What is a Culture of Victimhood?

20 September 2015

A few thoughts about so-called cultures of victimhood and whether it's a new, old, or even real phenomenon, prompted partly by recent "debates" over trigger warnings, but also by our recent episode onthe Changing Face of Feminism. I put "debates" in quotes like that because I think of the debates more as heated exchanges. Way too much talking past each other and way too little sympathetic listening has gone on.

But enough of that. I start with the observation that it's surely true that there have been victims as long as there have been humans relating to each other. i don't think any reasonable person could or would deny that. Would they? I suppose that what is taken by some to be perhaps a new thing under the sun -- and what people who talk about cultures of victimhood and victim studies and all that jazz are sort of trying to get at -- is that there are nowadays intensely fought and fraught contests over who exactly counts as a victim in various morally and politically fraught contexts. And I think that although perhaps they do acknowledge that nobody wants to be a victim, what they notice is that there are, nonetheless, certain advantages to being seen as a victim.

这是柏拉图的盖吉斯之环,但可能是反过来的。如果你从这个角度来看,那么受害者的社会/规范地位在某种程度上就变成了一件复杂的事情——既希望如此,也不希望如此。虽然没有人想要成为真正的受害者所带来的坏处,但人们确实想要被视为受害者所带来的好处。都是些什么货?一定程度的权力,至少是道德权力,如果不是政治权力的话。要是一个人能同时拥有一块蛋糕就好了。

这是一个非常重要的问题。一个人能拥有巨吉斯之戒是什么?那就太酷了。它将允许一个国家在不成为受害者的同时,仍被视为一个国家。当然,这可能需要一点不诚实、不真诚或自我欺骗或其他什么来完成帽子戏法。我认为,这就是反对者认为所谓的受害者研究的切入点。也就是说,那些不认为某些领域是受害者研究的人认为,在对受害者身份的争论中,它们的功能就像一个反向的盖吉斯环。这些特殊的戒指的作用是让其他人,甚至佩戴者自己将佩戴者视为一个受害者,一个被削弱、受压迫或边缘化的角色。当然,它不仅会欺骗佩戴者,还会欺骗佩戴者自己,这使它有别于柏拉图的戒指。柏拉图的戒指只对其他人有效。 It didn't hide the wearer from his or herself.

现在魔术来了。那些提出这种指责的人会想,戴上戒指的行为本身就是一种完整而至高无上的行为。这不仅证明了所谓的受害者身份是假的。但这本质上是一种侵略行为。抢占道德制高点的侵略行为。这至少是一个值得占领的道德基础甚至是政治基础。站在道德的制高点上,你可以指挥和谴责他人的行为。如果你这么想的话,它可以被称为受害者的制高点。

But is this a real phenomenon? Is it something new under the sun? Well, as to the latter, I doubt that there was some discrete point in cultural history when contests over power came, at times, to take the form of contests over claimed victimhood. Probably such a move was always available. Probably it was exploited at different time in different ways by different groups. Nietzsche, I think, thought that something like that is a more of less enduring feature of human social life. (resentment, herd morality and all that). And I don't think he's entirely wrong for thinking that. So maybe in some sense at least the possibility of "cultures of victimhood" have perhaps been with us always.

But beyond abstract possibilities, do we really live at such a moment now? A moment when non-victims have seized the moral high ground of victimhood? That's a much tougher call. People, on one side or the other of our current struggles will no doubt view them differently in this regard. Where one side sees as an illegitimate culture of victimhood backed by bad faith and the will to power, the other side is liable to see genuine and disempowered victims claiming their moral due. Judging where the truth lies in that sort of meta-dispute -- is a hard thing, truly fraught thing. Notice that right now, I'm in my neutral interpretive guise. I'm just trying to figure out what talk of cultures of victimhood might really come to.

Comments(5)


Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Monday, September 21, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

Reposted from the thread on

Reposted from the thread on feminism:


在我年轻的时候,女人们不戴围巾是不会出门的。但他们并没有从政治角度出发。应该有人画一幅穆罕默德和法蒂玛的漫画,让法蒂玛在围巾里戴卷发器。关键是,这只是一个问题,因为其中包含强迫。没有其他理由可以肯定它是一种“权利”。更不用说面纱了。这不是由被奴役的人来支持奴隶制的条件。有些妇女可以自由穿戴围巾或面纱吗?文化是一种权利吗?如果它不是自发的,它就不是不可分割的。 The earliest talk of right was about the right to self-defense. The point there was that no law can prevent it, and so it was taken as a demonstrable fact of natural law supreme over human laws and customs. Cultural constraints are not a natural and spontaneous expression of rights. A recent film on arranged marriages (I do not know its title) portrays an ex-patriot Indian community desperately clinging to social norms that are fading in India itself. Should their right to be sticks-in-the-mud be regarded as an inalienable right? Indigenous cultures should not be protected from the future, they should be provided the means to adapt to it in their own terms. Assimilation is a two way street, we adopt them as much as they us. The only crime is where it is unilateral and coercive. Absent that coercion and that implacable resistance to being influenced by the stranger, two way assimilation is the future for us all, not just those who feel they need to be protected from it, or from "them". Go to Iran and watch the girls push back their scarf when they think no one is looking, but quickly pull it over their hair when they think officials might be present, and then tell them it is their "right" to wear it. In France the scarf is outlawed in public schools. Does this go to far? Or do they have a point? After all, they don't allow visible Christian symbols either.

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Monday, September 21, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

My comments on cultural

我对文化受害者身份的评论很可能不会让那些长期信奉平等原则的人喜欢我,甚至可能支持像平权行动这样的难以调和的概念,以纠正过去的不公平。我也曾经信奉过这种理想主义,并在一个民权组织工作了多年,就像之前提到的那样。但是,随着时间的推移,少数民族和妇女逐渐认识到处于不利地位的好处,从而逐渐削弱了平权行动的最佳意图。作为文化受害者可以变成某种资产,机会将从这片迄今为止毫无希望的流沙之海中流出。几乎每个人都开始认识到正在发生的事情,受人尊敬的弱势群体领导人拒绝平权行动和其他这种人为的机制。AA现在可能已经临床死亡,尽管尸体可能还保留着一些残余的热量。在他的结语中,泰勒教授想知道“关于受害者文化的讨论可能会真正发展到什么程度”。让我提出这样的建议:也许,只是也许,它们可能清除一些蜘蛛网,并使我们能够以事后诸明的态度评估我们最好的意图所产生的结果。是的,有时候真相很伤人。

ryoudelman@gmail.com's picture

ryoudelman@gmail.com

Friday, October 2, 2015 -- 5:00 PM

When did the term "victimhood

“受害者心理”这个词是什么时候出现的?标准英语术语“受害”有什么问题?
"Victimhood" by definition suggests that "victims" are milking their condition and making undue demands. It's a shaming term which is designed to put victims on the defensive. "Victimhood" reflects contempt for victims.

edgarp678's picture

edgarp678

Thursday, December 10, 2015 -- 4:00 PM

In honor societies,

In honor societies, individuals (men) kept up their honor by reacting to affront, insults, infringement of rights without anyone else's input help roughness. For the most part respect societies exist where the principle of law is frail. In honor societies, individuals ensured themselves, their families, and property through having a notoriety for quick savagery. Amid the nineteenth century, most Western social orders started the ethical move toward pride societies in which all nationals were lawfully enriched with equivalent rights. In such social orders, persons, property, and rights are protected by plan of action to outsiders, ordinarily courts, police, et cetera, that, if fundamental, wield roughness on their benefit. Respect societies rehearse resistance and are a great deal more quiet than honor societies.thesis writing service

Gerald Fnord's picture

Gerald Fnord

Wednesday, March 9, 2016 -- 4:00 PM

Modulo a Nietzchean rejection

Modulo a Nietzchean rejection of there being anything proper to a victim, an illegitimate victim would be one not truly victimised. This implies a judgement of whether or not there has been an actual tort, to dip into legal language. Roughly speaking, those on the Right used to generally claim that the victims in whose interest the Left spoke were not true victims because the supposèd injuries done them were either due them by virtue of their failings ('The poor are lazy. ') or represent the natural and inevitable consequences of the way society, if not the entire Universe, is set-up ('Blacks/women/infidels are naturally unsuited to lead, so in a well-ordered world they will naturally have to defer to whites/men/{the One True Church}.'). Those on the Left, roughly again, see false victimhood in members of formerly dominant classes of people constructing their new lack of acknowledged superiority as a form of injury.