Read on Twitter
Unpopular opinion but I think giving people the space to realize they may have been victims of assault or abuse is far more helpful to them than forcing the label on them when they actively reject it.
This comes up a lot with men who talk about having had sex with older women when they were at a young age — Chris “It’s Different In The Country” Brown comes to mind. His story of having sex with a teenager when he was eight is abhorrent to me. But if he rejects the victim label?
Well. The whole thing about abuse and assault is that you’re having your agency taken away. And forcing the label of victim on to someone is just another way of taking away their agency.
I think with men it’s even more complicated, because being a victim — and being sexually victimized by a *woman*, at that — is so incongruent with most men’s notions of masculinity that they fundamentally cannot process the idea.
Which brings me back to the original point: I don’t think telling Chris Brown, or whomever, “You’re a victim!!!” over and over changes anything. I think challenging men’s conceptions of masculinity, and giving them space to consider the possibility of victimhood does.
At the end of the day, the label “victim” (or survivor!) is only as useful as the context it provides the person to understand and process their experience. If someone has a block against that processing... forcing the label on them only exacerbates that.
