{"id":30516,"date":"2012-04-26T18:04:06","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T08:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=30516"},"modified":"2012-05-02T02:07:38","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T16:07:38","slug":"safer-spaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=30516","title":{"rendered":"Safer spaces?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On libcom, Ramona has written an interesting blog entry on ‘Safer spaces, false allegations, and the NYC Anarchist Bookfair’<\/a>. It concentrates on addressing what she argues is the mistaken fear that the implementation of somesuch policy lends itself to abuse; in the case of the Bookfair, this includes the private dissemination of email (on behalf of the Bookfair’s ‘Safe(r) Space Group’) asking the nominated person not to attend. The alleged problem is that: “By providing anonymity to the person who requested the recipient be asked not to attend the bookfair, this letter paves the way for abuses of power and a slew of false allegations”. As for the policy itself<\/a>, while problematic in some respects, it reads (to me) like a fairly sensible one on the whole. Somewhat oddly, however, it makes no reference to the issuing of the letters that Ramona writes of and which is also the subject of disco<\/a> elsewhere on libcom (and no doubt numerous other cyber spaces).<\/p>\n

As far as I’m aware, formal policies regarding the creation and maintenance of ‘safe(r) spaces’ at radical events and institutions evolved only in the last decade or two, largely, it seems, in response to feminist or feminist-derived concerns at the fact that men in radical milieus, like those outside of them, also commit rape and sexual assault<\/a>, and that this and other forms of ‘anti-social’ or discriminatory behaviour (lawful or not) required action. As I see it, the real concern here is not the possibility of false allegations being made by participants in such events or projects, but the use of such structures by elements hostile to radical organising full stop. How this concern can be addressed I’m not sure. That aside, an effective policy requires effective policing: nominated individuals can be un-invited, certainly, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t rock up anyway. There are also some technical issues embodied in the letter, and it raises all-sorts in terms of invested authority…<\/p>\n

Blah blah blah<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On libcom, Ramona has written an interesting blog entry on ‘Safer spaces, false allegations, and the NYC Anarchist Bookfair’. It concentrates on addressing what she argues is the mistaken fear that the implementation of somesuch policy lends itself to abuse; … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,29,14,9,893],"tags":[1437],"class_list":["post-30516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anarchism","category-broken-windows","category-sex-sexuality","category-state","category-thats-capitalism","tag-safer-spaces"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-7Wc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30516"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30611,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30516\/revisions\/30611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}