[TW: physical/emotional/sexual abuse, abuse culture, rape culture]
I’ve only ever heard one other person (Kavitiya!) use this term, but I think it’s been incredibly helpful, at least for my own thinking.
Abuse culture basically functions like rape culture, except that it exists to enable [emotional/physical/sexual/financial/psychiatric/etc] abuse and undermine individual and community responses to that abuse. Also like rape culture, abuse culture endangers and affects absolutely everyone, but it specifically makes abuse easier to perpetuate along some kyriarchal line. For example: abuse culture makes it so that queer women who’re abused by their cis female partners have even fewer resources available to escape/heal than women in relationships with cis men.
I’m trying to compile some sort of “list” of different ways abuse culture manifests. Here’s what I have so far (but you should please please please consider adding on to it with things that I’ve missed). And of course, it’s pretty fair to say that there’s a huge overlap between what counts as “abuse culture” and “rape culture”—probably because the right to violate someone’s body, autonomy, rights and boundaries factors into rape, sexual assault, and pretty much all other forms of abuse.
[Repeating my trigger warning for emphasis: this part has descriptions of assault and physical/emotional/sexual/financial/medical abuse]
1. Abuse culture is when no additional “justification” is needed for an authority figure or privileged person to violate the boundaries of anyone they have authority or privilege over.
To clarify: making your kid hold your hand when you guys cross the street because your kid doesn’t understand the concept of death, risk, or fast-moving cars is justified. Physically restraining your kid and tickling them against their wishes because you have arbitrarily decided that this is an appropriate expression of affection is not. Withholding needed medical care because you want your patient to loose weight is not. Re-adjusting someone’s low-cut shirt because they’re fatter than you and you think their cleavage is “obscene” is not.
2. Abuse culture is when everyone (and every relationship) is assumed to be non-abusive until proven abusive.
Self-explanatory? If someone’s partner/parent/friend/care-taker/etc is in the room when you ask them how they got their injury, you might be doing more harm than good.
3. Abuse culture is the insistence that “ability to” equals “right to.”
You hear this one a lot in regards to the internet. Like, “if you put it out there, anyone can see it” is usually used as a way of dismissing victims’ concerns that their abusers are stalking them online or keeping tabs on what websites they use in an attempt to control or intimidate them. Protip: just because someone is technically “able” to be an abusive douchebag, doesn’t mean that we as a society shouldn’t take a stand against abusive, douchebag-ish behavior.
4. Abuse culture is when bystanders are encouraged to “white knight” regardless of the victim’s wishes.
“White knighting” things runs the risk of fucking everything up for the victim—especially if they actually are dependent on their abuser for survival and OOPS now they have to make it on their own. Also, people who do this might contribute to the victim’s sense of helplessness and lost autonomy. Sometimes taking action is necessary, but FOR FUCK’S SAKE: you are not a good person just because you told someone’s partner that they need to step off or else.
5. Abuse culture is the widespread belief that only “bad” people are abusive and that all abusive people are “bad people.”
What this does is make it hard to recognize red-flags in relationships with people who seem to be decent—and so you wind up being sucked /into/ an abusive relationship because ~leaving~ would be a harsh statement against the potential abuser’s character and because That Person Won’t Ever Be Abusive.
It also creates a disincentive for the abuser to be accountable, which fuels re-victimization and isn’t fair to the victim.
6. Abuse culture is the normativization of sex and certain sexual acts/practices in romantic relationships.
This is also rape culture. You have no reason to believe that the person you’re seeing will want to have sex with you or that the sex they’re willing to have is the same kind of sex that you want to have or are “expected” to want. JFC.
7. Abuse culture is when discussions of abuse are made verboten.
Basically, this just further marginalizes victims/survivors and their narratives. Believe it or not, it’s actually harder to build a support network that will keep you from going back to your abuser when you “aren’t allowed” to talk about the way you’ve been living. Additionally, refusing to discuss abuse (with your friends, in your health classes, among activists) makes it much, much harder for non-victims to identify abusive behavior, should it ever be directed at them. No one should have to seek out information about what abuse looks like by googling frantically; that knowledge should be considered as general as understanding how to brush your teeth or wait your turn in line.
8. Abuse culture is the belief that all victims can leave their abusers
Many people wind up in abusive situations because the “alternative” is worse or because they depend on their abuser to help them with emotional/financial/housing/medical care/etc needs. The helpful question is “what can I/we provide so that it’s easier to leave abusive situations?”* not “why don’t you fucking leave already?”
*[answer includes: childcare, food, employment, support, education, opportunity. If those things were easier to come by, then fewer people would be forced to stay in abusive or exploitative situations.]
9. Abuse culture is the belief that abusers can “make up for” their abusive behaviors
Just because someone would go un-fed or un-housed if not for their abuser, doesn’t mean that the abuser isn’t abusive or that the abuse is now magically okay. This myth is blatantly apologistic, and it tells abusers that housing/caring for/supporting their victim means that their community will take their side. See also: “how can you be so ungrateful to [your abuser]?!” Predictably, the people who are already dis-privileged enough to *need* support (children/minors, PWD, etc) are the most likely to be dependent on an abuser and therefore subjected to this sort of backlash.
10. Abuse culture is the kyriarchy.
Or rather, abuse culture is kyriarchal. It targets people specifically for their marginalizations and enables abusers specifically because of their privileges (be they money, ability, race, gender, etc). That said, abuse culture victimizes absolutely everyone by making them unsafe (see #7), and it targets anyone who has been abused, regardless of their privileges.
