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This chapter examines the continued presence of sexualized violence against girls and gender nonconforming/lesbian, gay, trans* or inter* students in education. It discusses endeavours to establish ‘true’ safe spaces as preconditions for and effects of efforts to prevent or minimize sexualized violence. It shows thereby that debates on safe or even brave spaces provide further stimuli for the topic of sexualized violence and reveals the significance of the interaction of sexism, heteronormativity and hatred of people who are perceived as ‘different’. Counselling centres, survivor support associations, schools, and child and youth welfare organizations are now developing concepts to protect all target groups. However, there is still a lack of sufficient and well-conceived offers, especially for lesbians, gays and trans*. Strengthening the agency of those affected could be a promising starting point.

This chapter introduces the purpose and structure of this edited volume, including why safe spaces are needed in educational settings, how to think about what makes a space safe for different individuals or groups, and aspects to consider in creating and maintaining safe spaces. It describes the two broad sections, the first of which comprises chapters that introduce the problem, context, need for safe spaces (Chapter 2), the broad conceptual frames supporting them (Chapter 3), and detail and deconstruct examples of various safe spaces created in diverse educational settings (Chapter 4). Chapters in Section II include aspects of the conceptual foundations and details about the purpose, development, and implementation processes, and outcomes of various efforts to create and/or maintain a safe space for education.