Very very wise, not least because this illustrates how insisting on one term for something can alienate the very people it describes. Women are not the Borg. We don’t all want the same language or labels or identities or even interventions. https://twitter.com/drjesstaylor/status/1334480155725754370

I have to have the ‘victim/survivor/label/descriptor’ debate with myself often, particularly regarding Ian Paterson. I am a victim of his crimes. I am a survivor of his harm. Neither word gives me the strength I need to properly place myself in the story.

BUT. Sometimes I have to have a short sharp way to identify myself in that story. “I was a victim of Ian Paterson”, past tense, because it’s over. “I am a survivor of Ian Paterson”, present tense, because hundreds of his victims died.

I have to have a way to impart the impact and seriousness and yes the horror of “I was operated on for no reason by a monster surgeon who is now in prison” because that impact and seriousness and horror are the most useful tools in trying to stop it happening again.

But equally, I need to move on, and I don’t want or need the baggage (read my forthcoming memoir for how much sodding baggage I already had). Victimhood can be baggage. So I try not to think of myself as a victim, even while calling myself one to others.

It’s enormously complicated. I do think that ‘victim’ gives the perp some ongoing power, but I also need people to understand that he had victims, and that vulnerable women as a class were targeted (and therefore victimised) by him.

We need this analysis. It’s one of the most important tools in the fight against male violence and structural inequalities. Exploitation has victims. It’s taken me years to stop feeling like one. But ‘survivor’ doesn’t sit right either, it invokes a fear of death.

Need to coin a new word.