Is telling a woman that she's a victim of abuse disempowering?

[tortoiseonthehalfshell]

This is bad form, because it's a thread about something that happened on another forum. It's a small community, and we're a lot less blunt than Mumsnet, and it is very rare that people come out and say - hey, things are awful, help.

Anyway, so someone posted about her husband. Who, to me, seems like a classically abusive man. He controls all of the finances and tells her that she could be capable of dealing with money if she tried harder. When she gets dolled up he says "I'm not sure you want to go out looking like that". He works and she's at home, and she does an insane amount of housework, but if she slips up (with two small children), he yells or gives her the silent treatment. The thing that inspired the post was, he decided that Facebook was evil (they've recently moved overseas and it's her main conduit to her friends and family), in her words "caught her typing on it" and by the time she posted it was three days into a total silent freeze.

So, ticks the boxes, right? So I said exactly that, along with the usual practical stuff - squirrel away some money, reach out to a real life friend, blah blah blah.

The next post was someone saying that fine, important to tell people that treatment is bad, but how can we judge without all the facts, and this is usual stuff. But this is why I'm posting, this quote here:

But to tell someone over and over that they are being abused - when you don't actually know - can actually disempower them. It makes them feel stupid for being in the relationship and for wanting to work it out. It can make them feel even more of a victim when the first step in fixing a relationship, or in leaving it, is to take back power.

All my self justifying guff aside - can someone help me with a reply to the above? It seems to me that calling something abuse is only disempowering if you buy into an idea that a woman is at fault for being there. But the idea that to encourage her to take back power one should not call it abuse, is...well, I don't know what it is, which is why I turn to you.

dittany

I think we are not desperately apart.
I draw no conclusions about anyone else based upon their use of language around their own abuse. I don't regard anyone say 'I was a victim of abuse' as being passive.

I simply mean that I don't like that phrase, I don't like it as shorthand for every child who has survived abuse because I hear it as becoming the thing that defines us.
I was a victim. I am not ashamed of having been a victim.
But the Oprah style " Meet Pagwatch, a victim of child abuse' sounds too much of a label designed to define all of who I am.

It is the same dicussion as 'Child with autism' or 'autistic child' and has no right answer I think. It is an issue about how you hear it as much as what others mean when they use it. Very personal.

Victim or survivor. I think which word one is comfortable using boils down to one's own personal attitudes and experiences. I suggest leave any name for the problem out of any reply and concentrate on the advice about what steps she can take. Mention her options and let her decide.

Everyone who experiences violence or abuse is a victim. Tragically, not everyone is a survivor. I wish they were. This woman is currently surviving. Let's hope she ends up a survivor.