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When Inclusion Excludes: The Flaws in Safe Space Culture

Safe spaces are designed to be havens of acceptance, understanding, and comfort. They are meant to offer refuge from judgment, discrimination, or hostility, allowing individuals to be their authentic selves without fear. In theory, they sound ideal. But in practice, the concept of safe spaces can sometimes backfire, leaving people feeling excluded, judged, or even silenced.


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One of the reasons this happens is because the idea of “safety” is deeply personal and subjective. What feels safe to one person might feel uncomfortable or even threatening to another. For some, safety means a gentle environment where challenging conversations are avoided. For others, true safety is found in spaces that welcome difficult discussions, where vulnerability, disagreement, and discomfort are allowed in the service of deeper understanding. When these definitions clash, people can end up talking past one another, creating tension rather than connection. What begins as an attempt to provide a shelter from harm can unintentionally become another site of hurt.


The very structure of a safe space can sometimes create a pressure to conform. Many of these spaces are formed around shared experiences or identities, which can be deeply affirming. Being surrounded by others who understand your story without needing explanation can bring a profound sense of relief and validation. But this closeness can also create invisible walls. There can be an unspoken set of rules, about how to speak, what to feel, what views are acceptable, that, if not followed, leave people feeling like outsiders in a space that was supposed to welcome them. Sometimes, instead of genuine inclusion, we encounter subtle forms of gatekeeping, where those who don’t entirely align with the dominant narrative of the group are gently or overtly pushed to the margins. When people are made to feel they must earn their place in a safe space by being a certain way or believing certain things, the space no longer offers refuge - it becomes just another place where masks are worn and authenticity is policed.


Fear of saying the wrong thing can further complicate the landscape. In the name of protecting others, some spaces become so tightly controlled that people begin to censor themselves. Participants might avoid expressing confusion, curiosity, or dissent for fear of being seen as ignorant, insensitive, or worse - unsafe. This often leads to a culture of surface-level harmony, where everyone is performing inclusion without actually engaging with each other in meaningful or transformative ways. The anxiety of being “perfectly correct” all the time erodes the very trust and openness that true safety requires.


There is also the emotional toll of navigating these tensions. For individuals already struggling with marginalization, rejection, or trauma, entering a space labeled as “safe” can come with high hopes. When those hopes are not met, when they’re met with subtle judgment, competition for who is “most oppressed,” or a hierarchy of whose pain matters more, it can feel like a betrayal. The disappointment runs deep, not just because the space failed to deliver on its promise, but because it mirrors the very exclusions it was created to counteract.


This is not to say that the idea of safe spaces should be discarded. In fact, they are more important than ever. But they must evolve. Safety should not be defined by the absence of discomfort, but rather by the presence of empathy. A truly safe space is one where people can be real, where difficult truths can be spoken, where mistakes can be made without fear of exile, and where growth is prioritized over perfection. It’s a place where we acknowledge that we are all learning, that we carry different wounds, and that understanding each other will sometimes be messy, emotional, or even painful.


We need to rethink what it means to hold space for one another. Instead of expecting uniformity, we need to embrace complexity. Instead of centering comfort, we need to center care- care that can withstand disagreement, mistakes, and raw emotion. Creating a space that is both brave and compassionate requires patience, humility, and the ability to sit with tension without rushing to resolve it. It requires us to move away from the binaries of safe/unsafe, right/wrong, good/bad, and instead embrace the murky, difficult terrain of real human connection.


It’s also important to remember that safety is not a fixed state. What feels safe today may not feel safe tomorrow, and what feels safe to one person may inadvertently feel harmful to another. This means that safe spaces require constant tending. They are living, breathing ecosystems that must be regularly assessed, redefined, and reshaped. They require open channels of feedback, a willingness to adapt, and the emotional maturity to acknowledge when harm has occurred - even unintentionally. Perhaps the biggest shift we need is to view safety not as something that can be guaranteed or enforced, but as something that is co-created. It emerges not from a strict set of rules or a flawless environment, but from the relationships and trust built between the people in the room. Safety grows when we commit to seeing each other not as ideas to be debated or problems to be fixed, but as whole people - with fears, contradictions, histories, and dreams.


When we hold each other in this kind of recognition, we allow room for discomfort without fear, and we make space for healing without perfection. In doing so, we get closer to the true spirit of what a safe space was meant to be - not a bubble of agreement, but a home for authenticity, mutual care, and the ongoing work of learning to be human together.


Written by: Vedica Podar



October, 2025

 
 
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