#but i need people to stop using victimhood as a catchall excuse

[thedroloisms]

just an essay bc it's been on my mind but the way that victimhood becomes a weapon on social media is so fucking stupid and counterintuitive to actual advocacy. people wielding "im a victim" as a defense not only in situations actually involving their specific case but also in basically every damn situation in the world is so ???? even in cases involving dream, for example, i will see people using his history as a means of defending him (it's really fucked up that you would accuse a victim of ___, he's an abuse victim i'm sure he won't defend ___ and that he'll ___) and while i understand where that sentiment comes from, the base assumption it's making is...nakedly untrue. and assuming its truthfulness can hurt victims moreso than it helps them.

being a victim isn't moralizing. being a victim doesn't make you a good person. suffering isn't absolution, and going through fucked up shit doesn't make someone "good." people equate abuser = bad person and victim = good person, and then assume that victims are incapable of abusive behavior or "problematic" internalized ideas. an abuser can't be neurodivergent, or mentally ill, or part of a marginalized group, and most importantly an abuser can't be a victim. the boxes of victim and abuser are strictly defined with no overlap. once you've been through something truly, verifiably, Fucked Up (tm), congrats! you get a certificate of eternal victimhood that prevents you from ever being a Real Bad Person ever for the rest of your life.

only that's not how real life works! it's just not! generational trauma leads to cycles of abuse that perpetuate themselves over whole generations of people! the kids that think that it's perfectly fine and a-okay for a parent to physically punish their children don't tend to be the ones with parents that don't lay a finger on them! and you know, it sucks. it sucks that you get nothing out of being hurt, that there's no fucking prize, that there are no suffering vouchers for you to cash in because of the abuse you suffered that can give you good-person-points. it sucks to endure all that shit for nothing. but the opposite idea of suffering making you a good person is the exact reason why some people preach about the miles they walked to school in the driving rain to excuse taking out their shitty temper on their small children.

being abused generally doesn't make one "better." if anything, trauma tends to fuck you up in ways that hurt you...and others. going through shit tends to make people worse. working to get better is something that requires actual conscious effort, not something that you are given as a side effect of going through hell. over and over again, traumatized individuals who are made to feel powerless and given little freedom and ability to change their circumstances, when in a situation where they are given power to some degree over some person, may choose to abuse that power while they're in their own abusive situation or after. part of being a victim of abuse often means having a distorted view of the abuse you've been through! it can mean normalizing fucked up behavior! looking at shit and treating it lightly because you've been taught that it's "not that bad," if you've been taught that it's bad at all! victims aren't granted perfect ideologies from god because they walked through flames--cult survivors usually have to unlearn all sorts of messed up beliefs that were drilled into them--beliefs that many people on twitter would then damn them for, because obviously if you've thought something like that in the past then you're a bigoted hateful individual.

i can only speak from my own experience, but i can't fucking count the number of people i've heard of or met or known personally who have been through some kind of trauma in the past, who are undoubtably victims of abuse, who then go on to act in toxic, manipulative, and abusive ways to others. oftentimes, these people are aware of the fact that they were in abusive situations in the past and make quite a big deal about the fact that they care about victims, as a victim, and want to advocate for them. they're the same people who react extremely negatively to anyone alluding to the idea that they could be abusive--they're not like that, they've been abused, how could anyone accuse them of abusing another person, don't they know how much that hurts with their history. and so on and so forth.

and...i have a lot of sympathy for these individuals, generally speaking. because as mentioned above, being abused in the past doesn't necessarily make it harder for you to be a perpetrator in the future. sometimes--oftentimes, even--it's the opposite. and i feel for them, because going through trauma and being hurt makes you scramble for ways to not be hurt again, and oftentimes the easiest answer for that (and the ways of solving problems as modeled to them in the past!) is control, and controlling another party can very easily slip into manipulative, abusive behavior. especially if you still have internalized ideas mixed in with the fear that surviving abuse entails, internalized ideas that are often left unexamined by people who believe that their victimhood absolves them from any further responsibility. i feel for people who are deathly afraid of ever being seen as terrible people, oftentimes because of the shit that they went through, who seek explanations for their abusers' behavior that make it so much easier to simplify the matter into "they're something separate from me, something that i can never become." i sympathize with the anger and fear and frustration and grief that might never had had a healthy outlet while in a past situation that ends up poured out into places where it shouldn't be in the present, i sympathize with the desire to find reason in being hurt where it doesn't exist, to want there to be something to make the whole damn thing worth it instead of having nothing to take with you but your pain.

but at the end of the day, that's not how life works. that's not how abuse works. yeah, there are abusers who are cruel for cruelty's sake, who are aware of the harm they do and desire to cause more--and there are just as many who genuinely believe that they're doing the right thing, that they're doing good, that they care for the one that they're hurting unselfishly and wholeheartedly. there are many, many people who hurt others because they have been hurt before, and this isn't an excuse--of course not--but refusing to acknowledge the ways that pain can perpetuate itself and blinding oneself to the possibility of their own actions ever being abusive can literally be how this pain continues. it's good to be self aware, it's good to want to do the right thing, but assuming that victims are good people because of the suffering they went through not only means that so-called "bad victims" (or anyone that's not yet Acceptably untangled the thought patterns and actions that have been normalized to them, or anyone who lashes out in quote-unquote appropriate ways as judged by whatever social media council is handing out social justice tickets for the week) get overlooked and ignored, but abusive patterns of behavior are allowed to continue to exist, just in a repackaged form with different language. it's not fair to victims to nail them to this standard of so-called righteousness that is also inextricably connected to their experiences, allowed to be revoked if they're too "abuser" to be "victim" anymore, or to overlook the victims of their behavior because their inherent suffering-borne righteousness keeps them from crossing the line into bad behavior.

at the end of the day, no one deserves abuse, victims deserve to be advocated for, and people who have been through horrific shit didn't deserve to go through horrific shit. but you don't get handed get-out-of-jail-free cards for being treated badly, you know?

#abuse #like ugh it's complicated #but i need people to stop using victimhood as a catchall excuse #and this isn't criticism of like. dr eam btw #who really hasn't ever used anything re: his experiences as an excuse as far as i can remember #it's one thing to say that 'these situations affected my actions' which is half of what this essay is abt #because yeah. going through shit affects your actions ... and not always for the better. #now the other ccs whose opinions ive been unwillingly subjected to over the last few weeks ? lol. lmao. #like look this idea of victimhood earning anyone anything is inherently damaging and completely untrue #sympathy and understanding extended towards abuse victims shouldn't be dependent on the morality points that they falsely earn #as a result of going through fucked up shit