Becoming a Survivor? Identity Creation Post-violence

Abstract

In recent decades, advocates have sought to combat stereotypes about sexual violence and victims. This effort included replacing the term “victim” with the term “survivor,” but researchers have little understanding of how people who have experienced violence understand these terms. Drawing on in-depth interviews of 30 young people marginalized by gender who have experienced sexual violence, I find that few strongly identified with either label. Respondents described victim and survivor in contrast with each other, creating two typologies of response post-violence that exist along a continuum. Respondents described “victim” as an all-encompassing label that communicated overall weakness and passivity. Most distanced themselves from the victim label and aspired to the survivor label. However, most did not identify as survivors. They described being a survivor as the result of a long process toward becoming strong, morally worthy people who had “moved on” and were ready to advocate for others. Respondents’ descriptions of survivors constitutes what I theorize as the “perfect survivor narrative,” a cultural script that made it difficult for most people in the sample to identify as a survivor, with implications for their racialized and gendered self-perceptions. The findings demonstrate the freedoms and constraints of using new language to combat dominant narratives.