If you think a save space is a public social media group with a bunch of anonymous users, you already went pretty wrong.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
42 points (95.7% liked)
Asklemmy
50427 readers
929 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
You’re not wrong. But there’s not a lot of other options a lot of times.
Fair enough, it was called a "safe space"
anywhere shit gets cliquey it gets toxic real fast - and that goes for ANY and ALL organisations.
safe-space concepts often inherently deals with an "us/them" dichotomy, which is unfortunately fertile ground for things getting cliquey.
it's not that one must lead to the other, its just that the foundation is there so the risk is higher if it's not managed properly.
this is why safe-spaces need to be protected from within and without. regardless of whether you're in the clique or out of it, it hurts everyone in the end.
We have a human tendency to take safe spaces to mean "safe space for me, even if I make others unsafe".
South Park made a good satire of exactly this, where Cartman immediately realized it meant he could continue being offensive and "safe space" away anything he didn't want to acknowledge
Because people do everything to silence the pain in themselves, even if that means inflicting pain onto other people.
Hmm, makes a lot of sense.
I feel you. Case in point; I just got torn up in an autism community after saying I had some science ideas I wanted an objective take on to determine if they had merit. Apparently I was not qualified to have ideas because I’m not a professional scientist, so it’s guaranteed that my theories are trash right out the gate.
"I'm too afraid to think and share my observations and hypotheses for peer review so nobody should, else I'd feel challenged/incompetent and that's just too much for my little heart to bear."
@DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
Apparently I was not qualified to have ideas because I’m not a professional scientist, so it’s guaranteed that my theories are trash right out the gate.
I sometimes get the sense that so much of the harshness of such replies come from active students in academia, not so much from professors and TA's, etc. Probably multiple reasons for that, but one of them might be that they're smack in the middle of a 'this is the right way to learn and do things!' process and mindset.
Whereas most teachers would probably be much more inclined to say something like "okay, let's break those ideas down, shall we?" But already being teachers, they're probably plenty occupied with such, and not as much of a regular online presence. Or something like that, haha...
They come from the "average man", intellectually cowardly and living by inertia, and whose entire ideology was most likely fed to them by mass media and propaganda, IME. They've never thought independently about anything deep, and if they did at some point it brought nothing but frustration and further confusion to their lives so they're triggered by anyone trying to have a thoughtful exploration as it might bring the house of cards that is their worldview down. As such, their gut reaction is to "shut it all down", using whatever poor argument they have at hand to do so (because if they were wise enough to be honest about their reasons for being against this potentially productive convo, they wouldn't react this way in the first place). 🤷
I don't know that I would personally make so many specific conclusions or necessarily group individuals together like that, but... as individual points I've no doubt that they do accurately describe various types of thinking and character.
I would also tend to think that if that whole package of characteristics does indeed describe lots of people in academia who happened to want to teach, then they'd either have to work to become better human beings, or get sort of 'locked-in' to being shitty, unpopular professors. Which could of course greatly impact their career upsides. *shrug*
Unfortunately, what people call a space doesn't necessarily correspond to how you will experience it, or even reality. Always trust your own read of things.
I think it was cruel sarcasm. Better to just move along.
In terms of self harm, the only "safe space" that should exist should be one that helps the person get the help they need - and the only kinda space that actually fits that criteria is often the relationship between a trusted stable friend/family member or a therapist. A space with only people struggling will end up as a toxic feedback loop that pulls everyone down.