[sudo-discuss] a safe space, what does it mean to you?

[David Keenan]

>
> In the noisebridge context ...
>>
> 1) what does safe space mean for you?
>>
> A place free of implicit rules and conventions what constitutes
> appropriate social behavior. (that probably implies explicit language, and
> not playing games by the usual rules ... ISTR having overheard folks whose
> opinion matters that this is not the way it works)
>
In practice social space is impossible without implicit rules
guiding appropriate social behavior for that space. Sociality is
relational, and all relations have an accepted physics starting with
the dyadic form of cultural exchange, including the structure
of language and gesture itself - an agreed-upon, generative set of implicit
rules governing social communication that we already must accept as
the basis for any sort social practice (and corollary underlying moral
schemas) to be engaged in. NB/SR may have constituted a
site-specific, subcultural set of unspoken mores, but their points
of divergence from the mass culture, or their lack of explicit
articulation, does not render them nonexistent: In the case of consecrating
a definition for 'safe space' - a prohibition against physical
intimidation, or against ethnoracial/gender/ableist discrimination, and in
fact many other implicit 'rules' generally abided by at NB/SR come to mind.

As we strive to resist the determinist, ever-acculturating structures and
strictures of capitalism and mass culture in our own ways, I personally
feel we must be wary of a sort of unattainable utopianism that in its
nature precludes any possibility of realization: be it some perfect social
space without any 'rules' or a language/argot that is perfectly politically
correct or un-misconstruable. When relations are implicit, we can all have
our own unarticulated sense of what the social 'rules' are, even perhaps to
the point of pretending they dont exist. To hack the implicit into
explicitness is what cultural anthropologists do, and in general is
an enlightnening, reflexive, science-minded excercise that can result in
exactly the kind of actionable transparency for our community so valued by
SR. -my 2c
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