Unsafe Spaces

Unsafe Spaces reveals the shocking extent of sexual abuse in English and Welsh universities and offers practical solutions to the present crisis and to the culture of disrespect which blights many universities and allows such abuse to continue unchecked.

Unsafe Spaces reveals the shocking extent of sexual abuse in English and Welsh universities and offers practical solutions to the present crisis and to the culture of disrespect which blights many universities and allows such abuse to continue unchecked.

The academy is in crisis. Students call for speakers to be banned, books to be slapped with trigger warnings and university to be a Safe Space, free of offensive words or upsetting ideas. But as tempting as it is to write off intolerant students as a generational blip, or a science experiment gone wrong, they’ve been getting their ideas from somewhere. Bringing together leading journalists, academics and agitators from the US and UK, Unsafe Space is a wake-up call. From the war on lad culture to the clampdown on climate sceptics, we need to resist all attempts to curtail free speech on campus. But society also needs to take a long, hard look at itself. Our inability to stick up for our founding, liberal values, to insist that the free exchange of ideas should always be a risky business, has eroded free speech from within.

For too long, women have been told to confine themselves-physically, socially, and emotionally. Eliza VanCort says now is the time for women to stand tall, raise their voices, and claim their space. Women fight the pressure to make themselves small in private, professional, and public spaces. VanCort, a teacher, consultant, and speaker, provides the necessary tools for women to rewrite the rules and create the stories of their choosing safely and without apology. VanCort identifies the five key behaviors of all Space-Claiming Queens: use your voice and posture to project confidence and power, end self-sabotage, forge connections, neutralize unsafe spaces, and unite across differences. Through personal narrative, research, and actionable strategies, VanCort provides how-tos on combating challenges, such as antimentors and microaggressions, and gives advice for building up your old girls club, asking for what you're worth, and owning your space without apology. Bold, fun, and enlightening, this book is birthed from VanCort's incredible story. Having a mother with schizophrenia forced VanCort to learn to be small and invisible at an early age, and suffering a traumatic brain injury as an adult required her to rethink communication from the ground up. Drawing on these experiences, and those of real women everywhere, VanCort empowers women to claim space for themselves and for their sisters with courage, empathy, and conviction because when we rise together, we rise so much higher.

Change is inevitable, we are told. A job is lost, a couple falls in love, children leave home, an addict joins Narcotics Anonymous, two nations go to war, a family member's health deteriorates, a baby is born, a universal health care bill is voted into law. Life comprises events over which we have considerable, partial, or little or no control. The distance between the event and our daily lives suggests a quirky spatial politics. Our lives move forward depending upon how events play out in concert with our reactions to them. Drawing on nearly three decades of geographic projects that involve ethnographies and interviews with, and stories about, young people in North and South American, Europe and Asia and using the innovative technique of ethnopoetry, Aitken examines key life-changing events to look at the interconnections between space, politics, change and emotions. Analysing the intricate spatial complexities of these events, he explores the emotions that undergird the ways change takes place, and the perplexing spatial politics that almost always accompany transformations. Aitken positions young people as effective agents of change without romanticizing their political involvement as fantasy and unrealistic dreaming. Going further, he suggests that it is the emotional palpability of youth engagement and activism that makes it so potent and productive. Pulling on the spatial theories of de Certeau, Deleuze, Massey, Agamben, Rancière, Zizek and Grosz amongst others, Aitken argues that spaces are transformative to the degree that they open the political and he highlights the complexly interwoven political, economic, social and cultural practices that simultaneously embed and embolden people in places. If we think of spaces as events and events encourage change, then spaces and people become other through complex relations. Taking poetry to be an emotive construction of language, Aitken re-visualizes, contorts and arranges people's words and gestures to

Despite the name, trigger warnings have nothing to do with gun control, and safe spaces don't necessarily mean state-of-the-art panic rooms. Instead, these terms and the phrase "microaggressions" relate to preserving and protecting one's emotional safety. In this volume, readers will learn about the increased demand for sensitivity in social settings, in literature and media, and on the Internet. They will also encounter the opposing view, that we, as a society, are becoming too fragile and don't need figurative bulletproof vests for every occasion.

In World Horror Grandmaster Award-winner Brian Keene's latest non-fiction collection, nothing is sacred...or safe. Be it thoughtful examinations of the works of writers like Jack Ketchum and Mary SanGiovanni, loving tributes to authors J.F. Gonzalez and Tom Piccirilli, ruminations on middle-age, a rueful look at how publishing and writing have changed, sarcastic barbs at pop culture's obsession with superhero movies, or a hard look at both sides of the social justice war, Brian Keene once again offers an honest, no-holds-barred critique our lives, our culture, and our world, and proves that we are all inhabiting ...UNSAFE SPACES.