Beyond the Buzzword: Why “Safe Spaces” Aren’t Always Safe
Published August 8th, 2024; revised April 18th, 2025
It’s a phrase many of us hear a lot: “This is a safe space.”
And while the intention behind it is often rooted in care—a desire to create environments where people feel welcome, respected, and included—I’m increasingly aware, especially moving into 2025, that it’s not trauma-informed to promise that any space is inherently safe.
Because safety is personal. Each of us brings our own lived experiences, identities, and traumas into the spaces we occupy. What feels safe to one person might feel uncomfortable, disorienting, or even harmful to another.
For many trans and nonbinary people, for example, spaces that are labeled “safe” often still uphold systems, behaviors, or unconscious dynamics that exclude, tokenize, or harm us. Sometimes it's a lack of gender-inclusive practices. Other times, it's a refusal to name power dynamics, or a culture that prioritizes comfort over accountability.
This isn’t about dismissing the good intentions behind “safe spaces.” I truly believe many people mean well when they use that language.
And yet, when we make that promise—explicitly or implicitly—we risk unintentionally erasing the complexity of people’s lived realities. We flatten difference in the name of comfort. We silence necessary conflict. We prioritize a feeling over a practice.
So, what’s the alternative?
Credit to Michelle Cassandra Johnson, who was one of my first teachers on this topic: she taught me that safer spaces are the more honest and aligned aspiration.
Safer spaces don’t pretend to be perfect.
They don’t claim to be free from harm.
They acknowledge that conflict, rupture, and discomfort are part of the work of being in any relationship, and especially in relationship across lines of differences of identity or power.
What makes a space safer is the commitment to try—to take responsibility, to repair when needed, and to orient toward practices that reduce harm and build trust over time.
Safer spaces require care. They ask us to consider:
Who holds power in this space?
Who feels most at ease—and who is being asked to stretch, explain, or accommodate?
What are we willing to do when harm happens—not if but when?
These are the questions that can guide us into deeper integrity. Because creating safer spaces isn’t a checklist. It’s not a bullet-point on a flyer. It’s an ongoing practice—personal and collective—that asks us to stay engaged, especially in relation to power, privilege, and oppression.
It asks us to be brave enough to move at the speed of trust, even when that trust has to be rebuilt again and again.
Reflection Prompts
I invite you to sit with these questions, whether you’re a facilitator, an organizer, a participant, or simply someone who wants to move through the world with more care:
Have you ever been in a space that claimed to be “safe” but didn’t feel that way?
What would creating a safer space look like in your community or workplace?
What’s one commitment you can make to help build a safer space for trans and nonbinary people in the years ahead?