Angel
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The Culture of Victimhood
Let's talk about victimhood.
It appears to be on the rise in Millennial America.
In these terrible times everyone seems to be claiming victimization.
Have we nurtured a culture of victimhood?
Below are posted links to a book, a blog, and an article on the psychology of victimhood in order to kick-start the discussion.
All opinions are welcome.
If you feel victimized by this thread, speak up.
Let's talk about victimhood.
It appears to be on the rise in Millennial America.
In these terrible times everyone seems to be claiming victimization.
Have we nurtured a culture of victimhood?
Below are posted links to a book, a blog, and an article on the psychology of victimhood in order to kick-start the discussion.
All opinions are welcome.
If you feel victimized by this thread, speak up.
The Culture of Victimhood
Hoaxes, Trigger Warnings and Trauma-Informed care
The Culture of Victimhood | Psychology TodayVictimhood has now become a protected class in our society, a trend fed by well-intended, but potentially harmful, therapists, activists and daytime talk shows.
In our culture of victimhood, victims can be excused for victimizing others, taking away the rights, freedoms and autonomy of others, in service to their victimization.
Why would people loudly and publicly proclaim themselves as victims? Perhaps a better question, based upon the level of secondary gain, attention, protection and support received by these people, is why wouldn’t they? With all of the attention on the issue, why are we surprised when people are exaggerating, using, or downright lying, about victimization? Of course, when we attach benefits to identification as a victim, we will hear from more victims, both real and exaggerated.
To continue with the way we are idealizing and rewarding victimhood, creates more and more incentive for people to desire to be seen as victims. We must instead encourage people in a way that supports their ability to move forward in their lives, without needing emotional bodyguards to protect them from the unpreventable pains of life. To do less is disrespectful of them, and it discounts the strength they have within. It treats victims as though they are less than, less than capable, less than independent, and less than whole. It treats victims as though their victimization is the most important thing about them.
The Rise of Victimhood Culture
The Rise of Victimhood Culture - WikipediaThey argue that grievance-based conflicts have led to large-scale moral change in which an emergent victimhood culture is clashing with and replacing older honor and dignity cultures. Campbell and Mason describe three paradigms of moral culture that have shaped the American society in succession, calling them honour culture, dignity culture and victimhood culture.
A dignity culture, according to Campbell and Manning, has moral values and behavioral norms that promote the value of every human life, encouraging achievement in its children while teaching that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me.
Because victimhood culture now confers the highest moral status on victims, Campbell and Manning argue that it “increases the incentive to publicize grievances.” Injured and offended parties who might once have thrown a punch or filed a law suit, now appeal for support on social media.
Manning and Campbell also argue that victimhood culture dominates university campuses where academic freedom is endangered by paramount concerns about “safety” and “sensitivity.”
THE VICTIMHOOD REPORT
The Creation of Deviance
The Victimhood Report — Notes on the Rise of Victimhood CultureOne of the interesting things about the moral changes in modern America — especially those involving the package of ideals, grievances, and techniques of social control that we call victimhood culture — is the continual creation of new offenses. That is, the number of words and deeds that are considered wrongs — wrongs severe enough to be worth institutional attention and other collective action — is growing. This involves the creation of entirley new categories of offense, such as cultural appropriation, microaggression, heteronormativity, or deadnaming. It also includes recognizing as offensive things that were previously unobjectionable, and are still unobjectionable the large majority of people.
More interesting is that this appears to be part of a larger pattern. The creation of new categories of offense, or redefinition as wrong of things that virtually no one objected to before, suggests an ever-increasing sensitivity to slight. But it’s not a sensitivity that’s equally applied: The new moral categories coming out of contemporary universities are all concerned with offenses against social groups that have historically had lower status or are otherwise seen as victims. It is they alone who should not be offended, and the bar for offending them is getting lower. It might even be that if someone in an official position to police these things just imagines something might offend such people, that makes it offensive.