There Are No Safe Spaces For Everyone

I made a painful decision today: I removed myself from a Pro-LGBTQ+ group, because I felt unwelcome.

I was one of the original members of the group, but today I leave Queer Vocal Voices behind.

Like many other Left-leaning spaces where I once felt safe and included, QVV has experienced a sharp step sideways into a cause that has nothing to do with Queer people, and everything to do with propping up a regime where the existence of Queer people is illegal and coming out is a death sentence.

Don't ask me to explain the logic of that, I'm still baffled. Especially when the country they're protesting against is the only Pro-LGBTQ country in that region of the world. Their Eurovision entry in 1998 was a major breakthrough for trans visibility and acceptance, and they're still the only country in the Middle East to hold a pride parade.

But, different people have different opinions, and everyone has the right to be spectacularly wrong.

I'd been biting my tongue and scrolling past certain posts for a while, by the time it all came to a head.

It started when I entered an article into the Pride Under Protest Challenge, detailing the reasons why some people might not attend Pride Parades, including sensory overwhelm, social anxiety, physical limitations, fear of being identified, and political protests.

I mention the last because for the past three Pride Parades, there have been disruptions by Climate Change, Anti-Government and Pro Palestine Activists (in that order), to the point where police - already a contentious issue at Pride - were summoned in an official capacity. Also, my general annoyance that these protests couldn't take place literally any other day of the year, but had to disrupt the one day celebrating the LGBTQ+ community.

But, the fact that I mentioned Pro-Palestine in a non-praiseworthy context was enough to get the post removed and myself slapped with an official Admin waring.

Why? It was a single paragraph about how political protests sabotaging other protest movements was counter-productive and risked making attendees feel unsafe. I didn't single out Pro-Palestine protestors, there were no personal attacks... but the story was still removed from the one group that is supposed to centere Queer Issues.

One of the biggest issues Queer-identifying people face is people talking over us, claiming that we don't need Pride now that we have Same Sex Marriage, and co-opting Pride to talk about other political issues.

I thought that criticizing other political movements invading Pride Parades was perfectly appropriate.

Nevertheless, I responded civilly. I've been a Facebook Admin before, and had to make unpopular choices and give warnings where it felt like an over-reaction despite keeping the same standard for everyone. It's not an easy job, and I respect the intent, even if no-one gets it right all the time.

The next time I had an article mentioning the Pro-Palestine movement, if indirectly, I sent it to the admins ahead of time, asking permission to post it. Permission was granted, under the condition that I turned off the commenting ability, rather than start a brawl in the comments section.

Messaging me privately was still an option, as was commenting on Vocal itself. No one did.

I posted the piece, with an explanation that Admin had requested to turn off comments as they and I knew Palestine was a divisive issue. I tagged Admin and turned off comments as requested. Then I ate dinner and went to bed.

I'm Australian, I live in a different time zone to most of Vocal.

Waking up the next morning, one of the first things I saw was a post from another Admin, "apologizing" for allowing a divisive post and promising in very passive-aggressive terms that they would be reviewing future posts more carefully, as if I hadn't asked and been granted permission by the same admins who were now throwing me under the bus to save face.

I saved them the trouble and removed myself from the group. I'm not a confrontational person, and I wasn't about to start a fight in the group when I could simply leave a place I no longer felt welcome.

Of course, QVV being a private group, that means that I can't go back and screenshot the receipts, which I didn't realise until after I'd left. My bad.

Safe Spaces

In addition to having multiple diagnosed disabilities, I've also worked in the health sector for well over a decade. I'm no stranger to the need for safe spaces, but also very aware that there is no such thing as a safe space for everyone.

Accommodating one person means disadvantaging another. In education, one child may need fidgets in order to focus, while another requires a distraction-free zone. If you place them both in the immediate vicinity of each other, both are going to have problems, because their needs conflict.

One person I know has trauma related to people raising their voices around them, because at some point in the past, anger meant Bad Things. Most of the time, that can be accommodated. However, while we can provide trigger warnings for that person, it isn't fair to ask that no-one else be angry, ever, or excited, or need to make a general announcement in a room full of people. Other people struggle with volume control when they're passionate about a subject, and it isn't fair to ask them to never speak or participate in discussions because it might make the first person upset.

One person's comfort cannot always supercede the needs of everyone else.

It's the same thing in every safe space: there will be people with conflicting needs or traumas who require conflicting accommodations. There will be people who lash out from a place of trauma, as much as there are people who lash out from hate.

While I am against accommodating transphobes, racists and other bigots on principle, it isn't always easy to seperate them from people who have dissenting opinions rooted in trauma or attempting to advocate for a different minority, or even from people speaking from a place of ignorance.

Education is a life-long journey, and while we never stop learning, not everyone had exposure to the same learning opportunities.

I was exposed to a lot of different cultures as a child, between travel and the school I attended being surprisingly diverse for inner-city Sydney. But I was in my 20s before I encountered the LGBTQ+ community outside of media stereotypes and news headlines. It took time to unlearn the stereotypes, and while a generally accepting outlook goes a long way, learning inclusivity and intersectionality are not an overnight process.

Even being an active part of the LGBTQ+ community for more than 10 years, I'm not so arrogant to think that I don't still make mistakes. Native American Two-Spirit people are different to Aboriginal Brotherboys and Sistergirls, and I'm by no means an expert on either. No culture is a monolith; Queer culture included.

Women-only spaces, from Gyms to Support Groups, exist for a reason: trauma related to male-presenting people. Men's Groups, by and for men, exist for similar reasons, and don't have nearly as much support as women-only spaces. It isn't fair to force a transman or transwoman to 'pass' some nebulous standard in order to seek support or participate in same-sex spaces, but neither is it fair to expose those spaces to a trauma trigger for someone else's convenience.

The only answer I can see is enouch safe spaces to accommodate all the different needs, but even that gets accused of polarizing or segregation.

I wish I had an answer, but I don't.

I can only create my own safe space, and help the people around me create theirs, in whatever way best suits them.