Queering Safe Spaces

Son Vivienne is chief executive officer at Transgender Victoria, a community-led organization advocating for gender-diverse well-being.

This is a complex and beautifully researched book, grounded in community, cultural, activist, and creative work. In the weaving of interviews, anecdotes, histories, and autoethnographic reflections, Vivienne investigates how ideas of ‘safe space’ play out in, with and through marginalized communities, often to negative effect. This vital and timely work asks what we might do, individually and collectively, to create ‘brave spaces.’ It argues that binary modes of thinking inhibit nuanced understandings of difference and offers a ‘how-to’ section that addresses the practicalities of sustaining a trauma-informed model of working with groups. Vivienne’s nonbinary and neurodiverse approaches to reading and writing the politics of ‘safety’ and cancel culture presents a model for moving from the utopic naivety of ‘space spaces’ to brave, trauma-informed and resilient spaces where we can turn our attention to what matters: action, activism, connection, and community. This book is a love letter, a dreamscape, and a call to each other’s arms.

• List of FiguresPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart One: Safe SpacesChapter 1: A Framework for InterpretationChapter 2: Histories of Safe SpacesChapter 3: The Safety TrapChapter 4: Bodies at Borders: Breaching the BinaryPart Two: Safe Enough in PracticeChapter 5: Devising ‘Safe Enough’Chapter 6: Intimate EncountersChapter 7: Mediated StorytellingPart Three: Safety, Security and RiskChapter 8: Beneath the Surface—Embodiment and PassingChapter 9: Queering the BinariesChapter 10: How to be Brave (or Triggers to Watch Out For)ReferencesAbout the Authors