"Playing the victim"

betterdeadthanbeta · 2016-03-17T20:21:09+00:00

What's wrong with portraying women as victims of certain gendered issues? Why is it bad?

For one thing, its overly antagonistic. Rape, for example, shouldnt be a men vs women thing. At least in the west, It should be a "vast majority of sane, well intentioned men and women vs a smattering of predators and enablers" thing.

All feminists have to do is say "men, we're under assault by these people. Please help." Polite, straightforward, doesnt make assumptions. Even i would respond to that.

Instead the feminists message is essentially: all men are rapey rapists. Teach men to not rape! Our whole culture and society promotes rape so you are all guilty, become feminist now and wash away your ~~sins~~ privilege you mansplainey male gazing degenerate male.... but dont get the wrong idea though, women are still strong and independent even when demanding your protection under threat of shaming.

Huge difference between asking someone politely for help and shaming them until they cave in... Feminists tend toward the latter strat. Thing is, i, nor anyone with any self respect gives in to that kind of rhetoric.

ThorLives · 2016-03-17T21:29:22+00:00

When I use the phrase "playing the victim", I'm generally not talking about someone who simply is a victim. Rather, it's used to shift blame away from themselves or exaggerate their victimhood. It really bothers me when feminists exaggerate their problems, especially when they make it appear that women have it sooo much harder than men. Here are some examples of what I mean:

The wage gap. As far as I can tell, there might be a small wage gap possibly in the range of 0%-5%. When feminists talk about 77 cents on the dollar "for the same exact work", though, it's an example of playing the victim. There are reasons why the average woman gets paid 23% less than the average male - and that's because women tend to choose lower paying professions (schoolteacher, social worker, etc) and want jobs with shorter and more flexible hours. Freakonomics had a recent podcast about this, and I'm glad that more places are talking about how "77 cents on the dollar for doing the same job as a man" is getting called out by more people.

I've seen a number of studies recently that tried to say that women were discriminated against in the workplace. Here are two of them:

The GitHub study which was widely reported in the media. The claim being made was that women's code gets rejected more than men's code. In fact, the results of the study was much more mixed. What they actually found was that people who did not have a gender associated with their username had the highest acceptance rates (above both obviously female or obviously male names). They also found that when strangers submitted code, men's code was accepted more than women. However, when women were part of a known group of people, women's code was accepted more than men.

Here's an excerpt from a webpage accurately reporting the results:

"Among insiders, women do the same as men when gender is hidden, but better than men when gender is revealed. In other words, if you know somebody’s a woman, you’re more likely to approve her request than you would be on the merits alone... Among outsiders, women do the same as/better than men when gender is hidden, and the same as/worse than men when gender is revealed." Source: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-about-that-github-study/

Here's how a different article wrote it (which completely ignored the findings that men's acceptance rates were also lower if their username was obviously male, and the fact that "insider" women had higher acceptance rates if her gender was obvious):

But when gender was identifiable, the acceptance rate for women’s code fixes dropped to 62.5% from 72%. On projects where the woman’s gender was obvious and she was an “outsider”—an anonymous online stranger rather than a regular contributor to a software project—the acceptance rate of suggestions dropped below the rate of men.... But any explanation for why women perform better on GitHub still can not explain away the study’s most disturbing detail: concrete evidence that the only thing standing in the way of female programmers is their gender." http://fusion.net/story/267752/female-programmers-on-github-do-better-than-men-if-they-hide-their-gender/

There was another study that used fake names of students asking for guidance from professors. It was widely reported that white men had, by far, the highest response rates, suggesting that women and racial minorities had a much harder time getting a response from professors. In reality, white men and white women had identical response rates. In private universities, white men did have slightly higher response rates than any other group (including white women). But, at public universities, white/hispanic/black women had the highest response rates (including a response rate above white men). Taken all together (public and private universities), it equals out. But that doesn't stop the media from reporting it as a story about "white male privilege".

Here's NPR giving the "women face discrimination" version of the story:

"And what they found was there were very large disparities. Women and minorities systematically less likely to get responses from the professors and also less likely to get positive responses from the professors." http://www.npr.org/2014/04/22/305814367/evidence-of-racial-gender-biases-found-in-faculty-mentoring

If you actually read the paper and dig down to page 53, you can see that the white women, hispanic women, and black women at public universities have a higher response rate than white men. Edit: Here's a graph from the paper, since the download is being weird: http://imgur.com/MWpmi1x Open the PDF to see it (Edit: doesn't seem to be working right): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2063742

I remember a while back reading a story about sexism in Brazil. The author (a woman) complained that a woman is murdered every 2 hours in Brazil, as if that was evidence of sexism. What she left out of that statistic was the fact that men in Brazil were 11 times more likely to be murdered as women in Brazil.

I get really tired of the exaggeration. There's a widespread belief in the media that women are constantly discriminated against in large ways compared to men, and these fake news stories are part of the problem. It makes women feel victimized because they actually believe they have it so much harder than men. It makes it harder to talk about men's issues, since women's problems are "so much bigger", and therefore more important than men's problems. It makes sure that the majority of activism is going towards women, rather than other groups (including men, but also any other disadvantaged group - e.g. the poor). We could be talking about things like "why are men 30% less likely to attend or graduate from college than women", but feminists have a lock on the "I'm a victim" status, so the academic problems of men are going to be shut-out of discussion. Consider the student-profession study I cited above. White/Hispanic/Black women in public universities already have a higher response rate than white men (by about 3-4%), and media reports are claiming that women get a worse response rate, which might cause universities to devote more attention to women, which would enlarge the response advantage that they already have.

Lonny_zone · 2016-03-17T20:12:25+00:00

What's wrong with portraying women as victims of certain gendered issues? Why is it bad?

This mindset encourages women to never own up to their own poor choices or defend themselves.

Got raped while blackout drunk at a frat party? That sucks and it is horrible...but here is a bright idea: don't get blackout drunk, anywhere, ever! Then they want to call it victim blaming when you suggest they take some responsibility and protect themselves.

Got date-raped? Here is an idea, don't fool around with a guy in his bed if you don't intend to sleep with him. It is pretty simple.

Feminists then fail to understand that taking no responsibility for their own safety and problems isn't going to grant them any respect. They expect white knights to do it for them.

They want all the power of men but none of the responsibility.

How would you suggest feminists bring attention to these issues differently?

Well, they are barking up the wrong tree. Constant thought pieces on street harassment aren't going to help them because street harassers aren't reading a feminist blog. You can't teach a criminal sociopath not to rape. These men already know society sees rape as wrong and they don't care. Therefore, it would be better to teach women not to walk alone at night, get blackout drunk, and to arm themselves. So it conjures a victim mentality in these women when they could be a strong adult instead.

wazzup987 · 2016-03-17T23:52:43+00:00

What's wrong with portraying women as victims of certain gendered issues? Why is it bad?

I'll bite, its gas lighting for starters. Second it emphasizes patency over agency. Take slut shaming for example as an MRA my response is: slut shaming is bad but complaining about only shows the person who is clearly trying to fuck with you your weakness. The better option is to turn it in to armor and say something like "oh yeah? you must be jealous" or something to that affect. In essence give as good as you get. The constant portrayal of women as victim plays in to the oldest of gender norms 'women need protecting from men by men'. Whether by socialization or biology men will do what it takes to protect women (generally speaking) even if that means restricting their freedom. By painting women as perpetual victims you de-emphasize their agency and foist hyper agency (and agency sink) on to men. So the question then become not how women can affect their own destiny but how men can fix things for women. A great case study is Islamic culture.

Why do women where the hijab? because bad men might get them if they don't (also honor and virtue signalling). Why do women need a male escort even if they are like 9? 'bad men'. Why is that if the father dies the fiscal responsibility falls to the eldest son? protect women. All these can be argued 'help' women over men. But they stifle women's freedom. playing the victim only play into that. You want freedom you have to except risk. You can not have one with out the other. Also the women as victim trope plays in to The one good man trope which is toxic to both men and women. (Also read nice guys).

It’s actually a form of benevolent/positive sexism in the academic feminist sense. See there is an old saying: The soft bigotry of low expectations. Historically much power and influences was granted to men, there was also a great deal of expectations foisted on to men in return. Women were never expected to compete with men So they are not socializing to be disposable and given enough of the tough up buttercup shtick that they need. This continues today in subtler forms, such hiring and college admission be favored for women on top of greater academic achievement dues to a heavily biased academic system toward boys and young men. There are plenty of other issues where this is true as well. Think about and IPV indecent. A woman hits a man everyone stops and asks themselves what did he do to deserve it. Note the man still has the agency (and moral agency) despite being the actual patient in this scenario. Or take a murder case where a woman kills her partner and claim battered woman syndrome. The only person short of hospital records that we know is a victim of any thing is the dead partner. Yet we have legal statues which presume the woman is not an agent or a moral agent. We also have infanticide on the books still which is a female specific law which was design because juries would let women that the state had dead to rights on killing their babies go free. So they invented infanticide just to convict women of killing their kin. Time to court some more controversy I guess, in for dime in for dollar as they say. Take rape. IT horrible yes. But the way feminist treat it you would think a woman being raped is equivalent to a person being stuck by lightening in their basement away from all metal piping and electric wires laying flat on the ground.

In most cases this simply isn’t the case. As a security expert who has done the full spectrum of security activities I can tell you that in most case of any crime really the victim made a series of choices which lead to their victim hood. The any given choice in the probability matrix doesn’t matter all that much but combined they can make the difference. Now isn’t it better to come out of the victim of a crime say ok that sucked what can you do better/different next time so that doesn’t happen again. So going back to my dude In the basement who still manages to get struck by lightning. That dude is scarred. He did everything imaginable to avoid getting struck by lightning. There is nothing he could have done differently short of burying himself in a mountain. Now take golf under a tree mid swing. He gets struck. He knows what not to do again next time and should have known from the beginning that there were heaving risks of playing golf in thunder storm under a tree. Same with crime. The saying W should have known that X increase the Y risk of Z event isn’t victim blaming. It empowering, its giving power back to the victim to mark their own the destiny thus reducing scaring and giving them a path forward from a bad experience. Feminists appear to want to wallow in their victim hood, and never mover forward letting their alleged victim hood define them as person. Its seriously creepy shit like Munchausen syndrome or gas lighting levels creepy.

How would you suggest feminists bring attention to these issues differently?

Emphasize agency over patency. I cringe as someone who studied business management whenever I hear feminists talk about empowerment. Because whenever I here them talk about empowerment they are mangling the term usually. Empowerment in the business sense was a CYA doctrine developed by managers to let employees make decision without management involvement. But the catch is it was really to force more disposable employees to make decisions that should be handled by supervisors or mangers so they have smoke screen. That way mangers don't have to make decisions and if it goes badly (cumulatively or otherwise) it’s the employees head that roles not the managers. (by the way everyone involved is still an agent even if that agent is in catch 22 or what the reverse of catch 22 is situation)

By contrast when I hear feminist talk about empowerment it typically goes something like this: we need to empower women to do/be/become XYZ therefore we need men/corporations/organization/government/ECT to give/do XYZ for women. Note the Subject of the statement is not an agent. Its benevolent/positive sexism, not privilege which has no long term or short term down side. This meme set does have a very real down side though. Because men live in a do or die state relative to women. If they don’t do well they usually don’t die but end up in the gutter. I mean look at all the studies on to global equality. They ALL define equality has men doing as well or better than men. Look at how aid is distributed by NGOs; women first. There is an assumption that men in third world shit holes somehow aren't affected by them being third world shit holes.

But in tangible terms for the west this means that by virtue of being the recipient of benevolent sexism such as having the option/choice to not be a bread winner or work a reduced amount men have to work longer hours or work high paying jobs to both. No reciprocal exists for men in real terms. This leads to women under performance in regards to multiple metrics from the pay gap to professional achievement because the pressure to perform isn’t there, its ‘optional’. Because achievement isn't seen as do or die for women, it’s an add on. Something nice and laudable but if it does happen there aren’t any real ill effects in the same sense that men face. This pushes men to put themselves in the position where they work harder more dirty jobs for longer hours at higher risk (or have to take higher risks). In essence women have choices, men have decisions. So instead of painting women as victims of culture which men/corporations/governments/organizations must fix we should tell women that they are agents of their own destiny (for better or worse) and need to take care of themselves and it’s not men/corporations/government/organization to fix anything for them (which would make them agents).

JFK "Don't pray for an easy life pray for the strength to endure a hard one."

Quick glossary: Agent: One who acts.

Benevolent sexism: Positives views of an entire sex In general or discrete aspects with little or no immediate down sides but very negative long term down sides. (EG women are more empathetic than men)

Hostile sexism: Negative veiws of an entire sex in general or in discrete aspects.

Moral agent: One who is seen as morally culpable for a given situation.

Moral patient: One who is seen as not responsible and usually on the receiving end of an action (synonyms victim).

Negative sexism: Negative actions on the basis of sex alone taken regardless context or merits of a given situations.

Positive sexism: Positive actions on the basis of sex alone taken regard less context or merits of a given situations
with little or no immediate down sides but very negative long term down sides. (EG Think white knights/ airports law / nice guys^tm).

Patient: receiver of an action.

Privilege: An unearned benefit with no long or short term down side.

Decisions vs choices

Further reading of the progressive wing of the MRM:

Pathological altruism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRzb8LVWDP8

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10408.full.pdf

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10408.full

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Pathological_altruism

Moral typecasting:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/dwegner/files/gray__wegner_2009_moral_typecasting.pdf

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/minding-morality/201103/the-best-way-escape-blame

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13164-012-0108-1#/page-1

http://www.mpmlab.org/Gray%20&%20Wegner%20-%20Dyadic%20Morality.pdf

http://archive.is/ispjn

http://archive.is/0vBS0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiyipf1hG8s&list=PLyRwczIsk2BAIEb2o8MiBEPdfsSrMn8Ae

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MCwxUiaaUI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVvYNpv2CwA

PS /u/cuittler This would be a good question for /r/femradebates

sleeping_willow_ · 2016-03-17T20:10:57+00:00

I think it is better for us as women to focus on solutions that are directly under our control. The more distant the solution is from ourselves, and the more we rely on other people, the less power we have over the result. Even if our circumstances are entirely out of our control, we can still choose how we will react to those circumstances.

So I am against victimhood because it takes power away from woman and increases their dependency. I want women to have control over their own happiness, and not rely on change from other people. I can't stop an occasional man from shouting at me in the street, but I can choose to not let it bother me.

A_Rex · 2016-03-17T20:01:13+00:00

I'll take a crack at your first question.

The problem with "portraying women as victims of certain gendered issues" is that it simultaneously does two things. First, to be a "victim", there must be a perpetrator. Thus, feminism invents its own Devil (the patriarchy, and by extension, all men) to rally against. Instead, it could simply look at an issue and say plainly why women are being treated inequitably, support it with irrefutable data, and push for change. Problem is that approach is not inflammatory enough to get attention and, more importantly, has run out of legitimate inequalities to remedy.

Second, not everything is a goddamned gender issue. More men going into STEM fields in this day and age is not the result of patriarchal repression by men - it's the result of the fact that many women simply are not interested in that line of work, for whatever reason. It's a classic case of trying to ascribe your cause onto an observed effect.

OlBastard · 2016-03-17T23:09:21+00:00

Strawman alert

There's nothing wrong with portraying people as victims when it is necessary.

What is wrong is the entire victimhood culture that feminism/liberalism has created.

http://righteousmind.com/where-microaggressions-really-come-from/

dakru · 2016-03-17T23:12:44+00:00

The problem to me isn't simply portraying women as victims. In many cases women are actually victims, and there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that. My problem is that so many feminists insist on seeing women as the victims regardless of the circumstances. They have a hard time separating womanhood from victimhood.

I can't count the number of times that I've heard men's issues raised and the feminist response was either to deny them, or downplay them by trying to explain why they're really just issues for women that affect men as a side-effect. For example, I've seen things like male pedophile hysteria (men are more likely to be treated as dangerous or pedophiles when interacting with children than women are) and unfair treatment of men in divorces (having a lot of difficulty getting custody) dismissed by saying that it's just a side-effect of misogyny and the fact that we expect women to care for children. They accept that some harm comes to men, but women are the real victims. (And it's strange because we could just as easily say the opposite, that women are only expected to take care of the children because we see men as bad parents and dangerous. Not that that makes sense either. All of this is part of our views on the two genders, and who's to say that one of the views is that main one?)

Another example is in violence victimization. There are some types of violence that women are more likely to suffer, including sexual assault and (depending on the statistics) domestic violence, but also many types that men are more likely to suffer, and they hardly seem less important: murder, robbery, injurious physical assault, etc.. I've seen many feminists who clearly portrayed the situation as if violence as a whole is just so much more of a problem for women than for men, even though that's just not the case. They treat "violence against women" as something separate from, and worse than, violence against men. I consider that (focusing on the types of violence that affect women more, and ignoring the types that affect men more, to portray women as the overall victims of violence) to be an instance of clinging hard to victimhood.

ThirdEyeSqueegeed · 2016-03-17T20:43:06+00:00

If gender is a social construct and feminists believe that's a bad thing then why would they portray anything as a gendered issue? Surely in doing so they're helping to maintain the status quo of the patriarchy they hate so much.

darkmoon09 · 2016-03-17T20:12:54+00:00

Feminists tend to go overboard with certain things, with street harassment if a man even a looks at a woman the "wrong" way that could count as "harassment". Demanding that men stop "manspreading" because the broads are too lazy to stand in the subway, bitching about not enough women being in STEM because men excel at it better, causing disruption and pulling fire alarms on any male gathering discussing male issue on a college campus, saying that video games a repatriarchal evil, etc

wombatinaburrow · 2016-03-18T03:15:29+00:00

Tbh, I tend to find that people would rather see themselves as survivors rather than victims, and where there is an injustice, as fighters.

Leinadro · 2016-03-17T20:48:22+00:00

A common complaint by RPers is that feminism encourages a victimhood mentality in women by focusing on and bringing public awareness to issues which mainly affect them vs men such as street harassment, for example.

And at the same time a common complaint by feminists is that the mrm encourages a victimhood mentality....for doing the exact same inflammatory things some feminists do.

But to answer your questions.

What's wrong with portraying women as victims of certain gendered issues? Why is it bad?

At face value nothing is wrong this except for the fact that in order to be a victim you need a perpetrator to point a finger at.

When feminists engage in this the finger gets pointed at patriarchy which has devolved to code for all men.

They need to find s way to acknowledge situations where women victims without turning it into a blame men fest.

Look at how feminists accuse the mrm of blaming everything on feminism. There are mras that do that and do ot precisely for the same reason feminists blame men for everything. They need a villain to justify their righteousness.

How would you suggest feminists bring attention to these issues differently?

By not antagonizing and blaming men for everything.

Most of the issues that feminists bring up are real and usually have a male counterpart at work. Instead of dismissing (or worse co opting) that male struggle use it as a chance to form a united front with men.

For example when talking about dv a lot of feminists wont acknowledge male victims unless they either immediately follow with a disclaimer that female victims have it worse or as a chance to take a cheap shot at the mrm.

They would get a lot further by simply being inclusive of male victims, calling for female perps to be brought to justice with a fraction of the tenacity they bring when wanting male perps held responsible, and not getting into a pissing match when a male victim speaks up.

(Obligatory disclaimer. Im not saying all feminists do this. If you dont then dont sweat what I said.)

SkinnySweaty · 2016-03-17T22:02:47+00:00

I would add that RP seems to believe that they are victims because they cannot get laid, as if that is a societal or systemic issue rather than a personal one.

SOwED · 2016-03-17T23:36:21+00:00

One thing that makes it bad to constantly portray women as victims is feminism's paradoxical rhetoric which usually implies women aren't victims. The whole "rape survivor" thing is one example of that.

Feminists also often claim that men or the patriarchy try to take away women's agency or infantilize women, yet the portrayal of women as victims often does exactly that.

Regardless of whether or not it's right to portray women this way, feminism can't choose a side on what it actually wants to say on the topic.

YaBoiTibzz · 2016-03-17T23:37:49+00:00

--The problem with the victimhood narrative is that it implies a lack of agency on the part of those being named as victims. They cannot change how they feel or how they are affected by certain behaviors; the onus is entirely on the men to alter their behavior in order to make women feel better. It paints things in a light of "predator" vs "victim" and assumes that men are inherently the former while women inherently the latter. This is such a gross distortion of reality it's honestly kind of sickening to think about.

--It depends on the issue. With something like street "harassment" it's legitimately not worth attention. Yes a guy that catcalls you is being an asshole. So is an angry driver who honks his horn and flips the bird at you for no good reason. Neither one is a serious problem to be solved. The resources of state entities, policy-makers, media outlets, etc., are much better spent on things that cause real and provable harm. "It hurts my feelings" isn't a good justification for the government to act.

disposable_pants · 2016-03-17T23:47:18+00:00

Identifying as a victim is often little more than a rhetorical trick to garner sympathy and deflect criticism. If you're a victim, people feel sorry for you -- you've suffered! If you're a victim, people can't say you did anything wrong -- that's victim blaming! It's an extremely attractive position to identify with.

This isn't to say there are no legitimate victims -- there are. But most people who claim victimhood are not real victims.

impossibleworlds · 2016-03-17T22:15:09+00:00

I suppose I'm a non-feminist. While I do think there are certain inequities in how women are sometimes treated academically and professionally involving harassment, etc., I just accept these things as a fact of life to some extent while being perfectly willing to file complaints if they reach intolerable levels. To me, that's really all there is....the individual taking action against a perceived injustice. On occasions when I've been harassed in the street I just tend to ignore and brush it off unless I seriously fear for my safety in which case, knives out. I tend to be very individualist in my response towards such issues.

As far as what feminists could do differently, I actually think that in general, they should be more proactive. What I mean by that is: rather than accusing men of crimes on social media, writing puff pieces on Jezebel, tramping at SlutWalks, etc....seek actual, legal justice for any legitimate grievances against specific individuals or groups, and then just move on. IMO, attempting to alter general male attitudes and behaviour en masse is a fool's errand.

I say just keep it focused on individual empowerment and concrete solutions to problems. Otherwise people risk losing focus, motivation, and creating exaggerated, overblown boogeymen. While also enabling some people (men too) to live in this paralyzed perpetual victimhood state.

alreadyredschool · 2016-03-17T20:04:53+00:00

I hate it when both genders victimize themselves. Life is equally hard to both men and women.

Title	"Playing the victim"
Author	cuittler
Upvotes	5
Comments	123
Date	March 17, 2016 7:48 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/4ausj1/playing_the_victim/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/playing-the-victim.275646 https://theredarchive.com/post/275646

Comments

Strawman alert