What is abuse culture?

whoneedssexed:

Abuse culture describes the way our culture systemically indulges, excuses, and ultimately normalizes abuse. It frequently overlaps with rape culture, and has intersections with oppression (racism, sexism, ableism, classism, homophobia, etc).

Examples of abuse culture include:

• Applauding “creative” methods of abuse as punishment, such as parents shaving their children bald, or someone destroying their partner’s valued possessions.
• Insisting some people and children deserve physical violence (that is not self defense).
• Making a hierarchy out of rape and abuse in general, “at least it wasn’t–” type rhetoric, and trying to make survivors compete or attack each other.
• Trigger jokes.
• Punishing people who defend themselves from their abusers, and the way laws and society view self defense as only being what is “equal” to the abuse (such as, a person being violently abused by their partner for years wouldn’t be justified in killing them because their partner was not literally threatening their life, thus it was “an overreaction” and not actually self defense). 
• Victim blaming, and having more sympathy and empathy for abusers and assailants than their victims (”This could ruin their life", serial killer fandoms, “They’re just sick and need help”, etc). 
• Ignoring emotional abuse, financial abuse, dietary abuse, cultural abuse, and religious abuse as forms of abuse that can be just as bad as physical abuse.
• Insistence that bullying is necessary for whatever reason.
• “Well life’s not fair” and similar rhetoric compounding a belief that life is naturally unfair rather than synthetically unfair (ie, it is unfair because of cultural and social issues and impacts, not because it just is). 
• Saying victims should change instead of their abusers. “Well if he wasn’t so weird he wouldn’t be bullied. He needs to stop being weird.” instead of telling his bullies not to be bullies.
• Parents being allowed to do basically whatever they want to their children; seeing children as property, your personal therapists, etc.
• Joking about crazy ex girlfriends; crazy ex girlfriends being funny stories and anecdotes instead of being acknowledged as abusers, or instead of acknowledging their justified grievances. 
• Stalking, paranoia, and possessiveness being played as romantic and dedicated. 
• “Quiet hands” and other abusive practices being touted as therapeutic for neurodivergent people. 
• Police brutality

Our #abuse culture tag has more examples and some other important remarks about abuse culture.

– mod BP