Presented at the Gender and Sexual Diversity Symposium, University of Calgary, March 2014.

1. Creating Safer Spaces:The
Disjuncture Between
Feminist and Liberal
Individualist Approaches
Melanie Carroll
mcarroll@ucalgary.ca
Melanie Carroll

2. Safer Space Research
• VAW - safe space for women who are
victims/survivors of violence
• LGBT safe space
• safety from anti-LGBT violence and
harassment
• feel comfortable being out as LGBT
• promote acceptance/challenge
homophobia
Melanie Carroll

3. Safer Space Research
• Analysis and critiques
• Intersectionality
• Identity politics limits who feels welcome
in a space.
• How to correct this but still be
identifiable as a space for marginalized
people.
• Politics of declaration
• Safe space stickers,“Ally” as an identity
• Being of a marginalized identity exempts
one from confronting their privilege.
Melanie Carroll

4. Safer Space Research
• Safer space politics and practice must contend
with:
• problems/limitations of identity politics
• Who is the safer space for?
• balance between sometimes contradictory aims
for comfort/safety and challenging beliefs/
assumptions
• How does one articulate and practice safer
space when the people within have different
understandings and institutions have greater
interest in some models over others?
Melanie Carroll

5. In what practical ways do these problems
play out in safer spaces and in how safer
spaces can work within larger institutions?
Melanie Carroll

6. A Campus Women’s Centre
• Researching the Women’s Resource Centre
at a time when its safer space practices
were under threat.
• Disjuncture between volunteer and staff
understanding of their work in providing
safer space, and the University
administration’s understanding of the core
aspects of the Centre’s work.
Melanie Carroll

7. • two key moments where disjuncture
apparent
• safe space relegated to crisis peer
support
• Respect Guidelines enacted to silence
marginalized voices to avoid discomfort
of other marginalized people.
Disjuncture
Melanie Carroll

8. Doing Safer Space -
Campus Women’s Centre
• Everyday welcoming practices made explicit and
procedural
• Training across identity/social justice issues
• Workshops/Awareness Raising
• affecting public/private discourses
• Managing Conflict - Respect Guidelines
• honouring each individual’s experience
• encouraging all genders to work towards
gender equality
• peer model: each individual is an equal and all
individuals responsible for atmosphere of space
Melanie Carroll

9. Misunderstanding
Safe Space
• a space where all people are free from
violence and discomfort/feeling unwelcome
• harm is something that happens outside of
the space and support in the form of peer
support “treats it”
Melanie Carroll

10. Liberal Approach
• individualizes problems both:
• in framing of how problems occur
• victims and “bad apples”
• in framing of how problems
“are treated”
• medicalizing and criminalizing
• peer support risks falling into this
Melanie Carroll

11. Feminist Approach
• structural problems as enacted by
institutions and individuals
• raise consciousness of structural
problems
• challenge institutions and larger culture
• existing as an alternative space
• take personal responsibility, challenging
ourselves, being challenged by others
• conflict management
Melanie Carroll

12. • Creating Safer Spaces
• structural --------------------- individual
• transformational ------------ comfortable
• inclusive --------------- exclusive (safety)
• Who is the space for? What are the aims?
How might these create conflict? How will
you manage conflict?
Melanie Carroll