Suffering Chic: The Longing To Claim Membership In The Victim Class
Professing victimhood as a way to get attention is a form of "covert narcissism" -- a term I once heard from a professor friend. It describes people who use "Oh, downtrodden me!" and awful things that have befallen them to get others to feel sorry for them, attend to their needs, and generally put the spotlight on them.
There's a whole lot of that going on on campus, with so many students claiming to be traumatized. This being America in 2017, with more comforts and ease for all than at any other time in human history, what is there to be traumatized by?
There are people -- of course -- who have suffered actual trauma. But for the rest, hurt feelz will have to do. This ends up causing students who feel in need of attention and something to be a part of to claim microaggressions and all other manner of bullshit to be injuring them. Deeply, deeply.
Microaggressions include, "Where are you from?", which supposedly is an insult meaning you're not quite American.
What silly tripe. A great many Americans, for quite some time, have largely been white Christians from England, Ireland, and Europe.
So, if you are not of that ancestry, somebody might ask you that "Where are you from?" question.
Oh, and by the way, people have asked me for years whether I'm Irish. It's nice that they're interested. (Note the healthy psychology at work!)
But I'm not Irish, so I clear that up: "No, Eastern European peasant shithole Jew." But thanks for asking!
All of this pantywaist-ism leads to the inspiration for this post -- a piece in The Hedgehog Review, "The Strange Persistence of Guilt," by Wilfred M. McClay.
An excerpt:
Stolen SufferingNotwithstanding all claims about our living in a post-Christian world devoid of censorious public morality, we in fact live in a world that carries around an enormous and growing burden of guilt, and yearns--sometimes even demands--to be free of it. About this, Bruckner could not have been more right. And that burden is always looking for an opportunity to discharge itself. Indeed, it is impossible to exaggerate how many of the deeds of individual men and women can be traced back to the powerful and inextinguishable need of human beings to feel morally justified, to feel themselves to be "right with the world." One would be right to expect that such a powerful need, nearly as powerful as the merely physical ones, would continue to find ways to manifest itself, even if it had to do so in odd and perverse ways.
Which brings me to a very curious story, full of significance for these matters. It comes from a New York Times op-ed column by Daniel Mendelsohn, published on March 9, 2008, and aptly titled "Stolen Suffering."10 Mendelsohn, a Bard College professor who had written a book about his family's experience of the Holocaust, told of hearing the story of an orphaned Jewish girl who trekked 2,000 miles from Belgium to Ukraine, surviving the Warsaw ghetto, murdering a German officer, and taking refuge in forests where she was protected by kindly wolves. The story had been given wide circulation in a 1997 book, Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, and its veracity was generally accepted. But it was eventually discovered to be a complete fabrication, created by a Belgian Roman Catholic named Monique De Wael.
Such a deception, Mendelsohn argued, is not an isolated event. It needs to be understood in the context of a growing number of "phony memoirs," such as the notorious child-survivor Holocaust memoir Fragments, or Love and Consequences, the putative autobiography of a young mixed-race woman raised by a black foster mother in gang-infested Los Angeles.12 These books were, as Mendelsohn said, "a plagiarism of other people's trauma," written not, as their authors claimed, "by members of oppressed classes (the Jews during World War II, the impoverished African-Americans of Los Angeles today), but by members of relatively safe or privileged classes." Interestingly, too, he noted that the authors seemed to have an unusual degree of identification with their subjects--indeed, a degree of identification approaching the pathological. Defending Misha, De Wael declared, astonishingly, that "the story is mine...not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving."
What these authors have appropriated is suffering, and the identification they pursue is an identification not with certifiable heroes but with certifiable victims. It is a particular and peculiar kind of identity theft. How do we account for it? What motivates it? Why would comfortable and privileged people want to identify with victims? And why would their efforts appeal to a substantial reading public?
Or, to pose the question even more generally, in a way that I think goes straight to the heart of our dilemma: How can one account for the rise of the extraordinary prestige of victims, as a category, in the contemporary world?
I believe that the explanation can be traced back to the extraordinary weight of guilt in our time, the pervasive need to find innocence through moral absolution and somehow discharge one's moral burden, and the fact that the conventional means of finding that absolution--or even of keeping the range of one's responsibility for one's sins within some kind of reasonable boundaries--are no longer generally available. Making a claim to the status of certified victim, or identifying with victims, however, offers itself as a substitute means by which the moral burden of sin can be shifted, and one's innocence affirmed. Recognition of this substitution may operate with particular strength in certain individuals, such as De Wael and her fellow hoaxing memoirists. But the strangeness of the phenomenon suggests a larger shift of sensibility, which represents a change in the moral economy of sin. And almost none of it has occurred consciously. It is not something as simple as hypocrisy that we are seeing. Instead, it is a story of people working out their salvation in fear and trembling.
That bit in the last paragraph, again:
Making a claim to the status of certified victim, or identifying with victims, however, offers itself as a substitute means by which the moral burden of sin can be shifted, and one's innocence affirmed.
I really think it has more to do with being somebody than wanting to be somebody innocent.
There's a kind of celebrity in being somebody with a horrible story to tell. And with that kind of celebrity comes attention. You can almost be a Kardashian -- just without the sex tape, the Beverly Hills turbo stage mom, and the ass party guests can set drinks on.
via @CHSommers
> a way to get attention is a
> form of "covert narcissism"
You wouldn't be so condescending about if you'd been through some of the shit that I've been through.
> and the ass party guests
> can set drinks on.
Does anyone remember that one Crumb cartoon? Never mind.
Crid at April 4, 2017 11:18 PM
Crid, you're adorable right from comment #1.
Amy Alkon at April 5, 2017 6:21 AM
The "where are you from" question is totally fine to reasonable people, but can we all just agree to accept whatever answer the person gives?
When my husband answers this question with "Texas" and the person's follow up isn't, "Oh, which city? but instead, "OK... but... where you FROM from? Like where are you REALLY from? Like, were you actually BORN in Texas? Are your parents from there?" then we will just assume you're kinda obnoxious and don't get out much.
For the record, people who label themselves as "progressive" are equally guilty of this tired line of questioning.
sofar at April 5, 2017 8:18 AM
What you don't seem to understand is that whatever you have been through is your own problem. It is not ours, and there is no reason that we should be expected to preemptively accommodate it.
David at April 5, 2017 8:34 AM
New York Times columnist David Brooks addressed this last Sunday in an essay titled "The Strange Persistence of Guilt."
Here are a couple snips though the whole thing is good:
>We still use words describing virtue and vice, but without any overall metaphysics. Religious frameworks no longer organize public debate. Secular philosophies that grew out of the Enlightenment have fallen apart. We have words and emotional instincts about what feels right and wrong, but no settled criteria to help us think, argue and decide.
>The only reliable way to feel morally justified in that culture is to assume the role of victim. As McClay puts it, “Claiming victim status is the sole sure means left of absolving oneself and securing one’s sense of fundamental moral innocence.”
Canvasback at April 5, 2017 9:33 AM
"I really think it has more to do with being somebody than wanting to be somebody innocent."
I'd take that a little further and say that it has to do with wanting to be a classic, righteous, widely-celebrated hero. After all, a classically riveting hero always has to have a horrible story to tell, always sides with the good guys, always fights the bad guys, always gets the spotlight, and will always be victorious.
It's just that the contemporary (and stereotypical) spin on the hero's tale has the hero starting out as a victim; hence the belief that all victims are to be believed without question - because they're good and the hero is good and only associates with good. But the hero is (supposedly) also more capable than their peers; hence their ability to fight on behalf of all who have sufferred at the hands of personified evil.
That a person can claim to be a hero emerged from a victim class offers many advantages:
(1) They can claim that all their actions are righteous (hence no need to examine their own actions)
(2) They can claim to know exactly how the victims think and feel even if they are no longer victims in a "current" context (empathy is a poorly understood concept)
(3) They can absolve themselves of all claims of being selfish (because they're "helping" others)
(4) They are supported by all those belonging to their victim class (so there's an incentive to encourage more people join the victim class even if they're not really victims - we see this with ever broadening definitions)
(5) They can represent themselves as uniquely enlightened because, as a hero emerged from victimhood (or a villain who's seen the light), their perspectives have transcended those they supposedly represent
Kenii at April 5, 2017 10:09 AM
Well if they didn't claim to be a "victim" then no one would agree with them making them non-existent (maybe I should have said "have no agency" - can't they hire them in LA?)
Bob in Texas at April 5, 2017 10:19 AM
“Claiming victim status is the sole sure means left of absolving oneself and securing one’s sense of fundamental moral innocence.”
Of course, the problem with this is that it's a narcissistic way of reaching that status. Rather than being absolved of sins by means of being shown a pathway to a moral life, it promises absolution by conferring a privileged status upon the believer. It does not tell them which acts are moral; rather, it tells them that anything they do is moral because they're special. It's an indulgence granted by the Government rather than the Church.
I wonder, though, if the explanation for the spread of this isn't simpler than all that. No doubt there are true believers, but I suspect they are outnumbered by the pragmatics, the people who watch the strategy being executed, and observe that it works. The pragmatics observe that donning the cloak of victimhood confers wealth, power and status, and that living according to traditional Western values does not. They make the choice that produces better results. Of course, once enough people do this, it's a tragedy-of-the-commons downward spiral. Off hand, I can't think of any culture that has ever gone down this path and made it back to prosperity, without a substantial external intervention.
Cousin Dave at April 5, 2017 10:52 AM
"Oh, and by the way, people have asked me for years whether I'm Irish."
Me too. Was never sure if it was because of my Irish surname or because I drink too much and start fights I can't possibly win.
smurfy at April 5, 2017 11:33 AM
☑ ☑ ☑ smurfy at April 5, 2017 11:33 AM
Crid at April 5, 2017 11:53 AM
What you don't seem to understand is that whatever you have been through is your own problem. It is not ours, and there is no reason that we should be expected to preemptively accommodate it.
Agreed, and that's precisely my response to the widespread suffering-chic notion that raising a child is "the haaardest job in the woooorld."
Kevin at April 5, 2017 12:24 PM
The "where are you from" question is totally fine to reasonable people
_________________________________________
Sofar, it's not totally fine. Just because it's not amoral or HORRIBLY rude doesn't mean it isn't rude. Even being more specific and asking "where do you live" or "where were you born" could easily be too personal, if you're addressing a stranger.
Miss Manners, to my knowledge, has not addressed the idea of "microaggressions," per se. She HAS, however, said that it's rude to ask people with obviously foreign accents where they're from; if they want you to know, they'll tell you. It's similar to asking a person's age; if your curiosity is overwhelming, the least you can do is phrase it as "may I ask your age?" (Even children deserve the same courtesy, just as they shouldn't have to answer nosy questions from almost any adult who is not their parent or boss.)
Same goes for personal questions in general.
Interesting comments here:
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?304718-Microaggressions-and-What-Can-Be-Done-About-Them-(At-Ithaca-College)/page8
Richard Garfinkle: "...I've seen over and over again people trying to make a specific problem (that of comments given without regard for how the lives of the people being spoken to differ from the ideas the commenters have about those lives) into a generic problem of rudeness. I've also read the blithe assertion that assuming good intentions should handle the matter.
"Generic problems are insoluble. Specific ones can be dealt with.
"Miss Manners approaches the problem of rudeness by dealing with cases and categories. Microaggression is a category of rudeness. It needs to be dealt with on its terms, not generically.
"And assuming good intentions doesn't solve the problem. It only means that one is assuming people will be willing to fix things if problems are properly pointed out and solutions suggested. Assumption is not solution....
"... there is no such thing as garden variety rudeness. (Miss Manners) has vast volumes covering different social situations and what can and should be done about them. She has laid out the different kinds of social reactions to different varieties of rudeness.
"As to microaggression, I would characterize it as follows: an action that gives offense (usually unknowingly) at a low enough level that it's all too easy for people to not see what the problem is. Indeed, it happens at such a level that it is easy to stigmatize any response with a dismissive word such as hypersensitive, or PC.
"In short microaggressions are the kind of social wrong that make it easy to put the onus on the offended party. They also tend to be pervasive so that the suffering they induce is cumulative.
"Here's the critical thing, one generation's microaggression can become the next generation's blatant obvious sign of serious prejudice.
"For example, the word 'boy' used to refer to an African American man was once so commonplace that nobody noticed it (except the people it was used on, but nobody noticed them).
"This kind of rudeness is endemic in the language and social patterns and therefore needs to be dealt with by raised consciousness and broadened awareness. It is not the same as the kind of rudeness that comes from ignorance of local customs or the kind of rudeness that comes from focused selfishness or the kind of rudeness that comes from not paying attention to ones bodily emissions or etc on the categories of rudeness."
MazeRunner: "That's a good definition. But what would you say of older people beamed into a new reality and unable to adjust their words on a dime?"
Richard Garfinkle: "Actually Miss Manners answered this question years ago. I don't remember her exact phrasing, but she essentially refused to grandfather in rudeness.
"Time may be needed to learn, but learning should be done in that time. If not, we're dismissing the ability of people to adapt and learn because of age, and I think that's kind of dismissive toward the abilities of older people."
AW Admin: "...I first heard the word microaggression used in psycholinguistics graduate classes in the late 1980s. The phrase itself goes back to 1970. It isn't NEW."
(end)
Btw, it took me ages, as an adult, to realize that there was anything racist about white adults in novels or movies calling a black man a "boy" (of course, post-1970, ALL such fictional characters were revealed to be blatantly racist, by the creators), since I assumed, when I was young, that the word was just slang that was used regardless of race - like "guys," in other words. (There are MANY examples, after all, of white bosses referring to white male employees as "boys" - it just wasn't quite as common, maybe.)
lenona at April 5, 2017 2:12 PM
There's a kind of celebrity in being somebody with a horrible story to tell. And with that kind of celebrity comes attention.
______________________________________
True enough.
"The aristocratic rebel, since he has enough to eat, must have other causes of discontent."
-Bertrand Russell
Not to mention that if you're white and/or upper-middle-class and you play your cards right, you can get more attention than someone who's suffered a lot more than you.
In the same vein, it's not as though white or rich victims of truly violent crimes don't get well over their share of concern, even though they never WANTED to become victims that way, of course.
On July 29th, 2005, a well-known black comic strip character said: "I haven't watched the news very much lately. It's too much like reality TV."
Pause.
"Whatever happened to that white girl in Aruba?"
"I dunno. I stopped watching before the season finale."
This was after more than eight(!) weeks of international TV coverage of...the Natalee Holloway case - and little else.
More on that strip, if you like (the thread is long, but thoughtful and worthwhile, IMO):
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.comics.strips/holloway$20boondocks%7Csort:relevance/rec.arts.comics.strips/9EjQHmV_E8A/GrkZqaf5_7kJ
Excerpt:
lee
7/29/05
I often lunch in a company eatery that plays CNN on one of the sets. The people I work with talk about the Holloway case in much the same way that they talk about reality shows. I don't think the comic is as offensive as the lurid speculation that goes on in these conversations. Huey's response, to me, is a more respectful answer to the "Did you hear the latest on that girl missing in Aruba?" than typical hungry, "No, what happened? Tell me!" that I overhear so often. People try to defend their greedy consumption of this over reported luridly packaged news, as compassion for those involved, or with some justification that reporting it may make it easier to find the missing, but really it just seems to me to nearly always be morbid voyuerism.
(end)
lenona at April 5, 2017 2:54 PM
Cool lenona.
Just curious though, how do you converse with someone you just met?
Can't ask where, what, how, (can you ask who?).
It's so much easier here in the hinterlands. We just say "Howdy! How are you doing?"
Bob in Texas at April 5, 2017 4:30 PM
"Where are you from?" and other so called Microaggressions:
The problem is really the "victim" who gets offended by something that wasn't mean to be offensive.
Quite frankly, I get offended when you feel offended by me asking an inoffensive question.
So, what about your Microaggression of getting offended by me?
charles at April 5, 2017 5:18 PM
@Charles,
Well, it depends. I've been asked that question quite often and eventually you learn from the tone of the voice who is genuinely curious and who is an asshole who just wants an excuse to insult you.
Oh, and drunk people hate it with abandon when you don't want to answer their inquiry.
Sixclaws at April 5, 2017 8:18 PM
The problem is really the "victim" who gets offended by something that wasn't mean to be offensive.
Quite frankly, I get offended when you feel offended by me asking an inoffensive question.
So, what about your Microaggression of getting offended by me?
charles at April 5, 2017 5:18 PM
If you are on the hunt for microagressions, I can guarantee you will find them.
Isab at April 6, 2017 12:16 AM
I agree that quizzing someone you've just met about their ethinc background is a bit pushy. But when we ask someone we've just met "Where are you from?", it's more in the vein of "Do you live here or are you visiting?". It's a conversation starter. And because us Americans all have a bit of wanderlust, when we meet someone from another place, we want to learn a bit about it because it's interesting to hear about other places. "So you're from Kansas City... I've never been there. What's it like?" Things flow from there. We interact; we tell each other interesting stories. And by that, we make new friends and acquaintances, and we get our perspectives broadened a bit. Whereas if the person responds to our initial inquiry with a rant about microaggressions, we're most likely to think "Stuck up SOB", and walk away and go find someone more pleasant to talk to.
Cousin Dave at April 6, 2017 6:01 AM
re "where are you from"? My wife in an immigrant (legal) so the story of coming here is part of my life also. Asking that question opens up common experiences to talk about. I also like to learn about other countries. Also, my hobby is guessing where people are from by their accents (even within the US) and this opens up the possibility that I have been to their home town. Knowing where someone is from tells you something about them.
Idiots.
It is common for people who are not snowflakes to share horror stories of travel. we commiserate in our difficult times. It is bonding. But to turn this into a victim olympics is just nuts.
cc at April 6, 2017 6:51 AM
I think some of this in an incredible level of narcissism. How dare the world not treat me as special? How dare it be hard to find a job, hard to find a spouse, hard to make ends meet? With that premise, it is inevitable to become offended by daily life. If life seems unfair, because it is (ie, the world doesn't care a whit about you) then someone must be to blame. Lash out!!!
And no matter how successful you in fact are, like students at elite colleges, life is still indifferent to your existence, things are still difficult, unfair things still happen. And it makes these people angry.
cc at April 6, 2017 6:56 AM
I think there is even more going on. Even more than the fear of failure is the fear of being nobody, of having no place in the world. Since most people no longer have the extended family, the tribe, the hometown or the local church to provide identity, claiming to be a victim firmly places you in the world as SOMEBODY. It is a stupid choice, but while very few can be top dog, anyone can claim to be a victim.
cc at April 6, 2017 7:00 AM
Cool lenona.
Just curious though, how do you converse with someone you just met?
Can't ask where, what, how, (can you ask who?).
It's so much easier here in the hinterlands. We just say "Howdy! How are you doing?"
Bob in Texas at April 5, 2017 4:30 PM
__________________________________________
There's always the weather, for starters. And others' health. (Of course, this backfired in a very amusing way in Shaw's "Pygmalion." See the Dame Wendy Hiller movie - I don't remember if the same scene happened in "My Fair Lady.")
If you're sitting next to a stranger on an airplane whom you will likely never see again, there's little point in getting any more personal than that. One can, of course, talk about non-personal things - such as the tourist attractions of the two cities that the flight links to.
Some don't want to talk at all, of course. From 1994:
Film director John Waters tells US magazine that he used to read the book "Lesbian Nuns" when traveling by plane so no one would bother him. But now, he has discovered a better book "that is guaranteed to ensure privacy," he says. "It's the paperback called 'Urge to Kill'...Read that on a plane, and I swear you will have hours of uninterrupted peace."
More of Waters' quotes on reading in general, if you like (he's a pretty serious reader):
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/17366.John_Waters
If you're getting to know a co-worker who may NOT turn out to be a nice person in general, one can always still talk about - and even politely debate - the right ways to do the different tasks at work. Since getting along with one's co-workers is very important, getting personal is typically a delicate matter anyway.
If you're in college, asking "where are you from" is usually understood to be a neutral question anyway, since one seldom goes to college in the exact same town one's parents live in.
In the meantime, one can, under the RIGHT circumstances, ask "where do you live" or "where were you born." Just not on the first day, necessarily.
lenona at April 6, 2017 4:46 PM
Forgot to say: Thanks for the compliment, Bob.
lenona at April 6, 2017 4:50 PM
"Does anyone remember that one Crumb cartoon?"
Found it!
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 6, 2017 9:29 PM
Close.
But I was thinking of the "shelf" effect.
...As one so often does.
Crid at April 8, 2017 1:38 AM
Nowadays, reading that book on an airplane might get you ... er ... reaccommodated United style, for making a terrorist threat.
Karl Lembke at May 9, 2017 12:54 PM
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