The Gay Male Journal has a really good series of articles (two, so I guess technically a series, maybe it’s more of a two-part post?) about gay male safe spaces, what they are, why they’re needed, and why we shouldn’t apologize for them.
The beginning of the article even says to read it through the lense of a person of a color, and why it’s so important for us to move past the stereotype of gay men being white and rich.
There is also a large discussion in both parts about some legal issues, I don’t pretend to have any real insight or knowledge on them (I try to armchair lawyer with the best of them, but this is beyond my scope).
Here’s a few quotes from the first and second part:
[These venues] are called safe spaces, because we have always and still need places where we feel safe as gay males.
Gay male safe spaces are not a want, but rather a need to protect us from the daily acts of verbal, physical and emotional violence we experience just for being who we are.
Setting up a safe space is an act of self-defense against discrimination, not discrimination itself.
We will admit that our safe spaces are still not safe for everyone within our gay male community. As gay males of colour, we have first hand experience with these issues, but these are our internal struggles and not up for debate from an outsider that cannot even respect the fact that these spaces are needed to begin with.
Gay males have no need to explain to anyone why we need safe spaces. if every minority group had to ask for permission from the majority to create these venues, the answer would always be a resounding no.
Give them a read, they’re great, and in their writing, make the case for the need for other minority-only spaces. We’re all in this together, and there’s always a need to have our own spaces.
