No Safe Space

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

None.

I've known that my whole life, of course; when your very existence is one that fits into none of the spaces societally sanctioned, you learn very fast that you are safe nowhere.

Even — especially — at home.

Apparently there is once again a movement afoot to do away with "safe spaces" and such minimal protective devices for the injured and abused as "trigger warnings." They make the dominant culture uncomfortable; they point up abusiveness in a society that prefers to think of itself as both ruggedly individual and yet preternaturally charitable.

They suggest, in the quietest, mildest of terms, that perhaps such shibboleths as "up by your bootstraps" and "grow a thicker skin" and "you need to learn to take it" are perhaps not so much sure and certain truths as they are tools of authoritarianism, of control, of oppression.

Of abuse.

We have a new phrase making the rounds recently: "lateral violence." It's a thing, yes, and it needs to be addressed; hell, it needs to be upended, destroyed, burned to the ground, the earth salted over it. But it's now being used as a tool of violence, a bludgeon to be flung at some for the benefit of others, often within communities. [But not always; one of the more egregious recent examples involved someone who was, to me, a clear pretender arrogating the right to label others in a community for which she presumed to speak as practitioners of it. In such cases, the real violence isn't lateral at all, but more punching downward by yet another appropriator. And yet, someone close to me glommed onto this particular event as some sort of supposed demonstration of "allyship."]

I've spent my whole life fighting to own my voice, a voice. Silenced from infancy in literal and violent terms, struck even on the mouth for the most innocent of questions: funnily enough, sometimes for repeating the abuse'rs own words in all confusion, seeking clarification of meaning. And by "funny," I mean it's opposite, of course. And by struck, I mean not one event, but many, many, many.

Told to shut up. Bluntly, politely, obliquely, passive-aggressively, threateningly, it makes no difference. The end result was always the same.

Silencing.

Erasure.

Because I was not entitled to my words, much less my life. Not entitled to my existence, particularly when it didn't conform to sanctioned spaces and their prescribed (and proscribed) labels.

It's a legacy of colonialism, of course. One of many, and of many other dynamics, too. But it's real.

I was called "nigger" a couple of weeks ago. Flat out. In a public space. 

It's embarrassing. It shouldn't be, to me, of course, because the fault is not mine; the shame belongs to the bigot who said it. And yet, society dictates that the shame must also be mine. And then begins to look for "reasons."

It was, of course, another attempt to silence me. I'd said something the bigot didn't like. Some truth.

And for that, women of color are to be erased: for the great dominant culture crime of speaking truth. Forget about "to power"; speaking it under one's breath, to a peer, in a virtual space, in any other small and seemingly noninvasive way is more than enough.

And so silencing becomes insufficient: We are to be erased, dehumanized in a most literal sense.

I'm tired.

A half-century of fighting to speak, to be seen, to be "allowed" to exist in whatever unfitting spaces can be found, however uncomfortable to oneself and discomfiting to everyone else, will do that to you.

There's a new generation of women of color, though, braver and fiercer than I could ever have dreamed of being, and they are refusing to be silenced, refusing to be erased, refusing to be forced into unsafe spaces.

They are under attack, of course. From without, and from within. But they exhibit a courage I couldn't even conceive at their age, a willingness to put it all on the line, an insistence on being that will not be denied.

I don't have heroes, much less gods or masters.

But these women? They inspire me.

No safe space.

So I'm creating my own.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.