What makes you uncomfortable?

tell me, what makes you uncomfortable?

what makes your hair stand in fear

fear that you cannot articulate

what makes you uncomfortable?

what tightens your gut

and makes you lose your words?

tell me, what makes you uncomfortable?

when we gather

when we commune

when we try to make this space ours rather than mine

when we attempt to build that which is ours?

tell me what makes you uncomfortable?

The past few months I have been reflecting on the idea of safety and how we can create safe spaces. As someone who has spent most of my career, advocating for protection of vulnerable people, safety is not a new word. We are always saying that we are assessing for harm, preventing harm, and ensuring there is no harm.

When we talk about harm, what most of us are assessing and preventing is abuse. Harm and abuse are two different things. Abuse is most of the time intentional, it is criminal, and in the context of our work is mostly extreme. Abuse can easily be defined within the context of the legal realm. When we read most safeguarding policies that organizations have, the focus is often on addressing abuse. We are concerned people will rape, molest, or beat children. I find that this is rare, but it happens. Harm is more common and embedded in our culture. Harm is subjective. It is the grey area where most of us dwell and thrive by imposing our biases. To not cause harm, we must admit that intention is not enough and that just because you have good intentions doesn't mean you cannot harm me. This bothers a lot of us, who like to "help". It bothers us because most of us would like to be rewarded for our good intentions and not held accountable for the impact of our actions guided by good intentions.

Most of us, if we were honest, help not because someone needs help but because it makes us feel good. Our help is more about how the process serves us rather than the person in need. That's why when people who are in need, question us beyond the intention to help, it bothers us. When we are questioned about things like; culture, safety, choice; we struggle because "help" is always defined from our perspective as helpers.  "Help" is always about what it makes us feel. A sense of self fulfilment, gratification or worth.

It is in the grey areas of "helping" that we perpetuate harm, that we gradually build a culture of harm and toxicity and even though we don't technically abuse people, we are still causing harm. These questions led me to thoughts around individual safety and collective safety and how our need to be safe is driven by fear and in most cases includes dehumanising people we deem unsafe. It made me think how we rarely take time to define collective safety. It's almost assumed that everyone knows what it means and what it takes for all of us to be safe.

I have been questioning the idea behind individual safety and collective safety. Are they the same thing? Clearly not, men feel safe in spaces where women feel unsafe, cis-het people are safe in places where transgender people aren’t, and white people feel safe in places black people will never feel they are safe. 

If they are not the same thing, what should be prioritized? Black feminists often talk about collective freedom and the fact that we are not free until all of us are free. If we all don't become free at the same time, then we don't get to safety at the same time. It follows that it's not enough that I alone feel safe, we must all feel safe.

I find that our definition of collective safety just like collective freedom are lacking. They lack the voices of the people whose safety has often been  defined and assumed consistently by others.

I have more thoughts and questions on this issue rather than answers, so please bear with me. What are some of the answers or things I know?

-       Harm exists in culture. How we live our values everyday is where harm occurs. A toxic culture dances and thrives around harm. A toxic culture will not have care within its processes and systems. Care cannot exist when we focus on protecting the system rather than the people. We should be ready to burn down a system/organisation when it no longer serves people. A toxic culture eventually destroys your ability to recognise abuse. It slowly discolours your lens and numbs your instinct to be uncomfortable with what is harmful. I say, uncomfortable because most of us cannot fully articulate harm, most of us just sense it in our gut/bellies and are uncomfortable. I am learning to ask the question “what make you uncomfortable”? I am learning to watch people’s bodies and reactions because sometimes that discomfort is easy to miss if you are not observant. I am learning to ask myself; “what does care look like in this situation?”

-       We cannot aspire to be 100 percent safe. We are different, we are growing and by virtue of being human, we will harm each other. If this is true, shouldn't we also focus equally on how we repair harm done? How do we re-create a safer space after it has been affected by these issues? How do build back even if the answer is tearing down the whole system. What does the new system look like?

-       Safety cannot be assumed because we have the same experience. This is always a recipe for disaster. This is a special note especially for minority groups. The joy of being in communion with peers can make us assume safety and be less intentional about safety. We need to define collective safety from our combined definition of individual safety.

-       If we cannot completely prevent harm, shouldn't we also think of building a culture of wellbeing. Building a culture that makes us think of and consider how each of us feel at any given time? What ways would we imagine wellbeing for ourselves if we were not focusing on prevention of harm? What answers would we give if our systems focused on care rather than efficiency?  Are our systems efficient if they don’t care for people?

As I said, more questions rather than answers but I am happy to reflect and learn especially as someone that is currently in the process of creating a community around me and attempting to build a culture that aligns with the values I love to articulate.