#i have a huge crush on clementine morrigan btw

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Whenever I talk about abuse being something specific (behaviour that is physically or sexually violent, dominating, controlling, degrading, humiliating, or violating) people always say “What about emotional abuse?” And I have to ask these people to be more specific, and many of them get angry that I ask them to be more specific. Not all abuse is physical, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean that anything that hurts you or doesn’t meet your needs is abuse. When my ex partner told me I’m a disgusting slut who no one will ever love, that’s emotional abuse. When my ex partner stole my keys and my phone, that’s emotional abuse. When my ex partner insisted I keep the house spotless and exploded at me when I didn’t, that’s emotional abuse. But I had another partner at another time in my life who I was very unhappy with, who scrolled their phone while we were at dinner and flirted with other people online when we were monogamous and largely left me feeling sad and unwanted, and that, as much as it sucks, is not emotional abuse or abuse of any kind.

I am tired of tiptoeing around this and so I’m just going to come out and say it: the conversation on abuse prevention and supporting survivors is being dominated by people who are not survivors because the situations they are alluding to are not abusive. I have read entire ‘call outs’ that loudly proclaim a person is an ‘abuser’ who must be outed for community ‘safety’ and then go on to list things which are clearly conflicts, mismatched needs, and hurt feelings. I have watched people be humiliated, slandered, isolated, controlled, and robbed of everything meaningful in their life when what they are being accused of is not abuse, and what is happening to them is.