My sense is that anyone who uses the sarcastic phrase "Oppression Olympics" is highly skeptical that there is actual victimizing going on.
I think I know what you are saying: that there are contextual situations where belonging to a victimized group can give you leverage. But I'm disputing the idea that they acquire that leverage because,…
My sense is that anyone who uses the sarcastic phrase "Oppression Olympics" is highly skeptical that there is actual victimizing going on.
I think I know what you are saying: that there are contextual situations where belonging to a victimized group can give you leverage. But I'm disputing the idea that they acquire that leverage because, as claimed above, Western societies prizes being a victim.
Those instances when women are harmed by being women, or when a non-white person is harmed because they aren't white, are actual victims, no? And then the very fact that they were harmed qua woman or qua non-white person means society doesn't value being a victim.
I think you need to separate out two things: the consequences of *being* a victim, and the consequences of being *perceived* as one.
The consequences of actually being a victim are, generally speaking, negative. That's a natural consequence of being, well, a victim.
The consequences of being perceived as a victim are another story. Broadly, in Western society, being seen as a victim often invites sympathy and compassion, which for the most part is not a bad thing. Furthermore, in certain subsets of Western society -- especially the ones where the "Oppression Olympics" is at play -- being seen as a victim can even help one accrue status.
The claim I am disputing is the original claim from Feral Finster that Western societies highly prize victims. ("Humans don't just make up disabilities to get out of trouble, but because victim status is both highly prized and carefully cultivated in contemporary western human society.")
I don't see evidence that Western societies prize or value victims. If people openly claim that status (either by lying about it or publicize that they are a victim), I think they do it for other reasons: to get attention, to get assistance or sympathy, to help similar victims, etc. None of that amounts to gaining social prestige or high regard (sympathy is not prestige).
There can be a second-order effect in certain circles where claiming to be a victim can possibly give someone not just attention but a certain cache in the eyes of others (the high school football coach who felt he was a victim of injustice because was forced to stop conducting team prayers; the gay teacher who felt like a victim couldn't mention her wife at a Florida school). But if and when that happens, I can't see how the source is the supposedly general high value that US society bestows on victims.
As you can probably tell, I think there is a lot of imprecise, fuzzy thinking these days about what it means to be or claim to be a victim. In my view, a lot of talk about victimhood is really an idiom for thinking and talking about arrangements of power––and not a good one. It obfuscates more than it illuminates.
Western society (really western well-educated society) doesn't prize victimhood. It prizes various identities that are associated with victimhood, but doesn't prize the victimhood itself.
I presume a large part of the reason for this is that those educated westerners are embarrassed of their success, their lack of oppression compared to those identities they see as oppressed, and to countervail the self-perception that others may think they think they are better than those oppressed. So they need to raise the status of those oppressed, to ensure that they are *not* better than the oppressed. Ironically, they can only do this because they are powerful and not oppressed.
Then after they have successfully elevated the oppressed, suddenly those identities have gained significant status...because it was conferred on them by the people with the highest social influence. Now it's an attractive identity to have from a status perspective, at least within those educated circles.
No one wants to BE a victim (well, I'm sure there are some who do, but most people don't). The status is not given for *actual* victimhood; it's given for *perceived* victimhood, and it's done sloppily and lazily because it ascribes victimhood not to individuals, but to entire (socially-constructed) identities, and then confers status on that basis as well.
Thanks for the thoughts. If you are willing to say more:
"Ironically, they can only do this because they are powerful and not oppressed."
So this acknowledges there are powerful people. Does it also stipulate that there are also oppressed people (even if individuals who claim to be oppressed aren't always among them)? And if there are powerful people and oppressed people, is it better ethically or politically if powerful people address themselves to the situation of oppressed people?
I ask because I think it's possible (but I don't know for sure) that there are a lot of people who seem to find the very concept of a victim distasteful or suspect. They seem to think that all or most talk about victims in contemporary society is either A) misguided (because no one is really oppressed in, say, American society circa 2024; individual misfortune is just bad luck and no one can do anything about luck), or B) such talk is hypocritical (social progressives just talk about victims so that they feel better about being winners in a system that oppresses other people).
A third possibility about people with an allergy to "victim" talk are C) people who, for one reason or another, oppose any project whereby powerful people acknowledge the existence of victims (people actually harmed by existing social arrangements, not just unlucky individuals) and then try to learn, talk and act in good faith to redress the harm. In this scenario, the scorn heaped on the talk about victims ("victimology," "oppression Olympics") is a political response meant to discredit those projects.
Does one of those seem the most accurate for what you are describing?
A proper response to this would be article-length, and perhaps I'll write one at some point.
"So this acknowledges there are powerful people. Does it also stipulate that there are also oppressed people (even if individuals who claim to be oppressed aren't always among them)?"
- Absolutely. No one can live very long among humans with their eyes open and think that, in any given context, there are not both more powerful people and less powerful people. No one can live without recognizing that, in any given context, there are frequently people oppressed. Maybe there are some contexts where you could argue no one is oppressed, but exploring that would likely require a very careful definition of oppressed (my general definition for oppressed is people whose options / opportunities have been actively limited by other people's actions, but I haven't put a huge amount of thought into it).
A critical implication of these power relationships is that they are highly multi-variate, meaning that who is more and less powerful, and who is oppressed, varies, sometimes wildly, depending on the overall context. Intersectionality is getting at this issue, but doing it very sloppily and in a politically convenient way.
"And if there are powerful people and oppressed people, is it better ethically or politically if powerful people address themselves to the situation of oppressed people?"
- Depends on your ethics and politics, I suppose. Oppression is much like poverty, loneliness, or pain: it will never be absent. All that changes is which individuals experience it, how many individuals experience it, and how severely.
IMO, yes, part of our responsibility is to limit the oppression we and others may cause.
I also think that if one spends too much energy limiting oppression, one reaches a point of diminishing returns where the loss in time and focus incurred to other meaningful activities outweighs the limiting of oppression. There is also a certain level of push-pull, of balance, that when you push down on one type of oppression (remember there are all kinds pointing in all kinds of directions), you inevitably increase some other kind of oppression (hopefully to less effect than you push down the one). And further, we can't really measure the impacts of our actions very well -- the world is a complex place -- so we often don't realize all of the aspects and attributes we are privileging and are damaging.
"Does one of those seem the most accurate for what you are describing?"
- It may sound like a cop-out, but all three are in operation simultaneously all the time, sometimes within the same person.
My sense is that anyone who uses the sarcastic phrase "Oppression Olympics" is highly skeptical that there is actual victimizing going on.
I think I know what you are saying: that there are contextual situations where belonging to a victimized group can give you leverage. But I'm disputing the idea that they acquire that leverage because, as claimed above, Western societies prizes being a victim.
Those instances when women are harmed by being women, or when a non-white person is harmed because they aren't white, are actual victims, no? And then the very fact that they were harmed qua woman or qua non-white person means society doesn't value being a victim.
I think you need to separate out two things: the consequences of *being* a victim, and the consequences of being *perceived* as one.
The consequences of actually being a victim are, generally speaking, negative. That's a natural consequence of being, well, a victim.
The consequences of being perceived as a victim are another story. Broadly, in Western society, being seen as a victim often invites sympathy and compassion, which for the most part is not a bad thing. Furthermore, in certain subsets of Western society -- especially the ones where the "Oppression Olympics" is at play -- being seen as a victim can even help one accrue status.
The claim I am disputing is the original claim from Feral Finster that Western societies highly prize victims. ("Humans don't just make up disabilities to get out of trouble, but because victim status is both highly prized and carefully cultivated in contemporary western human society.")
I don't see evidence that Western societies prize or value victims. If people openly claim that status (either by lying about it or publicize that they are a victim), I think they do it for other reasons: to get attention, to get assistance or sympathy, to help similar victims, etc. None of that amounts to gaining social prestige or high regard (sympathy is not prestige).
There can be a second-order effect in certain circles where claiming to be a victim can possibly give someone not just attention but a certain cache in the eyes of others (the high school football coach who felt he was a victim of injustice because was forced to stop conducting team prayers; the gay teacher who felt like a victim couldn't mention her wife at a Florida school). But if and when that happens, I can't see how the source is the supposedly general high value that US society bestows on victims.
As you can probably tell, I think there is a lot of imprecise, fuzzy thinking these days about what it means to be or claim to be a victim. In my view, a lot of talk about victimhood is really an idiom for thinking and talking about arrangements of power––and not a good one. It obfuscates more than it illuminates.
Western society (really western well-educated society) doesn't prize victimhood. It prizes various identities that are associated with victimhood, but doesn't prize the victimhood itself.
I presume a large part of the reason for this is that those educated westerners are embarrassed of their success, their lack of oppression compared to those identities they see as oppressed, and to countervail the self-perception that others may think they think they are better than those oppressed. So they need to raise the status of those oppressed, to ensure that they are *not* better than the oppressed. Ironically, they can only do this because they are powerful and not oppressed.
Then after they have successfully elevated the oppressed, suddenly those identities have gained significant status...because it was conferred on them by the people with the highest social influence. Now it's an attractive identity to have from a status perspective, at least within those educated circles.
No one wants to BE a victim (well, I'm sure there are some who do, but most people don't). The status is not given for *actual* victimhood; it's given for *perceived* victimhood, and it's done sloppily and lazily because it ascribes victimhood not to individuals, but to entire (socially-constructed) identities, and then confers status on that basis as well.
Thanks for the thoughts. If you are willing to say more:
"Ironically, they can only do this because they are powerful and not oppressed."
So this acknowledges there are powerful people. Does it also stipulate that there are also oppressed people (even if individuals who claim to be oppressed aren't always among them)? And if there are powerful people and oppressed people, is it better ethically or politically if powerful people address themselves to the situation of oppressed people?
I ask because I think it's possible (but I don't know for sure) that there are a lot of people who seem to find the very concept of a victim distasteful or suspect. They seem to think that all or most talk about victims in contemporary society is either A) misguided (because no one is really oppressed in, say, American society circa 2024; individual misfortune is just bad luck and no one can do anything about luck), or B) such talk is hypocritical (social progressives just talk about victims so that they feel better about being winners in a system that oppresses other people).
A third possibility about people with an allergy to "victim" talk are C) people who, for one reason or another, oppose any project whereby powerful people acknowledge the existence of victims (people actually harmed by existing social arrangements, not just unlucky individuals) and then try to learn, talk and act in good faith to redress the harm. In this scenario, the scorn heaped on the talk about victims ("victimology," "oppression Olympics") is a political response meant to discredit those projects.
Does one of those seem the most accurate for what you are describing?
A proper response to this would be article-length, and perhaps I'll write one at some point.
"So this acknowledges there are powerful people. Does it also stipulate that there are also oppressed people (even if individuals who claim to be oppressed aren't always among them)?"
- Absolutely. No one can live very long among humans with their eyes open and think that, in any given context, there are not both more powerful people and less powerful people. No one can live without recognizing that, in any given context, there are frequently people oppressed. Maybe there are some contexts where you could argue no one is oppressed, but exploring that would likely require a very careful definition of oppressed (my general definition for oppressed is people whose options / opportunities have been actively limited by other people's actions, but I haven't put a huge amount of thought into it).
A critical implication of these power relationships is that they are highly multi-variate, meaning that who is more and less powerful, and who is oppressed, varies, sometimes wildly, depending on the overall context. Intersectionality is getting at this issue, but doing it very sloppily and in a politically convenient way.
"And if there are powerful people and oppressed people, is it better ethically or politically if powerful people address themselves to the situation of oppressed people?"
- Depends on your ethics and politics, I suppose. Oppression is much like poverty, loneliness, or pain: it will never be absent. All that changes is which individuals experience it, how many individuals experience it, and how severely.
IMO, yes, part of our responsibility is to limit the oppression we and others may cause.
I also think that if one spends too much energy limiting oppression, one reaches a point of diminishing returns where the loss in time and focus incurred to other meaningful activities outweighs the limiting of oppression. There is also a certain level of push-pull, of balance, that when you push down on one type of oppression (remember there are all kinds pointing in all kinds of directions), you inevitably increase some other kind of oppression (hopefully to less effect than you push down the one). And further, we can't really measure the impacts of our actions very well -- the world is a complex place -- so we often don't realize all of the aspects and attributes we are privileging and are damaging.
"Does one of those seem the most accurate for what you are describing?"
- It may sound like a cop-out, but all three are in operation simultaneously all the time, sometimes within the same person.