It seems to me that you didn’t steelman “social justice”, only a small part of it. There are people (such as myself) who are quite okay with the ideal of making the world a safer place—of course, after considering the costs and trade-offs; it’s not like I would sacrifice everything else for the smallest increase of safety—but object against some other parts of “social justice”. So, from my perspective, you didn’t steelman social justice at all. You only showed that it also contains some reasonable parts… which I already believed, because that is my standard assumption about all belief systems.
The usual problem with “safe spaces” is that often a safe space for X is an unsafe space for Y, because a thing that one person needs sometimes happens to be a thing that triggers another person. Making something a “safe space” for everyone would require a consensus on what is good and what is bad.
And we could find some generally accepted values, and e.g. make a space where no one is allowed to physically attack another person. But when we go further and declare that e.g. contradicting the beliefs of my tribe is literally violence… well, that makes it merely a safe space for one tribe, plus people who are willing to submit to the tribe’s rules. It isn’t even a safe space for skeptics or heretics within that tribe.
This may be difficult to notice for a naive, or politically mindkilled person, because “obviously” the safe space only needs to be safe for the good people; and it’s quite okay (maybe even desirable) if it makes the bad people feel unsafe. There is nothing wrong about helping good people at the expense of bad people, right? I mean, no one is forcing you to be bad; you could just stop being bad, and repent. If you are sincere, the good people would probably find it in their heart to forgive you, especially if your words are accompanied by real action, such as defending good people, attacking bad people, and promoting the expansion of safe spaces.
So, as I said, as long as we can have a consensus on what is good and what is bad, there is no problem with building universally safe spaces. Until then, we can only have tribe-specific safe spaces. If we try to turn the entire society into a safe space, unless it means an archipelago where each tribe gets its place, it probably means the dominance of one tribe and subjugation of everyone else (including the skeptics and heretics of the dominant tribe).
It seems to me that you didn’t steelman “social justice”, only a small part of it. There are people (such as myself) who are quite okay with the ideal of making the world a safer place—of course, after considering the costs and trade-offs; it’s not like I would sacrifice everything else for the smallest increase of safety—but object against some other parts of “social justice”. So, from my perspective, you didn’t steelman social justice at all. You only showed that it also contains some reasonable parts… which I already believed, because that is my standard assumption about all belief systems.
The usual problem with “safe spaces” is that often a safe space for X is an unsafe space for Y, because a thing that one person needs sometimes happens to be a thing that triggers another person. Making something a “safe space” for everyone would require a consensus on what is good and what is bad.
And we could find some generally accepted values, and e.g. make a space where no one is allowed to physically attack another person. But when we go further and declare that e.g. contradicting the beliefs of my tribe is literally violence… well, that makes it merely a safe space for one tribe, plus people who are willing to submit to the tribe’s rules. It isn’t even a safe space for skeptics or heretics within that tribe.
This may be difficult to notice for a naive, or politically mindkilled person, because “obviously” the safe space only needs to be safe for the good people; and it’s quite okay (maybe even desirable) if it makes the bad people feel unsafe. There is nothing wrong about helping good people at the expense of bad people, right? I mean, no one is forcing you to be bad; you could just stop being bad, and repent. If you are sincere, the good people would probably find it in their heart to forgive you, especially if your words are accompanied by real action, such as defending good people, attacking bad people, and promoting the expansion of safe spaces.
So, as I said, as long as we can have a consensus on what is good and what is bad, there is no problem with building universally safe spaces. Until then, we can only have tribe-specific safe spaces. If we try to turn the entire society into a safe space, unless it means an archipelago where each tribe gets its place, it probably means the dominance of one tribe and subjugation of everyone else (including the skeptics and heretics of the dominant tribe).
Related: A Response To Apophemi on Triggers; Safe Spaces As Shield, Safe Spaces As Sword.