Friday, September 22, 2023

What is the difference between victim and survivor?

Words matter!

Famous and well known are the Holocaust survivors. Although many of them are now third generation survivors born long after 1945. It is very understandable that the Jewish people refer to descendants of survivors of the Holocaust still as survivors.

Then we have the often mentioned survivors of sexual assault. How many sexual assaults are actually deadly or extremely violent? How to define sexual assault? (Is an brief, casual, inappropriate touch of the buttocks an assault? Next question, how inflated are the statistical data?) Would not victim instead of survivor make more sense and be more accurate? Survivor used in this context is more a term of propaganda than reality. Playing with emotions is dangerous!

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