Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

I find that social justice or leftist communities also tend to misapply social analysis to individual situations of abuse, suggesting that individuals who belong to oppressed or marginalized groups can never abuse individuals who belong to privileged groups (that is, that women can never abuse men, racialized people can never abuse white people, and so on). But neither of the above ideas is true. Survivors of abuse in one relationship can, in fact, be abusive in other relationships. And it’s easier for privileged individuals to abuse others because of the extra power social privilege gives them, but anyone is capable of abusing anyone given the right (or rather, wrong) circumstances. It can be easy, when confronted with the abuse we have perpetrated, to play “survivor Olympics.” “I can’t be abusive,” we may want to argue, “I’m a survivor!” Or “The abuse I have survived is so much worse than what you’re accusing me of!” Or “Nothing I do is abusive to you because you have more privilege than me.” But survivors can be abusers, too. Anyone can be abusive, and comparing or trivializing doesn’t absolve us of responsibility for it.