I Am Not A Victim: A Manifesto for Humans

1.

I am not a victim, as in adjective, personality type or horoscope. Victim is not the sun I was born under or in my rising sign. Nope.

I was victimized. Eclipsed. I was turned to noun by the verb of violence. Not mine – the violence of another thrust upon me. No permission was asked or granted.

I am not a victim but I was made one – not by choice but crime.

I am not a victim. I was victimized. I am not alone in this.

When I hear the words “She’s such a victim” I cringe, recoil and get small inside. I repeat the sentence in my mind replacing the word victim with a synonym or using the full definition.

“She’s such a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.”

“She’s such a sufferer, injured party, casualty.”

“She’s such a person tricked or duped.”

“She’s such a loser, prey, stooge, dupe, sucker, quarry, fool, fall guy, chump.”

We’d never say those things with an eye-roll of exasperation except when saying, “She’s such a victim.”

Why do we do this to each other another?

Why do we allow this being done?

I do it too.

2.

I’ve been the backseat driver on another’s life thinking:

If she just carried that one bag up over the other shoulder it would put less weight on her spine or she’s sort of making a lot of excuses… others are more resilient when the same things have happened… maybe if she put energy into positive things.

I’ve compared. Contrasted. Measured myself up and against.

How did becoming a victim become something someone does poorly or well?  

We judge victims as though they had a choice in being victimized. We treat violence as a piece of fruit left in a bowl. Why didn’t she go with the empowered orange for lunch instead of chomping on the bruised apple of victimhood instead?

Victim status isn’t a suit in a closet a person gets to pick. One doesn’t get to suit up in the one that flatters most, hurts least and matches what’s already in the closet.

That’s the point – victims aren’t born – victims are made.

The making of victim is verb, action, done by a perpetrator who rapes, beats, steals, molests, assaults or murders.

The only way one can become a victim is to be victimized.

It’s not an item we can return, refund or have tailored no matter how much it itches, chokes or tatters skin.

Victim status is a tattoo inked on skin covered soul by the hands and actions of another. The victimizer has no regard for the way lives and selves are scarred, marked or altered. The victimizer is responsible for victim status.

It’s not just language.

Victim isn’t temperament, horoscope or where I fall in birth order.

I was victimized is a fact obscured every time we talk about a victim’s body, circumstances or tendency to attach to story – as if that’s what matters.

Victim status is real made by real violence.

It’s not a fictional persona, creative device or attitude applied or removed.

I forget this too.

I judge myself and others who have been traumatized, forgetting lives get cut into, curtains pulled in mid-scene. Of course that has impact. Betrayal, scarring, damage and injury happen in beds, skin, brains, souls in childhood and adulthood most often at the hands of people familiar if not intimately known.

That kind of violence complicates the human experience for a long time.

3.

Instead of asking how poorly or well a victim has been victimized can we insist the perpetrator be the subject instead?

Has the cause of the effect that is victim been punished, held accountable or considered with the same frequency, derision or magnified scrutiny?

How did an offender have so much opportunity to abuse, injure, stalk, murder, stab, beat, rape and molest?

Violence is rarely a one-act play. It’s a monologue screamed on people who didn’t volunteer as audience.

Let’s stop asking why victims do or don’t do anything and insist the perpetrator stay on center stage. 

4.

I’m not a victim. I never made myself one. It’s not a degree I paid to study it’s a lesson branded into me, a hot iron of intrusion poked into tender skin. Victim status was a transfusion of violence inserted in pushing out all feeling of safety and agency.

Safety stolen. No matter how much it was needed, prized and mine.

We discuss the fearfulness, anxiety, depression, avoidance of sex or tendency to get suicidal exhibited by survivors as though they are debatable choice points not symptoms of traumatic stress. We act as though symptoms are high heels shoes someone chooses to put on to go for a run instead of lacing up in sneakers. We say the equivalent of: If she had just worn sneakers it would have hurt less, been easier and not so daunting.

In other words – couldn’t she just take her power back and not let herself be hurt?

What’s missing from the question?

Couldn’t he (or she) not be a robber of sexuality, joy, well being and peace?

A victim didn’t just sit in the stupid seat when the one next to it was good, available and empty.

The verb of violence is the cause of the victim result. Why is this ignored, forgotten, minimized or denied?

Victims were once people who got hijacked, jumped, raped, assaulted, punched, kicked and molested.  That’s what it takes to make one a victim – not attitude – or being negative or mopey.

5.

What if we used new words?

Her happiness was in his hands and he walked off with it, didn’t return it or leave a forwarding address.

His confidence is in the trunk of him where she hid it and took it without asking. Let’s go bang on her car with an army of loved ones to get the keys back to his freedom. He deserves that. It’s his.

Her ease and grace and joyfulness were like the ring, necklace and bracelet he stuck his hands in when he wondered through her jewelry door after he broke the door down and entered her house. Let’s gather up the police or help her file a claim.

Can we join a victim in being outraged, offended, shocked and angry? That’s normal not suspect. Acting as though symptoms are optional is high-level victim blaming.

A victim is changed, made sleepless, scared and post-traumatically stressed – by trauma and violence – not her own lack of anything. In fact, what separates survivors who get PTSD from those who don’t isn’t their inner strength, usually it’s how much support they do or don’t have.

Female survivors of natural disasters get far less PTSD than those injured by humans – not because the pain isn’t immense but because no one asks: Could you have stood somewhere less hurricane prone? Didn’t you know the earthquake was predicted? Why did you let yourself live in a home near the water anyway? People send money, help rebuild and share emotion.

Maybe it’s easier to think about the victim than the perpetrator. Maybe it’s too hard to imagine injuring other humans or being hurt.

Maybe it’s too scary to imagine ourselves rendered helpless or pained or forever changed by trauma resulting from people we know or love?

Or maybe we’ve become so desensitized because violence is common.

I never hear, “He’s such a perp, so relentlessly attached to being perpy again after just getting done with the last perpetration. God… what a sad and tiresome sort. What gives?”

6.

How we respond to victims is a game-changing issue.

The goal isn’t to “blame the perp” but to make a safer world place.  The goal is to prevent anyone from becoming a perpetrating offender who makes innocent people unsafe in themselves adn the world, i.e. victims.

We can’t just shift the blame from victim to perpetrator and call it a day. It’s a start to move the conversation and remember cause as well as effect. But it needs to go deeper.

This is where the prevention of child abuse is an issue for us all.

We can’t prevent victims unless we prevent offenders.

Not all children abused go on to offend. It’s uncommon to find an offender who was not once the victim. Violence starts with victims meaning people who got victimized.

Offenders were victims too once only almost always.

No violence = no victims. No victims = no future perpetrators.

Boom. Done.

I know it’s not that simple.

Except what if it is?

Violence is a social cause we can organize and rally to fight against instead of blaming or shaming victims of violence?

I couldn’t say to violence, “No thanks” “I’ll pass,” or “I’m allergic.”

I can work to prevent more violence.

I can refuse to participate in conversations about how noble, brave or resilient a victim is or isn’t,

Let’s make everyone safe instead.

Sources:

http://www.acesconnection.com/blog/to-end-violence-against-women-end-violence-against-boys-socialjusticesolutions-org

http://jjie.org/op-ed-reality-of-child-crime-often-starts-with-child-abuse-neglect/108710/

The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress, David Morris