I don’t know, I was looking for Discord servers and I found one for people like me that said “this isn’t a safe space, but it’s a comfortable place.” I don’t use Discord much, is there a difference?
Are “safe spaces” bad? I mean, the only knowledge I have of it is the post as well as other posts I’ve seen with people that tell you to censor literally any little thing because it “triggers their PTSD”.
“safespace” is, ironically, missing a space of its own.
“safe spaces” tend to be synonymous with “Echo chambers.” Comfortable spaces are more permissive and require the participants to arrive with a thick skin because the mods are there to keep discussion civil not be your personal emotional shield.
More of a danger zone enjoyer myself
all I know is every ‘safespace’ is a space full of bullies who feel they need the world to conform to their beliefs and hatreds where diversity of ideas and opinion are forbidden.
the issue is people confuse safety with control.
i have no idea what a ‘comfortable space’ is. I guess a space where you don’t feel like you are walking on eggshells? i guess that would be a place where people are grown up and mature enough to chill out.
i don’t use discord or most anything social media. i don’t live on the internet or communicate with people via it very much. i mostly make phone calls and interact with people in person.
Safe spaces have heavily restricted speech and highly offendable people, can ironically be high strung/high stress environments
Comfortable space is generally just reasonable people, kicking those being intentionally abusive or hostile
The definition of spaces as “safe” or “comfortable” is subjective, there may be some who use the terms synonymously but I don’t. There are safe spaces for drug addicts to discuss their experiences of addiction with each other; these spaces frequently deal with extremely uncomfortable topics. They are “safe” in that there are a few precepts that must be agreed upon in order to enter into the conversation, e.g. “There are no leaders; we are all peers” or “No drug addict is unworthy of help” or “Programs or methodologies that demand exclusivity are vulnerable to cultism and their promotion is not permitted here” etc. The idea is to make certain baseline topics axiomatic so the group can focus their conversations more productively than endlessly rehashing the same topic over and over again, which can exhaust and overwhelm members, to the detriment of all. That definition of safety is created by the community and agreed to by its members, and every safe space is free to define safety differently.
I like this definition the best. The rules are there to serve a group you don’t belong to - so from the outside they look silly or heavy handed. But that just means you don’t belong there. Uncomfortable topics may need more rules.
Second thought: if someone tells you something is triggering, please take them at their word, even if you privately think they’re being childish or dramatic or whatever. PTSD triggers suck and while there are common patterns, they can often be highly individualistic. If you find someone’s (or some group’s) interaction preferences over-burdensome, just don’t interact with them.
Safe spaces, in my mind, are ones that are free of any language that could be construed as harmful, whereas a comfortable space is one that is free of any language that any member construes as harmful. Like, as a concrete but contrived example, I would expect a policy like: if anyone is uncomfortable, we’ll enforce that everyone says “person experiencing homelessness,” but until then, we understand that that being policed is uncomfortable and you can feel empathy and still say “homeless person,” so we’re allowing that, even if it is strictly speaking a signal of a safer space.
I’d get told off for saying “homeless person” instead of “person experiencing homelessness” and just feel confused because I see both terms conveying the exact same thing, but the politically correct term just feeling clumsy.
Like, I have heard a lot of slurs for the homeless, and I don’t think “homeless person” wouldn’t even rank.
But I do like the idea of a “comfortable” space where neutral langauge is accepted. I hate euphemisms, and I’m irked by people who use them equally as much as people who overuse slurs. Both rub off as intolerance.
it’s deeper than that. the people who insist on this are… people who want to obfuscate the problems. because the reality of them are too harsh for them to emotionally accept.
The truth is there are legit homeless people… people who actively refuse shelters and social services and prefer to live on the streets, many of whom are criminal and can’t be in the shelters because they want to use drugs, abuse people, and steal shit… but the acknowledgement of this is not possible for people who insist ‘no they are just not getting enough help/stigmatized’. these are the types of folk who think everyone is inherently good and wonderful and it’s the evil bad world that made them bad people…
Most homeless folks are only temporarily homeless and most are like living out of a car or other temporary situation.
But those folks can’t acknowledge any complexity of any issue. because it terrifies them that other people are different than them… or exist outside of the limits of their small imaginations… so they want to shrink the world to fit into their comfortable headspace with euphemisms. and they want to naively believe that all problems are just because ‘other people are mean’ or something that’s kindergarten level way of looking at the world.
And you’ll notice the people who push these agendas… often come from wealthy privledged backgrounds… part of their whole shtick is using euphemisms so they don’t have to feel guilty about their own privileges… privileges which they are actively hostile to in other people but refuse to acknowledge in themselves. they will go so far to claim not being homeless makes you ‘privledged’ but won’t acknowledge that they live in a condo their parents bought for them, while you rent with 2 roommates, etc.
If you ask me it’s just a product of very sheltered people who are basically ‘allergic’ to reality because they never had to deal with it, like these folks never lived in a place where homelessness was a problem, so they can’t understand how it is a problem for anyone else, and if you got robbed/assaulted by a homeless person, you deserved it or something. And if you grew up in a town with problems like homeless and drug use where everyday things… you are basically evil and awful in these people’s eyes.
I grew up in a diverse town with a poverty rate of 15%. I had friends in grammar school who were sometimes homeless. I meet people now who grew up in towns with 3-4% poverty rates… which are mostly just old folks on social security.
Unless your own mind is a safe space, you will never find one out there in the world.
This is not my experience at all. My mind is a kaleidoscopic minefield and out there in the world, there are small refuges where I can find help, or at least rest, where I can gain perspective on my own mind and help make sense of it. Books, friends, quiet places in the woods and fields, cups of tea, benches near murals.
If your mind is a safe place I am happy for you. Mine is constantly trying to kill me, and the world and the people in it have helped me stop it, at great effort on both our parts. Those safe places are there because they help people like me live. Which is a pretty cool thing for the world to do, I think.
Helpful advice for me, to be fair. I don’t know if we can truly be in control of our minds but you do lay out the correct hierarchy of importance
being in charge of your mind is entirely your choice.
pretending that it can’t be, is an excuse to just not take responsibility for it.
a lot of folks, refuse to take responsibility, actively. either for their minds or their bodies, and actively refuse treatment from their medical providers. but that’s their choice even if they deny that it is a choice.
the problem is a lot of bad actors use their mental illness or physical illness as an excuse to be self-destructive.
Even being completely in control of your body is not a choice for most people. First, the disabled, then more generally, anyone who is not well-educated on physiology and fitness.
Every week I learn one new thing about fitness or one new exercise or stretch and i only get slightly more in control of my body as a result. I’m sure some people are totally in tune with their body but I doubt that it’s achievable even for every able-bodied person.
Ergo, I believe we 100% have a separation of Soul, Mind and Body. Since your soul is not your mind, you do not have full unity with or control over your mind. It would probably be harmful to have full unity with it, in fact, and be boring to have full control over it
cool, i don’t believe that at all. sounds like a convenient fiction to me. to me the ‘mind/soul can exist without the body’ is just ego-projection.
we’re meatbags. nothing is separable. everything is embodied.
do you know any disabled people? plenty of them get wheelchairs and such and live great lives. it’s their choice to be defined by the disability or not.
do you know any disabled people? plenty of them get wheelchairs and such and live great lives. it’s their choice to be defined by the disability or not.
This comes across as trolling. Positivity for disabilities is one thing but disabled people, about 100% of the time, would rather not be disabled. And I mentioned them because it counters your idea that anyone can be in control of their body or mind, and that not being in control of those things is a choice. Nobody is in full control of their mind.
it’s only trolling to you because you’re 100% wrong. look at the deaf community, plenty of other disable communities would rather not be disabled, and often do have the choice but choose to remain disabled. because it doesn’t mean their life is ‘less than’, like you imply. hell plenty of disable people live fully richer lives than ‘abled’ people, because well, they choose too. plenty of overweight abled people who can’t walk a half mile vs people who don’t even have legs who can do marathon.
yeah, the overweight fat people who can’t walk a mile also think they ‘aren’t fully in control’ of themselves too.
Trolling
yeah, the overweight fat people who can’t walk a mile also think they ‘aren’t fully in control’ of themselves too.
Obviously they’re not, for that exact reason
Sounds like that discord aspires to be a safe space but they don’t think they can account for all users behaviour nor can guarantee that a user won’t encounter their negative triggers. This is sensible because it’s a social media; it would probably be different for a organised support group or club - both of which could be hosted on discord, to be fair, but the main gist of this is that if User B says something rude or triggering to User A, the mods cannot instantly detect and remove it.
discord is a corporation that is acting like a corporation. it’s demographics are also heavily under 18, so they are legally required do a lot of shit to ‘protect the children’ from themselves.
