A note on terminology

[kaberett]

Content notes for trauma and abuse.

So I was talking to a friend the other day about the linguistic distinction between "victim" and "survivor". My friend prefers "victim", because (broadly; I am here summarising a position that was pretty alien to me) "survivor" feels like minimisation; "survivor" feels to them like denial or misrepresentation of (the effects of) what people have done to them, & "victim" a more accurate reflection of their experience.

Whereas I am firmly in the camp of self-describing as "survivor", because from here the important point is that to be a victim one is a victim of something or someone, and I loathe and resent that possessive. For me what surviving means is that someone tried to break me down into parts that fit their purposes, into something defined in relation to them and in their orbit, and they didn't fucking succeed; it means precisely that there is no sense in which I am theirs. That they abused me means that they are mine, my abusers, that they have given themselves to me and given me the right to tell their stories. Thus survival: however badly I might be broken, I have persisted as identity and reality distinct from the will of my abusers. Thus: survival means surviving.

Comments

[kaberett]

(I do not think my friend is wrong, to be clear, and I do not think my way is the One True or whatever! I just found it interesting that we think so differently on this one, that we're using language so differently and putting emphasis on such different facets.)

[alexseanchai]

Interesting distinctions.

[sonia]

I am also not arguing or saying anyone's way is wrong. Your thoughts about possessives make a lot of sense to me.

I use both. One of my reasons for claiming "victim" is that we get so many messages that victims are weak, victims are bad, victims are surrendering to the abuse, victims brought it upon themselves. I use it as: Yes, I was a victim of a crime (many, actually!), and I'm still here, a strong, successful person. The crime is the responsibility of the criminal, and being a victim does not make me bad or weak or blame-worthy. And also being weak is okay, surrendering is okay. There's so much about the whole victim narrative that's problematic, and takes responsibility away from the perpetrators.

[recessional]

I actually actively dislike both words and both frames and really, really wish there was a way to say "someone who experienced a very bad thing" (in one word or so) that didn't have either connotation.

My problems with "victim" are mostly about removal of agency, the sense of belittlement, the sense of being defined by something someone else did. It has freight, most of it derogatory.

I didn't sign up to be anything just because someone fucked me up. Some days "survivor" feels firmly in the "you expect a little head jiggle to make me happy" category: oh good, I lived. My crazy comes with full blown suicidal features: sometimes I really resent surviving, frankly; other times it's a lot of "woo-fucking-hoo". Other times, I hate "survivor" because it feels like a role someone else shoved on me, like being A Good Little Autistic or A Good Little Depressive: survivors must be always trying their best, survivors are ~*so strong*~ and ~*brave*~. They're not resentful, bitter, tired, unfair, deeply irritated with other people who lived through the same thing as them, and they for sure don't ever just give up on stuff.

I also don't love how it feels like it shifts moral focus and judgment on me in terms of surviving, vs the people that did the shitty things. And I REALLY don't like the way they're framed as opposites, especially in wider and less careful/thoughtful discourse.

I don't want that. I resent that I can't talk about having lived through crappy things or succinctly note that I have had x experience without signing up for all this connotational and symbolic freight.

So that's my thing. (Usual ymmv, etc)

[403]

Thank you for writing this.

[kaberett]

Ha. Yes. I have a whole lot of snarl bound up in my use of survivor, but yes to terms that don't have baggage. Probably more later when proper keyboard; thank you for prompting me to think more.

[recessional]

Yeah, I was on my phone, so thoughts slightly truncated.

And, like. Ten years ago I would have totally been one with the snarl and survivor thing, which is kind of interesting in terms of how things change, but my last bout of Really Bad was just so deeply exhausted? I did not have snarl. Snarl ran out. I had a promise to a god-thing, and I had stubborn, and that was it. I was not a fierce fighting survivor; I was bitter, resentful, tired, utterly unglamorous: killing myself was off the table, so given that, let's move on and go to bed so we can go to work.

Which is quite different from previous bouts of too-close-to-the-edge downswings or down-crashes.

It left me with antipathy for "survivor" in general and mixed feelings/ambivalence to its use in more specific/limited circles: there are groups wherein I'll use it, but I mean "survivor" in the sense of "tsunami survivor" or "earthquake survivor": I got lucky and didn't die. I don't like using it in circles where I don't know that the other people are parsing it that way, because of the depth of that last crash, and the part where I'm not actually here today because I am a tough brave survivor who fought through, I'm here today because I promised my [brother] and there might be SOMETHING to be said about loving someone enough to not walk off the cliff because you promised them, but if there is it's about me and him, not about my sheer toughness or whatever.

And then ties into the above mentioned growls I have with how many forms of ableism have retreated from overt and moved into The Good Disabled Person trope instead and it all just gets twisted up. *throws up hands* Words are stupid, throw rocks at them.

[pipisafoat]

I appreciate your honesty. I, too, am here because of a promise to someone. No warrior, no fainting princess of legend with a white knight, just a promise I managed to keep.

And that I am intrigued by the ways different people use different words as presented in original post and even more intrigued with the ways people interact with the different baggage they find in the words, like you talked about in your comments. (I'm with you on not really loving either. when it comes down to it, I tend to say "X thing happened in my past" rather than use any word to describe myself in relation to it.)

[davidgillon]

Oh, powerful interpretation, I approve!

[highlyeccentric]

That is an interesting set of distinctions!

I don't use either - 'survivor' feels like claiming too much (not because I am too broken: because I suffered too little), victim i might use in the past tense (I *was* a victim of emotional abuse, etc). I would rather not be the subject of that sentence, though. HE abused me, this is about him and his actions. We are not describing me, we are describing my abusive ex.

[quartzpebble]

On claiming too much: I also "suffered too little", with related "still can't/won't put names to it". I have been going with words along the lines of "dealing with sexual trauma" and "person whose actions led to said trauma". It's true, at least.

[untonuggan]

I also prefer survivor, although sometimes I feel like when other people (mostly media) use it about people like me it just turns into some sort of survivor inspiration porn. But the victimization thing does too, so that's really a mass media problem that will probably exist no matter what word we use until it is adddressed at the core.