Comments | grenacia: "Survivors" vs. "Victims"

grenacia

"Survivors" vs. "Victims"

Feb 13, 2015 12:53

There's this trend to use the word "survivor" in the place of "victim", to make the people being referred to feel more empowered. It's most widely used when talking about sexual and domestic violence, but you see it used anytime there is discussion of people who have undergone some sort of extremely bad experience, be it violence, disaster or ( Read more... )

Comments 4

grenacia February 13 2015, 18:55:23 UTC

Some of the comments on this blog post make very good points on of the problematic nature of overusing the word "survivor":

http://akhilak.com/blog/2012/03/13/why-words-matter-victim-v-survivor/

mle292 February 13 2015, 22:58:56 UTC

"Advocates for people who have suffered with"... maybe?

I have an issue with this too. I am not a survivor of aggressive telemarketing, but in the broadest possible interpretation I've been a victim of telemarketers.

It's something about managing blame, and focusing on the person who was not at fault.

one_undone February 15 2015, 04:51:29 UTC

I see it very differently than you do.

Survivor does not imply to me that the person who made it through the trauma did so because of their own strength or any other attribute. They merely didn't die; they survived. It may have been because someone else rescued them, or because they cleverly figured a way out, or because of luck or timing or any other reason. The word doesn't come pre-loaded with causality, though it seems from what you say that you consider it to do so. I don't.

I consider all who have been victimized to be victims, but the ones who have died as a direct or indirect result of trauma remain victims, because they are by definition not the ones who survived. All the others WERE victims, but now ARE survivors.

flwyd February 28 2015, 20:48:21 UTC

Depending on the value of X, "Survivor" may also underplay the harm caused by the aggressor.

"Survivors of tax return fraud" sounds pretty weak. I don't think anyone has died from someone else filing their taxes, they just might be out a couple thousand bucks. "Victims of tax return fraud" emphasizes that they've had to deal with significant harm; not getting a couple thousand bucks is a serious problem for a lot of people.