Queering Safe Spaces

Book excerpt: Queering Safe Spaces explains how safe spaces are determined by those with privilege and power, those who choose to invite us in or leave us out. Whether we encounter boundaries at national borders, bathrooms or birth certificates, our personal safety, and well-being are at stake. Gender-diverse and queer non-binary people have bodies, brains, and hearts that challenge traditional ways of being male, female, gay, straight, Black, white, good, and bad. These practitioners—at the interfaces of policy, architecture, art curation, group work, sex work, and tattooing—explore cancel culture and free speech, considering what it takes to be brave. In these times of global conflict and binary oppositions, there is urgent need for accessible and inclusive spaces everywhere. To listen and speak across the ideological voids that divide us, we must understand the differences that underpin our feelings of safety and discomfort.