Thank you for this.

In clinical psychology they pay a lot of attention to thresholds for what establishes a psychiatric disorder. So, there's a point system, and if you score above, say, 30, you count as clinically depressed, but if you score below that you don't.

Of course systems like that are flawed. Not all 29's are going to make it through the year without professional (and possibly pharmaceutical) help. And not all 31's strictly need help - some of them would get over the problem themselves, quite nicely, if given the chance.

But still, the idea of a "cutoff" is deeply embedded in our way of understanding the world. We need to know when a "problem" is bad enough that it requires our attention and when it isn't.

I'm convinced abuse follows that same logic. There are a lot of things that fall below the level we would historically set the cutoff for "abusive" at. But they are still part of the same dynamic and they still leave lasting damage.