> The meaning of 'safe' as it applies to physical harm is fairly easy for us to agree on. When it comes to emotional and psychological harm, what does it really mean? Where is the line drawn?
Offer a meaning of safe as it applies to physical harm. Let's see if we actually agree to that as easily as you presume we would first.
A space where you have no reasonable expectation of any form of personal injury, perhaps excluding self-inflicted harm caused by negligence (e.g. cutting off your own hand in the kitchen, but not somebody else cutting off your hand in the kitchen).
Great! In only 41 words, and seemingly off-the-cuff, you've crafted a perfectly reasonable definition of an 'acceptably physically safe space'.
The term 'safe' should never have been brought over like this to apply to psychological comfort. With physical safety, there is a clear and obvious event around which related concepts can be built: the event of physical damage to the body. We can point to those events, and it is easier to trace back a chain of cause-and-effect and discuss reasonable domains of responsibility.
With 'emotionally safe' spaces, there is no line that prevents the notion from being abused, and substituted for "the absence of anything I don't like".
Offer a meaning of safe as it applies to physical harm. Let's see if we actually agree to that as easily as you presume we would first.