Safer Spaces

The notion of safe(r) spaces has evolved over time, expanding to include many groups who experience marginalization—racialized people, religious communities, ethnic minorities, and gender-diverse groups. Yet its origins are rooted firmly in LGBTQ+ culture.

Writer Malcolm Harris traces a brief but powerful history of the term in a piece for Fusion, drawing on the work of scholar and activist Moira Kenney. In her book Mapping Gay L.A., Kenney situates the concept of the safe space in the gay and lesbian bars of Los Angeles in the 1960s. At that time, with antisodomy laws still in effect, a safe space was quite literal—a place where one could be out, visible, and in good company, at least until the police arrived. These spaces were never “safe” in the sense of being free from risk, nor were they insulated from the world outside. Rather, they offered moments of collective defiance and practical resistance against political and social repression.

From this perspective, safety was never about protection from discomfort; it was about creating conditions of mutual recognition where community, care, and dignity could take root. Safe spaces were also spaces of power, where shared vulnerability became the basis for organizing, solidarity, and cultural imagination.

Over the decades, the meaning of safe(r) spaces has broadened extending from physical meeting places to classrooms, workplaces, and digital platforms but their political essence remains the same. They invite us to build environments that nurture belonging and trust while confronting the forces that make some bodies and voices unsafe. To understand safe(r) spaces historically is to see them not as sanctuaries of withdrawal, but as sites of collective world-building, born from courage, care, and resistance.

Image from Queering the Map