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Toolbox: Safer spaces policies

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Season 2 episode 9 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we talk about safer spaces policies, as a tool that groups use for a variety of reasons.

‘Safer spaces policies can create a void that people will then fill with punitive approaches to difficulty, difference and conflict’

Show notes, links

After a callout for safer spaces agreements, a few groups kindly offered to have their agreements shared, to give you some examples:

A few other resources that we mentioned in the episode:

Perennial resources:

We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there’s always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!

Transcript

ALI
This is Resist Renew,

KATHERINE
the UK based podcast about social movements,

SAMI
what we’re fighting for, why and how it all happens.

ALI
The hosts of the show are

KATHERINE
Me, Kat.

SAMI
Me, Sami,

ALI
and me, Ali.

SAMI
I’m recording this now, baby!

ALI
Shit, it’s a podcast!

KATHERINE
Welcome to today’s episode of the toolbox, we’re going to be looking at the safer spaces policies today. This is a tool that groups can create: we’re going to be finding out what they are, talking about the pros and cons of using a safer spaces policy and sharing our top take-aways. Sami, do you want to tell us a little bit about what safer spaces policies are?

SAMI
I would love to Katherine! So I think safer spaces policies are often some kind of like written document or some kind of agreement. Often around the topic of like resisting societal oppressions, and they will name like, often the beliefs of like a group or a space and some intentions to resist these societal impressions. And sometimes mentioning what they think those versions of societal oppression are, for clarity, that aren’t going to be like, welcome in the space in whatever way they mean. And sometimes they will include some bit about what they’ll do to like, actually resist the societal oppressions. Not always. And I guess maybe there’s a distinction to make here between like something that is like more of a policy, which is like, ‘this is what we think and blah, blah, blah,’ and maybe more something that’s like a process, which is like, ‘we’ll actually do this or handle these situations in this way.’ So that’s like one distinction to draw out now. Ali, do you wanna nuance that up?

ALI
Oh, God, pressure. So safer spaces. It’s a bit of a weird term if you haven’t been around it much. So a bit of background as to why it’s called that. Previously, people used to talk about creating “safe spaces,” as in places that people will feel comfortable to share things and they won’t get a deal with oppression and stuff. But because that’s not possible, because we live in the real world, we try and mitigate against oppressions, rather than making them completely safe. So safer.

There are variations: some people have come up with the term braver spaces, which is, again, about showing up and dealing with things as they arise rather than creating safety.

So a bit about why we are talking about safer spaces, safer spaces policy in a season about conflict. That’s because often conflicts within groups relate to both societal oppressions and how they are replicated in our spaces. And/or conflict can stem from the uses of policies and bureaucracy. E.g. people will say, “you did this thing, and that’s against the rule, therefore, we’re going to punish for you, or make you do this thing because of that.” And so policies might end up replicating punitive justice.

But, Sami, do you want to tell us an example of a safer spaces policy that you’ve been around?

SAMI
Yeah, sure. So I was involved in a crew of people that was organising an anarchist feminist conference in London in 2014. And I was part of the crew that was trying to work out like how we wanted to handle this topic of like, safer spaces within this one day event, basically.

And so what we thought that it would be useful to do is so – people, people started that process of like writing what is maybe what you could think of like a ‘standard’ safer spaces policy, where it’s like, ‘here are some versions of societal oppression, we think these are bad, and we don’t think people should replicate those in our space.’ And then we were like, ‘I don’t actually think this is very useful for people. Like, I don’t think this is actually going to help anyone do anything. And I don’t think this is really going to provide much to actually resist the sight of societal oppression.’

So what we tried to do was shift it a little bit into more of like a process, we were like, what did we think people would actually need to be able to resist those oppressions and so and then use that to identify what some interventions could be. So we were like, maybe if you don’t want to raise something in a group don’t in a in a in a in a workshop directly, but you want it to be raised, maybe that’s one you can tell and they can raise stuff for you. Or like maybe we should have specific spaces to support people to be able to raise stuff at different points throughout the day. And so, like, added these different things in so that people could actually try and solve stuff.

And we did that because we thought that maybe just having a safer space is for policy on its own, which is kind of a quite a common thing, felt quite limited. And, and I guess that’s gonna lead into when we think about strengths and weaknesses, and things like that. Because I think probably, TL;DR these are the kind of things which when done well are good. And when done not well probably aren’t good, probably like all things. So who, who wants to start with some strengths?

KATHERINE
I can, I think one, one of the strengths of a safer spaces policy is that it can name the values of a group or space. And if you’re a new person who maybe has never been to that group before, seeing these stated somewhere, clearly, for example, on the group’s website, can really help you judge maybe whether or not you want to go along, whether you want to work with that group, join that group, for example; and can give a good indicator of the group’s awareness of what kind of oppression exists in the world and what they are trying to work against in their space or work to resist, as Sami framed it. What are other strengths of this tool?

ALI
Yeah, and I think another strength: I guess, at its best, what safer spaces policies can do is provide structure to address replications of societal oppressions in your space.

So there is a bit of a holding for that, that, you know, you can turn to and as Katherine said, this, like, named that this is the values and intentions of the space. And we’re going to do something about it.

SAMI
Yeah, and I think we talked, we talked quite a lot, I think in episode one, if I remember correctly, around, like the importance of like, clarity of language, when we talk about things like this, and sometimes what people will use as, like these kinds of documents, like safer spaces, policies for is to like outline: ‘When we say, racism, we mean, these types of things. And we don’t mean, some things that may get called racism in society, like anyone referring to race. That’s not what we count as racism,’ whatever.

And or, for example, what we what counts as, when we talk about we want to do stuff to like, repair harms, what do we mean by harm, so they can provide a space that really have clarity of terms, which can smooth future conversations about stuff.

ALI
So those are some of the strengths. What do people think about some weaknesses of safer spaces policies?

SAMI
I can start with my main one, it was, you alluded to it at the start Ali, which is around like, how safe spaces policies can link in with like punitive approaches within groups. I think, a thing that I often see as a limitation of having these like safer spaces policies, when they are more of a policy, and they don’t really, aren’t really backed up by any form of process, is what can happen is people have flagged to them, ‘You should do something, if you see there is like something that you would deem like, like realising operate like a, an operation, in service of racism in the space’ or whatever, like, ‘You should do something about that.’ But if you don’t give them guidance for what to do, then they will fall back on what the norms are for how things should be dealt with, and how you should deal with difficult situations, which often a lot of the things that people are drawing from is punitive frameworks, because that’s what we use in school. That’s what we use in, in people’s work and all this kind of stuff.

And so you can create a void that people will then fill with punitive approaches to difficulty, difference and conflict. And so I think that can create difficulties. And those can be amended by making sure that you don’t provide that vacuum by trying to be clear about like, what are the ways that you will actually deal with stuff? And how, what kind of outcomes do you want, if you don’t want punishment to be the default response. What are the responses that you want? What are the kind of values you want to embed it into space, and things like that.

And then I guess that suggests that maybe it’s not all about policies: it’s also about processes, it’s also about group culture and things like that. So not to say they’re not a good tactic, but that can be a real limitation of them when done unideally.

ALI
One weakness that it makes me think of is that for me, when I see a safer spaces policy, and it says like, ‘We are an anti racist, non hierarchical, feminist, perfect collective.’ For me, it kind of sets the bar quite high as to like what expectations I’m going to have about this group. And in general, most groups fail to live up to them because we’re not there yet. And it’s a process and we’re working on it.

And if implying that a group is has all these values and implying that there might be something done about things when harms happen, and then they don’t, it can feel like a real letdown and can feel like: yeah, it was like an expectation gap of they said they had these values. I was hoping when something I was hoping nothing would happen bad. Something bad did happen. And then if there wasn’t the backup of the policy process to deal with it, or hold it. Or if even worse, like, punishment is the way you deal with it, then that can feel, like, extra harmful or extra like hurtful in comparison to like going to a space where you’re like, these people could be alright, but they haven’t said that they’re ‘Ultra-radical’ people. And, yeah, it just sets set things up for a bit of a failure sometimes.

KATHERINE
I think a weakness for me, which I’m going to have a go at trying to explain, but if I get stuck, I might ask for some help. Which is around questioning a little bit like who is creating the safer spaces policies within a group. And often it is the people who are confident, the people who want to, who feel like maybe they’re more in the mainstream of that group, and have a sense of like, what the ‘right way’ to do things are. And that isn’t necessarily like the ‘right way’ for everybody.
And what can happen is the mainstream writes this policy of what they feel is what ‘safer space’ feels like. And then use that to police those on the margins who might disagree with that mainstream view by using these punitive rule-breaking kind of things that Sami was just talking about.

And I feel like that’s not always the case, but I’ve definitely seen in groups use the safer spaces policy to centre the comfort of the mainstream. And by saying, ‘we’re having a safer space here,’ not allowing conflict, disagreement into that space, because it’s not making it ‘safe.’ But actually, what that usually means is not making it feel comfortable to the people who are in the mainstream.

And that mix, mixing and matching of those terms can get quite tricky and sticky, quite quick, and lead to quite oppressive dynamics in this mainstream/margin dynamic.

SAMI
Can I I’d like to throw like a quick example of what came to mind when you’re saying that Katherine is like, there’s a distinction that people will sometimes make between like ‘calling in’ and ‘calling out’. Again, like safer spaces, it’s a very jargony thing. (Feel free to Google, maybe we’ll put some resources in the show notes.) But I think what I’ve seen happen in in kind of that dynamic is I’ve seen people say when they’re trying to like set a safer spaces policy, like ‘Oh, we have a we want, we have a kind of space where we want to like call people in not call people out’ or whatever. And often what people mean by that is like, ‘I don’t want someone to be angry at me when I’m insensitive to other people around me.’ And like, or what people can mean by that is like, oh, like, ‘what I think is really important is that we really, like, we really value the humanity of all of the people that are here. And like we try and make sure we listen to people and blah, blah, blah.’ And like you can, you can say things which sound acceptable within like certain communities and certain mainstreams of different groups that actually maybe aren’t things you want to operationalize as being fined by writing them into a policy, but because they’re within the mainstream, they don’t get questioned.

KATHERINE
Yeah, and I think like to kind of extend on from that. It can also be, if it’s vague about what the ‘safety’ means it can also be weaponized. The vagueness can be weaponized. For example, someone could say, well, I’m allowed to say something racist, because your policy around inclusiveness would make that a safe space for me to say whatever I want to say, I should be free to say what I want to say. Because then I’m safe to say that, even though it’s very, very harmful, and it gets murky around like, what is okay to say, what is not okay to say, what is being policed? What is not being policed? What is considered harmful? What is not considered harmful?

And I guess, like, what I want to say is that these things are often complex, they’re often interpersonal, they’re often relational, they’re often relating to the values and politics of the group. And that can change over time. And the way we want to deal with that probably isn’t going to be in a rigid, static policy document. It will be in an iterative conversation about what is okay and not okay, in that space. And usually, that will always include saying, ‘We don’t think it’s okay to be racist’. And what that looks like in terms of how a group deals with that will be different context-to-context based on: Is that a full group accountability process? Is that pulling someone aside and having that chat outside the room? Is it sending someone on a training process, like whatever it might be? It’s context specific And a rigid document doesn’t always get into the nuances of, of all of this complexity.

ALI
Nice. I just wanted to circle back. There’s been a few terms thrown around, and one that Katherine mentioned earlier was mainstreams and margins, which is like a tool that comes from Training for Change, which is a training collective in the States, which is all about group culture and how there can be certain behaviours, cultures, identities that are considered ‘acceptable’ and ‘normal’ and those which are not as welcome. We will drop a link to that in the show notes. So you can read more about that if you want to.

SAMI
Great. Do you feel like I think there’s maybe one, there’s one just small note to add, like maybe just like an idea to bring in that could be helpful. Which I think you were talking about the other day Ali, which is just like the idea of ‘negative peace’. It’s like a thing and like kind of Martin Luther King in the type of stuff thinking about, like, how there can be like ‘positive peace’, which is like the presence of justice versus ‘negative peace’, which is just the absence of violence. And like, often, I think, going into those ideas of safety, sometimes what is motivating these kinds of policies is the, is a explicit drive to create ‘negative peace’, ie remove conflict from space. And that is probably not a thing that is a good idea to do in a lot of spaces. So really think about what the purpose is.

ALI
Nice. And I guess one, like consideration for safer spaces policies is like, what is this safer spaces policy for? Is it for your group, which regularly meets all the time? And that, therefore, like a policy might not be as, like, organic as talking about things and iterating things and developing things relationally over time? Or is it like the example Sami gave earlier where it’s like a one day event? So like, Yeah, might be useful to like, have some posters around being like, these are some values in our space. And these are ways you can interact with the space and let us know if things aren’t going how you want them to go. Like different spaces, they might be more or less appropriate in different spaces. So: how about some top takeaways from safer spaces?

SAMI
And so I think for me, it’s that idea about how like, policies, like all aspects of like structures within a group can either like, help or hinder different things that you want to happen. And I think policies really have the ability to help enable harms in a group, for example, a punitive response to problems when they happen. So if you want to use a safer spaces policy in your group, then it’s really important to do stuff to explicitly plan like against that, for example, think about what are actually relevant consequences to specific versions of harm that can happen in a space. Like because there’s a consequence for someone saying something which they like used a term that they don’t realise has a racist origin, may be quite a different thing to somebody like yelling at somebody, repeatedly every single time you have a meeting, but they’re always yelling at the same person. And all this kind of stuff: like, the different actions will have different consequences. Who else?

ALI
I guess one takeaway for me is that it can be a really useful, written statement of intention statement of values, statement of what a group believes. And if we can be clear about what that intention is, it can be helpful, it can be a welcoming signal of like, what kind of group this might be, if it’s backed up by practice.

KATHERINE
And I think for me, the context matters. So thinking about whether you need to have a statement of intent for a day workshop, for example, isn’t going to easily transfer to that group that will meet on a regular basis and thinking about: what is the purpose? what is the context? what is the regularity? who and what are the relationships in this space? will really help you when you’re thinking about when and how and if to use a safer spaces tool.

SAMI
Nice.

ALI
Safe. Safer.

SAMI
So: summary. As like all things, sometimes good sometimes bad question mark.

ALI
Figure it out. Great!

KATHERINE
The end.

SAMI
Nice.

ALI
Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Resist+Renew podcast. Thanks as ever to Klaus for letting us use this backing track and to Rowan for doing all the transcription on this season.

If you want to find out more about Resist+Renew as a training and facilitation and collective check out our website, resistrenew.com, or on all the socials. And if you want to support the production of this podcast, you can do so at patreon.com/resistrenew. That’s it for this week. Thanks for listening and catch you next time. Bye bye.

 

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