A note on terminology
Jun. 24th, 2015 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettContent 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.
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.