallacy that a state where one never needs to know how to sit with fear is not only achievable but an entitlement.

I mean it’s not unidentifiable, to look at that sense of security and think “I want that. I deserve that.” I think it’s normal. Hell, I think people do deserve that. I just don’t think it’s achievable, not on some kind of black-and-white, universal scale. There will always be people who need different things, and even people who need things whose presence is potentially threatening to other people. (A neutral example: addictive painkillers.)

But I see a lot of people who are hurting, in spaces that are practically designed to hurt them, trying to fix it by turning the broken rules around backwards to make a society designed so they’ll never feel hurt or unsafe or uncomfortable.

And I think that’s harmful.

I think that’s drinking the privileged kool-aid.

This post is, by the way, NOT an argument against safe spaces. Safe spaces are necessary and important parts of any community. What this is is an argument against the idea of universal safe spaces in a world with diverse, competing, sometimes irreconcilable needs. This is a reminder that not every space can serve every person, and that when it comes down to the line we need to be very aware of this fact, and also aware of the difference between entitlement to BE safe and to FEEL safe.

The privileged approach to safe spaces is thinking that your needs are either universal or the priority and that your feelings outweigh someone else’s needs. The privileged approach to safe spaces is “this thing hurt me, so it’s bad.“ It’s thinking “my feelings are unbiased and objective and the most important feelings to have.” The privileged approach to safe spaces is “my internal reality is the one true reality.”

We know different. And when we have to, we know how to deal. Let’s not give that up.