Because that term has become so loaded, so warped and twisted, that it no longer means what it used to. It has such baggage, both in fandom and elsewhere, that you can’t use the phrase in a discussion without someone’s knee-jerk biases coming in and mucking up the whole thing.
I mean, look at how the pushback against it is framed. “Fandom is not your safe space,” for instance, is so, so belittling. And
accusatory: from one person, placing themselves as a singular authority, towards another person who is being placed as an interloper. But fandom is a space that fans built
for themselves -- what else is it meant for but to have some measure of safety for fannish activity of all kinds (including, but certainly not limited to
critique, which here is distinct from ‘mean-spirited criticism’ and ‘harassment’).
I’ve also seen it stated that some fandom spaces are meant to be safe spaces solely for fanwork
creators, not for other types of fans, but that again places some fannish activity as more important, and some fans’ protection as
more essential to the [sub]culture than that of other fans’, who are again framed as unwelcome participants when they don’t toe the line according to rules set out by the favored in-group.
So. Let’s not talk about
safety, right now.
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