A Rhetorical Analysis of the Safe Space Movement

Understanding the effects of memes and PC culture outside of North America.

In 2017, I wasn’t bored of the culture wars or memes yet. Whereas my friends were preparing for their six-figure incomes by obtaining Red Seal certifications, I was acing university and preparing myself for—

My final university paper was in a rhetoric class about memes. I know that more than enough has been written about safe spaces, political correctness, and free speech to last us a wasted lifetime, but with the inevitability of memes in Notes and Threads, I figured now’s a good time to post the following academic article.

I’ve modified the format to make it more attractive online, but I didn’t change the writing style. So, if you’re wondering why I suddenly sound like someone who loves a good ol’ academic circle jerk, keep in mind that —

Maybe I do love it. Academia has always been easier for me than real life, so without further ado, let’s make sure our memes don’t create a larger divide. Let’s break down borders.

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Our meme culture has allowed the rhetoric that surrounds safe spaces to mutate into dogmatic ideologies that affect how we approach intellectual freedom in our education system and by outgrowth or politics. The ambiguous goals set forth by proponents of safe spaces have undermined the physical and psychological safety they try to provide. These ambiguous goals have perpetuated political polarization and allowed those that oppose safe spaces to distort the original intent. I will primarily be using the research from Simon Western in contrast to Katie Byron’s work to highlight both the benefits and adverse effects of safe spaces. I will also be using the work of various cultural psychologists to analyze the possible effects of safe spaces outside of the North American context. Once we have reached intersubjectivity on the pros and cons of safe spaces, we can begin to look at the roles memes play. 

“The term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe small units of culture that spread from person to person by copying or imitation” (Shifman 2).

Since safe spaces are present in our physical and virtual realms, it is important to know that the definition of internet memes is:

“(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance; (b) that were created with awareness of each other; and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users” (Shifman 8).

Once we have explored how memes have influenced the safe space debate, we can turn to the potential use of memetic devices to better the rhetoric. However, first, we must look at the history of the term “Safe Space.”

Initially, the term safe space did not have the same memetic qualities that it currently has.

“Safe spaces find their roots in feminist consciousness-raising efforts of the 1960s and 1970s. These separatist spaces were meant to provide women with opportunities to discuss issues that affected them with other women. Safe spaces provided a semipublic alternative to the isolating nature of domestic life.” (Byron 118).

Feminists used the term to refer to the physical space but not to refer to an ideology. Once the term was attached to an ideology, it became a sort of ideograph which gave it memetic potential. Bennett-Carpenter, McCallion, and Mains define an ideograph as a word or short phrase that encapsulates an ideology and can be used as a rhetorical tool. It has also been defined as “a buzzword that is linked to ideologies” (qtd. in Boyd 144).

The exact time that the term safe space became ideographic is unknown; however, the term became popularized after debates started forming around politically correct language in the 1990s. During this time, the LGBTQ society became a primary agent of the ideologies that surrounded safe spaces. The concept of an ideograph has been broadened to include longer phrases and even visual representations (Boyd 145) which, in the case of safe space, is represented through the rainbow flag.

Figure 1. Whitson.

The rainbow was—and still is—used as a symbol for physical places to indicate that the LGBTQ community can feel safe in that establishment. Figure 1 shows that this rainbow has spread from the physical realm to the virtual realm through a meme. However, it was not until North American universities and colleges became primary agents of safe spaces that the term became a full-blown buzzword.

The role that North American universities play in both creating physical safe spaces and the idea of safe spaces is intermixed with the term “trigger warning.”  Lukianoff & Haidt define trigger warnings as:

“alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might ‘trigger’ a recurrence of past trauma” (qtd. in Western 72).

Although the debate around whether educational spaces should be safe spaces is not new, the debate around trigger warnings and safe spaces received a lot more media attention in 2011 once the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released additional guidance for colleges and universities concerning Title IX violations, including sexual violence (Byron 118). Among this list of suggestions was a recommendation to understand triggers, avoid unnecessary triggers, and provide trigger warnings. The use of trigger warnings and providing safe spaces eventually became routine on North American campuses.

Byron claims that creating classroom spaces that are shaped by the experience of traumatized students benefits not only unhealed students but also provides a more meaningful academic experience for the class as a whole by expanding on their viewpoints and thinking outside the box (123). However, a teacher of social work, Melissa Redmond, had the very opposite experience with safe spaces. 

While the evidence is strictly anecdotal, Redmond shares insight into how the rhetoric of safe spaces left her ill-prepared for emotional and challenging topics. Redmond extends her argument to include an anecdote from a student that some would put in the “oppressor class.” The student was not able to share her opinions, and so, rather than creating an all-inclusive environment, the safe space rhetoric caused a student to remain voiceless. At the end of her article, Redmond recommends a ‘‘pedagogy of discomfort” which Byron would seem to agree with when admitting that safe spaces should still, at times, be “uncomfortable” for productive learning.

The ambiguity that surrounds trigger warnings and safe spaces blur the lines between discomfort and trauma. Byron differentiates the feelings of discomfort and trauma when stating that:

“White students may not feel comfortable during discussions about racist violence because they are aware that a group they belong to is being discussed as perpetrators of violence. This is a different feeling from that of students in that room who have been on the receiving end of racist violence and are reminded of the ways they do not fit in the world” (120).

Byron goes on to say that neoliberalism contributes to racist and sexual violence by imposing narratives that promulgate the idea that trauma is a thing that one overcomes to better oneself (121). Byron’s argument makes sense when one thinks of the billion-dollar self-help industry, the plethora of counsellors, therapists, and soul guides as a testimony of the therapy culture promoted by neoliberal agendas (Western 70). However, one could argue that the politically correct safe space movement is equally complicit in creating a therapy culture. 

Both the politically incorrect (PIC) and the politically correct (PC) share the underlying belief system that we are living in a fallen world where morality and authority are no longer strong and clear (70).

“The politically incorrect tribe believe we have fallen from a better past and look to nostalgia for their inspiration and guidance, while the politically correct tribe believe that today’s morality has fallen/failed, blaming hyper-capitalism and its effects, for example, consumerism, greed, powerful elites, and a rampant media all of which undermine their “liberal-progressive” agenda” (70).

The idea that both PIC and PC people believe that we are living in a fallen world may contribute to why both sides take an authoritarian stance.

Historically, the suppression of free speech has been associated with authoritarian and conservative governments. It was conservative regimes that punished people for protesting the Vietnam War and challenged authors such as D H Lawrence and

Salman Rushdie

. And during the Reagan administration, countless books with explicit content were taken off the shelves.

Even today, conservatives still push back against freedom of expression in cases like NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem. When these same people claim that safe spaces are problematic because they suppress free speech, the hypocrisy is undeniable. However, the left is equally guilty.

The hypocrisy from the left mostly stems from the political correctness that has become more excessive and authoritarian every year. 

“In its early days, political correctness aimed to open societies eyes to the unseen ways in which discrimination took place, which reproduced a social status quo that discriminated against gays, women, and minorities. However, recently it has morphed into an authoritarian movement that has two aims, the first explicit and the second implicit: 1. To protect marginalized and oppressed groups against racism, homophobia, misogyny (at the cost of free speech and free thought). 2. To protect everybody from being emotionally wounded and hurt” ( Western 70).

Byron would argue that:

“By dismissing these students as whiny or afraid of being offended, critics of trigger warnings and safe spaces can turn student requests into the problem without worrying about whether their claims of trauma indicate the presence of violence on their campuses” (Byron 119).

However, the evidence that many universities’ safe spaces have turned from places that protect students from trauma to places that protect students from being offended is undeniable.

Instead of uniting marginalized groups and those that want a more tolerant society, the language used in university safe spaces has dissuaded possible supporters. For instance, PC culture and the safe space movement have popularized the term microaggressions which are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless” (Western 72).

According to some American campus guidelines, asking a person of colour “Where were you born?” would be a microaggression because this implies that they are "othered" from the dominant culture and are not “real Americans” (Western 72). Even though the people asking these sorts of questions might be ignorant, it would be difficult to say that these microaggressions are traumatizing.

Other evidence that indicates safe spaces are no longer just about protecting students from trauma but from protecting students from an offence, is the fact that many comedians will no longer perform on college campuses. Comedians such as Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld no longer perform at universities because students are too easily offended (Flanagan). Moreover, the comedian Konstantin Kisin pulled out of a charity performance at a British university after he was asked to sign a "no tolerance" policy to ensure the event would be a "safe place" where "all reciprocate joy, love and acceptance (Kolirin). The “no tolerance policy”  lead the comedian to say

"I was born in the Soviet Union, and it made me feel right at home.” 

     Proponents of safe spaces have unwittingly neglected the enthymematic qualities of the sayings and language. When it comes to memes, the premise is always drawn from the audience (Bitzer 408). The politically correct discourse that surrounds terms such as “microaggressions” has the ability for well-meaning, non-prejudice people to conclude that safe spaces coddle millennials.

“Critics of ‘PC’ had a plausible target because some (but only some) of the forms of cultural and discursive intervention labelled as ‘PC’ smacked of the arrogance, self-righteousness and puritanism of an ultra-left politics, and have caused widespread resentment even among people basically committed to anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc.” ( Fairclough 25).

If one searches memes related to safe spaces, one will find that this conclusion is vastly more popular than concluding that safe spaces are a place to protect traumatized victims. 

Figure 2. “A Safe Space Comic by University of Missouri.” 

Figure 3. Anonymous.

The majority of internet memes related to safe space reflect the conclusions drawn by figures 2 and 3. These memes indicate that people cannot openly share their opinions in safe spaces and that safe spaces keep specific ideas locked out. 

“It is very difficult to openly discuss the wider implications of large-scale immigration and how we address this challenge or the implications that gay marriage and the impact of raising children in same-sex partnerships may have on wider society. There may be positive and/or negative implications, but discussing them is very difficult in this polemic climate” (Western 74).

The goal to provide psychological and physical safety has been undermined by their authoritarian “no tolerance” policies and language.

The focus on language control is one aspect of the safe space movement that allowed opponents to create the idea that safe spaces suppress free speech. Free speech is a meme in itself. It is associated with ideologies attached to democracy and freedom, so when the safe space movement attached itself to “no tolerance” policies and the need to control speech, the safe space movement simultaneously dissuaded some of those that believe in democracy and freedom.

In today’s safe spaces, oppressor classes are often required to stay silent if what they say can offend people. This can include what some people would deem innocuous. For instance, using the wrong pronoun and assuming someone's gender.

VanderStouwe, a proponent of safe space, argues that the reality of safe spaces would not be possible without regulating language. VanderStouwe’s ethnographic data collected among members of a queer university group in southern California revealed that inclusive language is a primary objective of safe spaces. The group advocated for a training program that focuses largely on avoiding gendered words and using inclusive language in similar ways to the language patterns found in the Queer Alliance, which can be reprimanded for not maintaining the use of inclusive language tokens (VanderStouwe 282).

Yiching states that:

“There is a haunting resonance with the cultural revolution of Mao when students and youth brigades denounced teachers and even parents, in the name of purification and attempted to totally administer society, leading to unheard of brutality and mass killings” (qtd. in Western 79).

The re-education of dissidents also reflects the way the PC tribe tries to re-educate individuals and society who do not adhere to their ideology. Those who refuse to be re-educated are labelled as racist, bigots, or ignorant (79). When one begins to advocate control of language and thought, it is reasonable for some people to see the resemblance that safe space and PC culture has with authoritarian governments. 

Figure 4. Memegenerator.net.

Since safe space discourse has evolved to become authoritarian at times, it is essential to understand how collectivistic cultures—cultures where authoritarian governments are more likely to arise—perceive safe space.

Since safe space has the memetic quality of an ideograph and has transferred to the online realm, it is not unlikely that the idea of safe spaces will grow outside of North America. The term “safe space” might be difficult to find outside of North America, but the regulation of speech, political correctness, and the attempt to create tolerant environments exist globally. Bruce W. Davidson, a professor at Hokusei Gakuen University, researching critical thinking and theology, believes that Japan demonstrates the dangers for many non-Western societies of adopting Western-style political correctness in higher education. Some of these dangers include exacerbating social tendencies and traditions that already work against rational, scholarly inquiry and militating against educational reforms (182). Davidson’s claims are likely when a variety of studies have shown that with independent self-construals (construals more popular in individualistic cultures such as the USA), conformity is seen negatively and as immature. People who adapt to different situations are seen as “fake,” not genuine.

With interdependent self-construals (construals more popular in collectivistic cultures such as Japan), conformity is seen positively and as mature. Insistence on non-conformity is seen as immature and stubborn (Cheung). However, a major meta-analysis across African, East Asian, South American, North American, and European samples shows that anti-conformity is usually seen more among non-Western participants when confederates are seen as more of out-group members than in-group members. The analysis also revealed more collectivism lead to higher rates of conformity (Cheung). The effect of safe spaces in collectivistic cultures such as Japan depends on whether or not the proponents are seen as the out-group or in-group. It is also possible that people from collectivistic cultures will not become as polarized as North Americans on the debate that surrounds safe spaces because of their tendency towards naive dialecticism which is characterized by the acceptance of contradiction.

A study by Peng and Nisbett showed that when Americans encounter two contradictory arguments, they come to view the better argument as even more compelling than when they encounter this same argument by itself. In contrast, when the Chinese encounter two contradictory arguments, they come to view the weaker argument as more compelling than when it is presented by itself (Heine 369). Evidence such as this suggests that safe spaces might not be as problematic in causing polarization in the East as in the West; however, the authoritarian discourse could become a global phenomenon. 

Whether or not safe spaces act authoritarian in their physical spaces is not integral to understanding how it functions in our virtual and, therefore, the global world.

“Faced with the erosion of territorial space brought about by the conquest of orbital space, geostrategy and geopolitics will in tandem enter into the artifice of a regime of false temporality, where the TRUE and the FALSE will soon become obsolete, the ACTUAL and the VIRTUAL progressively taking their place, to the great detriment of public credulity” (Virilio 125).

The idea that true and false will soon become obsolete is reflected by Western’s claim that:

“this new authoritarianism arises from the result of our transition from modernity to post-modernity and from the industrial age to the digital age” (80).

The false temporality and erosion of territorial space seem to have arisen from our post-modern society.

“The change is from twentieth-century society structured in our minds and organizations that had clear boundaries, structures, roles, hierarchy, and a perceived order; a vertical society. To a society organized around peer connections, social media connections, and fluid, pluralist networks; a lateral society that has not yet discovered a settlement in how to structure itself in our minds or our organizations.” (Western 80).

Since our society has turned into a pluralist digital network, it is important to understand the current memetic qualities and possibilities that safe spaces have online. 

Since the memes that encompass safe spaces are highly political, it is critical to understand the effect of online political memes.

Huntington sets up a quasi-experimental design that tests the relationships between viewing political internet memes, the effect, and the perceived persuasiveness of memes. The results indicate that political internet memes produce different effects on viewers than non-political internet memes and that political memes are subject to motivated reasoning in viewers’ perceptions of memes’ persuasiveness (10). The results also showed that political memes were related to greater aversion than non-political memes and that political memes were scrutinized more (168). Huntington also discovered that political memes were rated as more effective when the participants shared the same political ideology which indicates that memes are subject to processes of motivated reasoning and could lead to political polarization (156). It is also important to acknowledge the bots present in our virtual landscape and how they contribute to polarization.

Bots also silence people and groups who might otherwise have a stake in a conversation. Bots make some users seem more popular, and they make others less likely to speak. This spiral of silence results in less discussion and diversity in politics. Moreover, bots used to attack journalists might cause them to stop reporting on important issues because they fear retribution and harassment (Guilbeault & Woolley).  Since political memes cause polarization, it should be integral for the safe space movement to detach itself from the radical left. 

If one researches the outcomes safe space policies have on marginalized groups, then one cannot deny their benefit. It is not the physical safe spaces that are to blame for the polarization and divide of the left, but the discourse that surrounds it. For example, North American campuses have not been perceived as safe for Indigenous students because of the association that educational systems have with the horrors committed at residential schools.

In Canada, the national average for youth suicide is under 20 in every 100 000. For Indigenous youth, that number is 140 in every 100 000 if they do not have agency in self-governance, land claims, education, health services, cultural facilities, and security (Cheung). When given agency in all six of these factors, the average suicide rate for Indigenous students drops below that of the national average (Cheung). Safe spaces try and give marginalized groups agency in their education system. When marginalized groups feel as though they are being respected, the risk of suicide drops dramatically. Even though people are divided on how safe spaces create psychological safety for students, it is possible to find intersections when it comes to intended positive outcomes.

 If we want safe spaces to succeed without authoritarian control of language, we must think of ways to restructure their reputation. Fairclough suggests that:

“We need a balanced view of the importance of language in social change and politics, which avoids a linguistic vanguardism as well as dismissing questions about language as trivial, and incorporation of a politics of language within political strategies and tactics” (27). In a world where much of our information is driven by memes, clickbait, and quick entertainment, the safe space movement must figure out how to make their memes as replicable and spreadable as those that oppose safe spaces. After all, as Flusser predicted:

“The current revolution can be viewed as a transfer of existence to the fingertips.” (Flusser 29).

It is our productive keys (keyboards, camera buttons, etc.) that are instruments for making the private public (Flusser), and safe spaces are designed to bring public awareness to the public (Byron 117). Instead of primarily focusing on politically correct language and trying not to offend anyone, safe space agents should be focusing on how to make their message relatable to people with various ideologies rather than the radical left.

One way to reach a broader public without causing polarization is to create memetic content that will be shared by people outside of leftist echo chambers. Six factors that enhance the content’s vitality are:

1. Positivity (and humour)

2. Provoking “high-arousal” emotions

3. Packing

4. Prestige.

5. Positioning

6. Participation.

Positivity is usually evoked when the meme is surprising, interesting, and useful (66). When it comes to the safe space movement, rather than sharing the upsetting effects of assuming someone's pronouns and other microaggressions, agents could share the positive experiences they had at safe spaces. When it comes to provoking “high-arousal” emotions, the “Awa" stories generate feelings of evolution in the face of something greater than oneself and are by far the most-forwarded stories in the New York Times list.

Even though content that evokes sad emotions does not prologue very well, content that evokes anger and frustration does (67-68). There is an abundance of awe-inspiring stories from minority groups. Many of these stories do not include the time they overcame a microaggression or were not provided with a trigger warning. These stories arise from overcoming real trauma. If safe space agents focus on awe-inspiring stories, they would have a lot more support from the public outside of academic and leftist circles. 

After analyzing the packing component, Shifman found that clear and simple news stories spread better than complex ones (69). Since the primary agent of safe spaces are universities, a lot of the vernacular used to promote safe space concepts are from critical theorists.

Articles with an abundance of academic terms such as gaps and indeterminacies, dehabitualization, decolonization, and intersectionalism, do not spread easily and create a sense of prestige and arrogance over the general public.

The time that you do want to use prestige is when the content shared by famous people spreads more (70). However, as we can see from Twitter quotes such as:

“A university is not a "safe space." If you need a safe space, leave, go home, hug your teddy & suck your thumb until ready for university.”

Richard Dawkins

It is the opponents of safe space that are using prestige to their advantage. Other famous opponents of the extreme aspects of safe spaces include Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, Joe Rogan, and academic celebrities such as Peter Boghossian. These people are not against equality, nor do they promote prejudice. They could just as easily be supporters of safe spaces if safe spaces restructured their image. 

When it comes to viral diffusion, positioning relates to the location of a message within social networks and its association with certain ideas (70). The locations of many pro-safe space messages are on LGBTQ sites and academic journals. The upside to sharing safe space messages on LGBTQ sites and physical spaces is that the best way to evoke participation is by not only encouraging the sharing of certain items but also carrying out other activities related to them (72). Members of the LGBTQ society or professors threatened with losing their job if they do not adhere to safe space policies are more likely to carry out the actions suggested by safe space protocol. However, as I have already suggested, the safe space movement should avoid enforcing protocols because it can backfire. For instance, those that follow Peter Boghossian on Twitter would have seen the hate mail he received from leftist students and that Portland State considered him to have committed academic misconduct after a "Sokal Squared" incident.  

When one sees supporters of safe space and political correctness sending hate mail, it is difficult for non-authoritarian progressive people to join the safe space movement. It seems that political correctness is not always associated with progressive liberals.  Wikström analyzed 184 Twitter conversations containing the target phrase “politically correct” or PC to discover the various and most common construals of the term. Some understand the term to be entirely fabricated by conservatives and the alt-right to silence liberals and progressives; however, Wilkström’s analysis reveals that the term is more complex than that. PC is also used to pre-empt potentially offensive understandings, project a more desirable state of discourse, perform a respectful and considerate persona, serve as a vehicle for irony, and some use the term playfully for interpersonal bonding (169). Wilkström concludes his paper by asking whether it is better to reject the term PC because the right uses it as a strawman argument to oppose progressives or is it better to appropriate the term and instil it with actual progressive values (169). The same question can be asked when it comes to the term safe space.

The term safe space is currently instilled with authoritarian language control, millennial coddling, and behaviours that do not reflect the real world. The close ties that the term has to political correctness and extreme leftist ideologies have divided rather than united people. However, these outcomes are due to the mismanaged rhetoric and discourse set forth by the primary agent—North American universities. Even though some of the safe space policies have ameliorated suicide risk and created environments where the voiceless can be heard, our virtual landscapes continue to turn safe spaces into something negative. After all:

“It is less important today to come up with a brilliant manoeuvre, an intelligent tactic, than strategically to cover up information, genuine knowledge, by process of dissimulation or of disinformation that is less effect, a known [avéré] lie, than the very abolition of the principle of truth [vérité]” (Virilio 124).

The truth of safe spaces—that they are places to help traumatized victims-- has been overshadowed by debates revolving around freedom of speech which is the outcome of the safe space agents that promoted language control and the safe space opponents that fabricated the safe space image into a place that coddles the youth. 

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