In the context of male violence, the term ‘survivor’ is now often used in place of ‘victim’ to refer to people who have survived an experience of violence, as a way of recognizing, healing and empowering survivors of abuse. The phrase ‘from victim to survivor’ emphasizes the process, to avoid essentializing the category of victim and to highlight people’s proactivity and resilience to overcome their victimhood.
However, there are also perspectives that criticize the excessively optimistic and individualistic views implied by some uses of the term, in that the survivor is denied her victimhood and expected to recover from the trauma, instead of accepting the weakness and vulnerability that she may, and has the right to, feel. The capitalist system is denounced for treating victimhood as a condition to be overcome in a short period of time; this is not optional, but a compulsory process that involves a determination to ‘change the victim mentality’. Thus, a failure to complete this transformation translates into blaming the victim (especially those who have not survived, who are blamed for not having fought hard or well enough) or the survivor, which from an individualistic perspective makes them the cause of their own suffering, as if it were a personal choice and as if one’s mentality were the only barrier for victims to stop being victims.