One of the biggest issues I see in survivor circles and on tumblr generally is how to define abuse. The fact that people care about this and want to share things like bullet point lists of what abuse is and is not is very encouraging, but unfortunately, the question is too complex to be summarized in this way and these lists, posted without context, are potentially damaging. Victims who have engaged in “abusive” behaviour such as walking away from a fight (for their own safety) may wonder if they’re actually the perpetrator in the relationship, while perpetrators can use these decontextualized lists to accuse their victims of abuse or try to claim that the victim is ‘just as guilty’ as they are, furthering their own control over their victims.
If we take a list of abusive behaviours, such as the one I wrote on this blog a while ago now (click here to view it) without placing it in its proper context, we could conclude that almost every single human being on the planet is an abuser. Obviously, this is not the case.
Lists are very helpful in that they assist people in identifying the warning signs of abuse and understand what is and is not acceptable behaviour. Used for their purpose - as one source of information for people questioning whether they’re being victimized - they’re very useful. Misappropriated to any situation, however, they can be counterproductive and even destructive.
With this in mind, I’ve written this post to hopefully provide some much needed context to go with those lists you’ve probably seen on your dash and on this blog as well.
When we talk about abuse, we’re often using two definitions that can overlap. The two types of abuse often discussed are; interpersonal abuse, and abusive behaviour. These two very similar terms are often related but not interchangeable.
Interpersonal abuse can be understood as a pervasive pattern of control, achieved through mistreatment and harm, committed by one person over another person, in a relationship of any kind. Intimate partners, parent and child, between siblings, boss and coworker, between friends, any relationship can be abusive.
Abusive behaviour, on the other hand, is similar to mistreatment; it’s behaviour that can potentially harm another person, regardless of the relationship of the people involved. This term is used to describe specific behaviour while interpersonal abuse describes a pattern of behaviour and control.
An individual can engage in an abusive behaviour without being an ‘abuser’ in the sense that we generally understand the term. At the same time, an individual can be an abuser without ever committing any actions that we generally understand to be abusive. To make things even more complicated - and this is where a lot of people get confused, this confusion making up at least 75% of the questions I receive - there are behaviours that are clearly unkind or hurtful, but that are not by themselves abusive behaviours.
Clearly, identifying abuse isn’t always clear cut, but these examples may help;
If you’re walking down the street and a stranger shouts obscenities and threats at you as you move past them, that person is engaging in abusive behaviour. This behaviour, while deplorable, isn’t part of a pervasive pattern of control, such as what we see in family and domestic violence.
If you have an argument with your partner and they refuse to speak to you (aka give you the ‘silent treatment’) this is clearly a hurtful and counterproductive behaviour, but this alone is not an abusive behaviour, nor does it indicate that your partner is an abuser. At the same time, this behaviour can be part of a wider pattern of abuse and control, in which case, it becomes abusive. At the same time, a victim of abuse may (rightfully) not want to interact with their abusive partner, this does not make them abusive.
If you’re in a safe, healthy relationship with your partner and they call you a nasty name, your partner is engaging in an abusive behaviour. This may be part of a wider pattern of mistreatment and control (even if you haven’t noticed/realized yet), or it could be an isolated abusive action. To be clear, this behaviour is completely unacceptable regardless of whether it’s part of an abusive dynamic or not, and isolated incidents of abusive behaviour are often the start of an abusive dynamic, that is, interpersonal abuse.
If your partner starts calling you names more and more often and getting angry with you over small things, blaming you for their mistakes, and generally behaving in ways that make you feel unsafe and as if you’re walking on eggshells trying not to set them off, they are engaging in interpersonal abuse as well specific abusive behaviours. Their hurtful behaviour has become part of a pattern of behaviour and they have cultivated a dynamic where you feel afraid of them. This is a hallmark of abusive behaviour.
Identifying abuse becomes even more difficult when victims have a tendency to overstate their bad behaviour and abusers tend to understate their own. This can lead to victims taking responsibility for issues they did not cause/create, and abusers using the victim’s feelings of guilt to deflect responsibility from themselves. Also, abusers tend to be in a position of power over the victim, which enables them to continue their mistreatment. In addition to the above, a few things that may help when trying to work out what’s going on a situation where you suspect abuse is taking place
Power; an individual with institutional power is more able to abuse someone with less power than the other way around, e.g. many bosses abuse their staff, but it’s uncommon for staff to abuse their bosses. This also applies to oppression in society; marginalized people generally lack the power to abuse those who oppress them, though this becomes more complex when we consider that power operates along many axes, and that axes of oppression are not quantifiable nor do they ‘cancel each other out’.
Social capital; this ties in with power (in the end, everything does) but its worth discussing on its own as well because its one of the most central factors when abuse of any kind occurs in community spaces, friend groups and even families. Those who are well liked, who have the most allies, who are able to manipulate others (whether those around them recognize it or not, and they usually don’’t) are able to perpetrate abuse and orchestrate entire groups to abuse, marginalize, and exclude the victim. Victims often vanish from a community/friend group/family without a trace in an attempt to escape, and the abuse often continues even after they do. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been the kind of work done about group dynamics of abuse as there has about interpersonal abuse so we don’t have a framework for it, but I would suggest considering who was forced out and under what circumstances. Severe and persistent mental illness, trauma, learning disorders such as autism and ADHD, and refusal to accept what the group considers to be fundamental truths or follow their agenda are all common reasons people who’ve experienced this kind of community abuse have described.
Who seems rational vs who seems “crazy”; abusers are very good at being calm in front of others, even when they claim their violence is caused by a loss of control. By contrast, victims are often traumatized, overreacting, or ‘hysterical’ due to the abuse they’ve been subjected to. The victims reactions to the abuse they’re subjected to are routinely used against them; they’re called hysterical, crazy, divisive, unstable, even dangerous. Strong feelings are framed as being innately abusive, regardless of what they’re in response to or how they’re expressed. It’s often this person who’s the victim, and the calm, collected person who’s abusing them.
The “there are two sides to every story” claim; this is a favourite of abusers because it enables them to posit that their abuse is the same as the victims attempts to survive their violence, and to claim that both parties are in the wrong. At the same time, victims may justify the abuser’s behaviour by explaining that they did something wrong too, but there’s a difference between doing something counterproductive or even hurtful, and being abusive. For example, a victim may say “my partner hit me but I did tell them they were useless first”. In that case, they’re using a bad but non-abusive behaviour (calling their partner useless) to justify their partner’s abusive behaviour (hitting them). At the same time, an abuser may use a similar method to excuse their own actions, e.g. an abuser may say “I know I shouldn’t have hit my partner but they got in my face and called me useless, and I snapped”. In this case, they’re using their partners bad (but not abusive) behaviour to justify their own abusive behaviour. To be clear, calling someone useless can certainly be part of a pattern of abuse, my point is that the situation surrounding it needs to be taken into account (this would be an example of a behaviour that can be abusive but is not inherently abusive by itself)
Who is in control; again this ties into power but it’s worth looking at on its own. This may be difficult to deduce from the outside but the core of abuse as a pattern of control is power over another person. The person who has little to no support, who is constantly changing their behaviour to keep the other person happy, who is constantly told they’re not good enough, who is told that their feelings are wrong, who is being coerced into doing things they don’t want to do, who is being taken advantage of, this person is virtually always the victim.
I hope this helps to add some much needed context to list-format posts that imply that anyone who commits any behaviour on an abusive behaviour list is a perpetrator.
To sum up, since this is a long post; abusive behaviour (actions that are violent/harmful by themselves) is different to interpersonal abuse (a pervasive pattern of harm and control by one person over another). A lot of confusion arises when people discussing abuse are using different definitions. Most people will engage in a potentially abusive behaviour at some point in their lives, but that doesn’t make them abusers or abusive; many potentially abusive behaviours are not abuse on their own but can become abusive as a wider pattern of harm and control. On the other hand, some behaviours are always abusive even if they only occur once. Finally, victims may engage in what is labelled as abusive behaviour while trying to cope with the mistreatment and violence they’re experiencing, this does not make them abusers themselves. Abuse cannot be understood as a list of behaviour, context is extremely important.
