The groups in question had it as just a basic matter of operating policy. It was often a balancing act, and it wasn’t without hiccups, but it worked pretty well. Example: A support group at which I facilitated for a while; the going approach was “safer space”: they knew they couldn’t ensure it was safe, full stop, for everybody in all situations—safety in this context being construed as “a buncha different people from a bunch of different backgrounds with varying experiences of oppression need to use this space, and they won’t always speak each other’s language about that, and we want to minimize the sense that this place is a hostile environment.”
It usually ran pretty smoothly. I can only recall one person who really ran afoul of it, and they did blatantly insult about half the group in the space of a couple minutes on their first visit, and escalated badly in response to people saying something about it.
I can think of some reasons why what you saw was different from what I saw, and it’s pretty much that you had a self-chosen group which was meeting in person and had work the members wanted to get done.
Hey, sorry it took a while to reply.
The groups in question had it as just a basic matter of operating policy. It was often a balancing act, and it wasn’t without hiccups, but it worked pretty well. Example: A support group at which I facilitated for a while; the going approach was “safer space”: they knew they couldn’t ensure it was safe, full stop, for everybody in all situations—safety in this context being construed as “a buncha different people from a bunch of different backgrounds with varying experiences of oppression need to use this space, and they won’t always speak each other’s language about that, and we want to minimize the sense that this place is a hostile environment.”
It usually ran pretty smoothly. I can only recall one person who really ran afoul of it, and they did blatantly insult about half the group in the space of a couple minutes on their first visit, and escalated badly in response to people saying something about it.
No problem with the delay.
I can think of some reasons why what you saw was different from what I saw, and it’s pretty much that you had a self-chosen group which was meeting in person and had work the members wanted to get done.