Thread by @PennyRed

THREAD:
The question of how to balance different peoples’ needs in public spaces is important. It’s being had in bad faith right now, by people who want to make the case for excluding minority groups- but it speaks to something important that lots of communities are considering.

As we become more connected, as difference becomes more visible and distance is truncated, our ability to impact one another is outstripping the current infrastructure we have to care for and protect one another. We don’t have good heuristics for balancing different needs.

And often- too often- a request that a particular group or person be accommodated is interpreted as a demand that other, potentially conflicting needs be sidelined. That’s just not true.

For example: in the current discussion about single-sex spaces, many people are insisting that the potential presence of trans bodies is always, inherently, traumatic for cis women and girls.
That simply isn’t true for everyone. It *might* be true for some people.

That difference is important when it comes to deciding how we share space, and what constitutes anti-social behavior.
It is hugely important to take people’s physical or mental health needs into account when we organise communities and design public space.

We can choose to share space in a way that includes as many people as possible, or we construct public space so that some people are deliberately shut out. It’s an ongoing conversation about what we owe to each other.

And flexibility and listening are vital to that conversation. There will never be one blanket rule, applicable in all situations, which protects every person from all possible harm. That doesn’t mean rules are useless. It means they should be negotiable.

I have extremely sensitive hearing. In public spaces, what counts as normal volume to most people is actively painful to me. What I do about that, though, depends on the situation.
It’s not fair for me to ask that every cafe in the world keep its music low.

Some people have hearing trouble, use hearing aids, or actively need things to be louder.
And there are specific situations where there’s a general expectation of lots of noise. Gigs and clubs I usually avoid, even though I love the idea of live music.

But if I’m in a cafe and it’s just a smidge too loud for me and it’s reasonably empty, I often will ask if the music could be turned down. Same thing if I’m in a group of my friends. In fact many of my friends now know not to blast music without warning around me.

I know a lot of people with trauma triggers that are different from my own, and the more I know the easier it is to accommodate them. That’s good. It wasn’t so long ago that social convention was that anyone with an atypical need or challenge was just expected to cope.

The world of disability advocacy is light years ahead on this, of course.

I’m not assuming that there is something traumatising about trans bodies, by the way- just noting that trauma triggers exist, and people develop them for all sorts of reasons, and there’s rarely any logic or prejudice involved.