It’s been talked about a lot already, but it’s been mostly people taking a firm stance on either side - so to those people, I hope you read ahead.
I wholeheartedly sympathise with DV survivors and advocate almost daily. Though I want to make an important distinction here, because two things can be true at once.
Firstly, your experience of DV is valid, and nobody gets to dictate how you should feel about your own trauma. I’m genuinely sorry to anyone who’ve experienced that, and I would never minimise the lasting effects it can have. But equally, sympathising with a DV survivor does not mean automatically agreeing with every action they take, nor does it make them immune from criticism. Two very different things.
From what we saw, there is a significant difference between acknowledging that Jolene has a difficult past and accepting that her past should dictate how everyone else is allowed to behave around her. Courtney expressing a different perspective on the situation is not inherently the same as telling a survivor how they are allowed to feel. There is a difference between invalidating someone’s feelings and disagreeing with how they use those feelings to navigate a conflict.
And I think this part is getting lost: trauma can explain someone’s reactions, without automatically justifying their behaviour.
Having experienced DV does not give anyone a free pass to make every disagreement about their trauma, shut down opposing perspectives, or expect everyone else to accommodate them regardless of the circumstances. When someone’s past is repeatedly invoked to make others feel guilty, silence criticism or secure a particular outcome, it can become emotionally manipulative. Their trauma may be completely real, but that doesn’t mean every argument they make is fair.
And respectfully, experiencing trauma does not automatically make someone empathetic, self-aware, accountable or even a particularly good person.
Survivors are human beings. Some are wonderful people; some behave terribly. Some develop incredible empathy, while others develop coping mechanisms that hurt the people around them. None of that makes their trauma less real, but neither does their trauma erase their responsibility for how they treat others.
I can care deeply about what you’ve experienced, believe you deserve compassion, and acknowledge that nobody should dictate your feelings about your own abuse, while still questioning whether Jolene’s behaviour in a particular situation was reasonable. Those positions are not contradictory.
We should absolutely have compassion for survivors. But compassion isn’t the same as unquestioning allegiance, and accountability isn’t the same as a lack of empathy. We can validate someone’s pain without validating every behaviour that comes from it. In fact, treating survivors as though they can never be challenged or held accountable is hardly empowering them; it treats them as exceptions to the very standards of mutual respect and accountability that apply to everyone else.
Emotional intelligence saves lives.
And no, folks, this didn’t come from ~sigh~ Chat. I’m an amateur novelist, with a neurodivergent urge to break things down to understand them fully.