I just realized the reason so many people will call someone “an abuser” when the facts of the matter indicate instead that the person is actually simply “an asshole” is because you can’t just create engaging social media guilt by association drama by demanding people unfollow x or y if they’re simply an asshole, but if you re-reframe banal assholishness as genuine psychological abuse it means you can also start shit with anybody who associates with the asshole in question. That might also explain why people say “this person is a gaslighter” when they instead mean “this person says lies”.
Hey op, I’m trying to read you in the best way possible, but this sounds EXTREMELY insensitive to survivors of abuse.
It goes way past merely “insensitive.” Actually, it sounds pretty abusive in and of itself. It’s victim-blaming at its finest. “You’re not being abused, you’re just trying to create drama” - really? Nope.
See, you’ve actually proved the OPs point. You’ve gone out of your way to call something that absolutely was not abuse ‘abusive language’ (and also ‘victim blaming’, proving that you don’t know what those words mean, either) which does nothing except water down what abuse actually is and make it harder for people who are actually victims of abuse to get help.
At no point did the OP blame victims of abuse for that abuse. Pointing out that not all assholes are abusers and not all asshole behavior is abusive is not telling anyone who has been abused anything at all. At no point did the OP say ‘you weren’t really abused’ to a victim of abuse. What they did say is that a lot of people (especially online) are very quick to label assholish behavior as abuse (and also things like lying as gaslighting) which dilutes the meaning of abuse and, again, makes it harder for victims to get the help they need.
Not all assholes are abusers. Not all toxic relationships are abusive. Two people can simply be bad for each other (whether as friends, romantic partners, family, or anything else) without being abusive. It doesn’t mean that toxicity and assholish behavior are never abusive, but when you call someone ‘an abuser’ when the truth is (born out by whatever ‘evidence’ is provided) that they were just an asshole, you are doing no one any favors, least of all yourself or abuse victims in general. The same can be said of calling someone a gaslighter when the truth is that they’re just a liar, or lied about one thing, or disagreed with you on something trivial. (All of which I’ve seen called gaslighting and abuse in the past lmfao.)