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Comment by intortus | Hacker News Reader

> "Safe-spaces", on the other hand, are cudgels of fear, handed to anyone claiming "victimization" to be capriciously used against people with whom they simply disagree and want to shut up.

Oh please. Now who's fear-cudgeling whom? You're being extremely melodramatic in reaction to a questionable anecdote.

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"Safe-spaces" are practical application of the principle, accidentally unearthed by xyz-equality movements of the 20th century, that people generally don't like hurting others and hence you can control them by appearing to be hurt, whether you are or not.

People modeling victim behaviors to remove everything that causes them discomfort aren't something to be afraid of, but also their cries for attention aren't something to be treated too seriously. Allowing them to get their way just reinforces further learning of this silly strategy.

This dismissive explanation doesn't account for why stories like this are so attractive to the population of sites like this. It's like people are getting off on superficially demonstrating how emotionally robust they are (I'm not convinced).

I'm not robust, I'm just angr^H^H^H^H victimized by people who try to make me feel bad for their emotional issues.

I try to explain that a) most people have little reason to feel consistently victimized, besides just a bad habit and b) this way of communicating isn't really productive.

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