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I think the complaint is not about safe spaces as something that people can opt into if they prefer, but the idea that an entire university should be such a "safe space."

The bulk of the specific complaints are about things like free speech zones, censorship, or banning, disinviting, or attacking speakers. These are all basically methods to provide intellectual "safety" to everybody regardless of whether they've asked for it, and I don't think they're really comparable with more limited (what I would think of as "traditional") safe spaces.

Edit: The Judith Shulevitz New York Times opinion piece linked early on (which made the rounds a few weeks ago) is clearly an inspiration of this post, and Shulevitz does a much better job of actually engaging with the "normal" definition of a safe space, its earlier history, and the expansion the article decries.

"In most cases, safe spaces are innocuous gatherings of like-minded people who agree to refrain from ridicule, criticism or what they term microaggressions — subtle displays of racial or sexual bias — so that everyone can relax enough to explore the nuances of, say, a fluid gender identity. As long as all parties consent to such restrictions, these little islands of self-restraint seem like a perfectly fine idea.

But the notion that ticklish conversations must be scrubbed clean of controversy has a way of leaking out and spreading. Once you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe. It follows that they should be made safer."

I'm finding Judith's article much better written. Looking at the response the students had to the "dangerous space" flier, seems to typify free speech. Why shouldn't they ask the university to condemn the flier?

But the article is very slippery-slope, and mostly doesn't criticize safe spaces directly, just what the author sees as their side effects.

I'd agree that both Shulevitz's piece and this one are flawed. They both offer some interesting anecdotes but don't do a great job of criticism (or even, you could argue, identifying what's being criticized).

Instead, both are to some extent willing to leave things at "look at the what the wacky Millenials (substitute "leftists", "feminists", "statists" as needed) are up to!"

Part of the problem, I suspect, is the messy intersection with politics and identity in this area. It's tough to come across criticism that doesn't devolve into political posturing, and even thoughtful discussion is easily dismissed as it often comes from "the other side."

I'd actively encourage everyone to listen to "the other side" regardless of what side they are on. I see the popehat article as guilty of not doing that, but similarly I think dismissing popehat entirely as a result of this article is a mistake for "my side" because the same thing will happen when we criticize it. We won't have understood the full picture, so we'll use the wrong words and make mistakes. I feel like this is true in many domains.

Since this comment thread has risen to the top, here's the link to the Shulevitz op-ed again:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shul...

Yes, there's some unfortunate ambiguity in his use of the term. If you aren't familiar with his stuff, follow the link with the text 'entitled to a "safe space"'[0] to see what he's talking about. And I don't think he objects to people being angry when they're offended - that is illogical at best. He objects to the sort of behavior he links to where the college student in question is trying to get the school to either pull funding for the school newspaper or appointment 'adult supervision' for writing a pretty innocuous complaint about other's behavior [1] (warning: it's a bit opaque).

0. http://popehat.com/2015/04/14/fear-and-butthurt-at-uc-san-di... 1. http://ucsdguardian.org/2015/04/01/students-be-aware-of-camp...

Unfortunately for the people that use the term I'm pretty sure that the ambiguity does not exist. It is exceptionally easy for me to read this article as a direct criticism of all safe spaces, while the author draws a link that seems very vague and actually counter to what I've experienced in those spaces.

I'm all for criticizing these spaces but the article draws a very bewildering link between a misunderstanding of liberty with the people that support them. That's a tenuous connection, at best.

The article confuses me and it doesn't feel like the author has a familiarity with the typical politics of people that frequent safe spaces.

The disconnect you're referring to is precisely due to his misuse of the term. Leave the term out and it will make sense.

Sincerely: Thank you for engaging with me on this.

Given what you've said, I really have two options with this article:

1) I can read it as fundamentally misreading the politics of people who use safe spaces on campus 2) I can read it as misunderstanding the generally accepted meaning of the term "safe space"

In both cases, my conclusion is that the author does not have a high level of understanding of the subject matter. I hope this isn't taken as a refutation of criticism broadly, as I've attempted to make clear.

Glad to have an unheated discussion about it. ;)

But I mean it when I call his use of the term 'safe spaces' unfortunate. Both of the interpretations you gave revolve around how to interpret his use of the term. Leave it out completely, is my advice.

The link is basically that a lot of the people arguing for these safe spaces are the same ones that will petition, slander, or decry the folks on the conservative side of things.

You don't get to, for example, run vicious media smear campaigns and organize automated blacklists of people on Twitter and still claim that you aren't aligned, at least in principal and methods, with the enemies of liberty--no matter how worthy your cause otherwise.

The other issue is that, culturally speaking, the mindset of those critical of microagressions and identity politics and other important issues also tends to dismiss or antagonize folks that are very much supportive of liberty or free speech or the right to bear arms. This ends up in a lot of sapping of resources on both sides as they fight over things as trivial as whether or not you can get married in a church.

It's actually very convenient to the folks in charge, if you want to be cynical.

run vicious media smear campaigns and organize automated blacklists of people on Twitter

What are you referring to here?

A good example of this:

https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker

I'd rather not talk about that subject too much, because it's such a clusterfuck. That said, there's an example for you.

EDIT:

A similar setup, for the curious.

http://www.theblockbot.com/?page_id=2

That doesn't really explain much, sorry.

So, the tools in question (as I understand their use, and I am happy to reconsider my position if my understanding is incorrect!) basically create blocklists based on the edges of known "bad actors" in the Twitter social graph. These users are effectively hidden unless you are already following them for some reason (Block Bot does this, as memory serves).

Whoever is subscribed has their potential feed manipulated by...some group? For reasons? It's certainly easier than manually removing trolls, but imagine finding yourself on the wrong end of one of these bots or a more aggressive descendant, just because you happened to follow somebody who was controversial or deemed controversial.

The entire point of these things is to make a safe space--where safe is defined as not merely keeping out dissenting thought but indeed making it appear as though it never existed, very much like a memoryhole. On some places (like HN or Something Awful or whatever) you'll see a post downvoted or annotated with "User was banned for this post. Reason: User is a mansplaining shithead".

We're a bit down the rabbit hole here. I'm curious if there are such bots created by the folks on the other side of the issue, or intended for use by people on the other side of the aisle. I suspect not, but I simply haven't checked yet.

> just because you happened to follow somebody who was controversial or deemed controversial.

Presumably you'd either unfollow that person and appeal your inclusion on the list, or else get over it. You are not entitled to push your thoughts to someone else's feed if they don't want to hear you. If you don't like it, join a platform where such an entitlement exists.

> appear as though it never existed

Nobody is confused about whether the dissent exists. Similarly, nobody has forgotten that creationists exist. The question is whether hearing the dissent is useful. It isn't, and for some it causes anything from annoyance to pain.

Presumably you'd either unfollow that person and appeal your inclusion on the list, or else get over it. You are not entitled to push your thoughts to someone else's feed if they don't want to hear you.

The point is that, even if I only ever tweeted about sandwiches, these tools will effectively silence me because of my association. And your solution that I remove myself and appeal my ban, caused just because someobdy found one of the people I follow offensive? That solution is exactly the sort of thing that violates my right to freedom of association and that makes everyone proposing that solution look closed-minded.

The question is whether hearing the dissent is useful. It isn't, and for some it causes anything from annoyance to pain.

One could make the exact argument about any number of things, and it would sound just as close-minded. I'm not defending the abuse and death threats and whatnot, mind you, but you aren't winning any prizes for "most tolerant of other ideas". I understand the reasoning, I understand with where it's coming from, but

Twitter is a private service. You have no right to compel a private company to let you do anything with that service.

And more than that, Twitter itself isn't maintaining the blocklists. The people who want to use blocklists are. Freedom of assocation has never meant, "I get to walk into -your- meeting and do whatever I want." It means you can set up your own meeting.

You can't force your way into the blocklist users' field of view, and while that may be personally frustrating for you, it is entirely within the entire world's right to ignore you if the entire world chooses.

I'm not making any claims about what Twitter has the right to do--it's obvious these are third-party tools.

So, again, I'm not saying "I want to force myself on other people". I'm also not saying "These people are terrible for using blocklists". I'm not saying "The world needs more rape and death threats". I'm not saying "The world must not allow some user to be ignored, ever ever ever".

Very specifically, and all together now, I'm saying:

"These blocklists allow people who have no other sin than an edge connecting them with somebody on the banlist to be blocked in turn, and they'll never know about it unless they actively seek it out, and they are effectively being punished in discovery rates because of something somebody else did. That they must renounce that edge is unfortunate, and that the attitude that this is okay if they refuse to remove the edge regardless of other facts (i.e., they are tweeting great on tech, but they follow XYZ even without ever commenting on those topics, so shhhhuuuuuun) is backwards."

Whether

The thing is, you don't have a right to be heard. You also don't have a right to compel some other people to use Twitter the way you think they should.

If they (the users of those GG blocklists) want to keep gamergaters out of their twitter experience 100%, and act as though that objectionable swath of people simply doesn't exist online, that is entirely within their agency to decide.

And to address your snark, "some group" is people they trust, and "reasons" is because of an endless torrent of abuse, leading up to and including death and rape threats, publication of personal information, and so on.

I don't get what this is. Is usage of either blacklist compulsory in some way?

Nope. Completely opt-in.

Most of the people on these block lists are... I'm going to charitably describe them as "trolls". Generally, accounts are added for harassment, abusive or threatening behavior, outright hate speech, deliberately triggering someone's PTSD symptoms, encouraging specific suicidal people to commit suicide, and that kind of thing. Oh, and trying to evade a block, or encouraging others to harass someone.

On any even lightly moderated discussion forum, these users would have been banned. Most of this is actually against Twitter's TOS, and theoretically could be grounds for suspending an account, but Twitter doesn't really do anything about it. They know it happens, but haven't come up with any kind of workable solution yet.

Most of the users of the block lists are people who have been targetted by those same trolls, and who have chosen to just ignore them.

The people using the block lists tend to be women (especially feminists), various racial minorities, LGBT people (and related activists, especially transgender people), and various other marginalized groups. They are pretty much universally harassed for what they are, and for standing up for themselves against the standard pervasive sexism / racism / whatever.

> A good example of this:

> https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker

how is that an example of a blacklist the "the enemies of liberty" would employ?

Is an ad blocker blacklist an egregious attempt to stifle free speech just because you don't want that shit running in your browser?

The thing is, shared killfiles predate twitter by decades. It's not a new idea and it's not a new controversy.

If a communications medium doesn't have functioning anti-spam, it drowns in spam. If it doesn't have functioning anti-abuse, it now appears that there will be a wave of harrasment and abuse.

The most recent victim of this I can name is Sue Perkins, after the rumour went round about her being a replacement presenter for Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear. This was nothing to do with her and had no truth in it, but nonetheless resulted in a misogynist hate campaign.

Vicious media smear campaigns? Automated blcaklists as enemies of freedom? Come on. The gamergaters are making death and rape threats and publishing people's home addresses, the targets of those threats are blocking them from view. There's no equivalence here.

As for the word salad about liberty and guns, it almost sounds like you're trolling.

It's pretty easy to figure out how a system for automatically and preemptively blacklisting people (even one that is opt-in!) can be abused. Creating and fielding such tools does not make you a good person, and it doesn't make you a friend of freedom of speech given how it is used and deployed.

As for the rest, I got somewhat off in the weeds, sure.

When you're defending death and rape threats--and the accompanying publication of the threat targets' home addresses--under the banner of "free speech," it's time for you to take a good long look at yourself and your values.

I am a free-speech absolutist. I value free speech, of any variety, for any reason, with any intent.

That said, there is a very large problem maintaining this view in the era of mass point-to-point communication if one also (as I do!) admits the issues of emotional harm. The problem is not so much in the messages, but in the quantity and ubiquity.

I've brought it up before, I'll bring it up again, I'll probably even write a blog post about it, but everybody is so hot-and-bothered about the current victim-of-the-month that they don't care about the underlying philosophical issues.

And again, this isn't about your right to make noise. Again, it's about everyone else's right to ignore you if they want.

Free speech isn't compulsory listening.