Victim-hood as a social and political strategy.
One of the worst developments in our society is the rise of victim-hood culture. The issue is that victim-hood status has, for a number of reasons, accrued an unjustified level of currency in modern political and social discussions. You can see this easily in social and political discussions where some person will get up and say things which establish their victim-hood before they attempt to speak on an issue. Some examples might be:
“as a victim of wrongful prosecution,”
“As a survivor of abuse”
“as Jewish, trans, black women”
“as someone who was victimized by crime”
Further, we are often told that we need to allow “victims” to be the ones leading the discussion on such things as crime, sexual abuse, racism, sexism, healthcare, gun violence, and a number of other topics that are too numerous to name. A clear example of this comes from Allison Randall, the Principle Deputy Director of the Office of Violence Against Women, who said “Empowering survivors to lead in addressing domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking means creating spaces where their voices are central to shaping the solutions.”1
In our culture a person who is a victim is thought to have something approaching moral authority and pristine knowledge on the matters relating to the situation which caused their victim-hood. This leads to a situation in which a person is thought to have some sort of special insight with regard to how the problems occurs, and to have the moral wisdom to determine which solutions are acceptable, what sorts of intervention are sufficient, and what if any restitution is needed. The intuition guiding this seems to be that victims have a front row seat from which to see their own situation, and therefore have the best vantage point from which to determine what it is they need to recover from their awful circumstances. So we end up with a “victims know best” mentality which says victims know best why things happened to them, victims know best regarding what supports they need, and victims know best about what justice will look like. This gives the victim a place of prominence within the conversation that allows them to determine which sorts of solutions are taken up for consideration, and which solutions are taken to be “not enough.”
And this is where the trouble starts.
That “victims know best” is something that is asserted and never proven. We are never told exactly we ought to think the victims know best about the cause of their victim-hood and how to prevent it from happening again. Many of the situations which lead to a person being a victim have causal antecedents that are extraordinarily complex and understanding the causes that lead to someone’s being victimized is extraordinarily difficult. It is simply not the case that being victimized means that one knows or understands all the causes that have lead to their victimization.
Here is a simple example that illustrates the point:
Through the 80’s and 90’s there were a number of people who were abused, robbed, beaten, murdered and defrauded by organized crime in New York City. These people surely deserve our sympathy, but it would be an enormous mistake to think those people are in a position to understand the factors that lead to the rise in violent organized crime in NYC. Questions like “why do young men join gangs,” “what is the internal incentive structure that allows the mafia to function,” and “how do very complicated money laundering schemes get carried out,” are not easily answered and that a person was the victim of organized crime does not put them in a position to properly answer those questions. If one wants to understand organized crime there is a whole host of social, cultural, economic, and legal factors that one needs to grasp before they can properly explain why organized crime has emerged in a particular way and taken a particular form in a given community. It is a mistake to think that on the basis of being a victim of mafia activity one has a full grasp on all the issues in play and therefore knows best how to respond to increasing mafia activity.
The second issue is closely related to the first. When a person is victimized often we think part of the injury they endure is a loss of agency and that part of the process of remediation is to return to that victim a sense of agency as a way to combat the feelings of helplessness that can accompany victim-hood. Giving the victim a say in the process of justice and in the process of determining the social and political response to the pathology that was the source of ones victimization is often thought to be a matter of justice insofar as it returns to the victim a sense of agency that was taken. We want victims to feel like they are no longer helpless and having to stand by and watch as things happen to them, so we give them a chance to actively participate in the response to the social ill in question. However, because victim-hood has such strong social currency people are very often much more deferential to the wishes of the victim than is justified. This may lead to attempts at remediation that adopt a course of action that the victim likes or suggests even when that course of action is counter-productive and unhelpful.
The third problem occurs when the first two problems are pointed out.
There tends to be a moral stigma around questioning the epistemic and moral authority of a victim with respect to the causes of their victim-hood, and there tends to be an equal strong stigma associated with refusing to follow the course of action that a victim would prefer. This leads to a situation where a victims’ knowledge and authority go unquestioned even when they step outside the scope of what they actually know and understand. For this reason victims are given far more influence when it comes to selecting solutions to social problems then they should actually receive. Put bluntly, there is a strong social incentive to not question a victims knowledge claims or their moral authority, and thus people with victim-hood status who may not actually understand all the social, cultural and economic issues in play around a given social problem are still able to get an outsized voice in determining how society responds to that social problem.
This can lead to a political strategy where cynical operators use the stigma surrounding the criticism of victims as a tactic to silence of discredit ones opponents. A bad-faith activists can use a victim-hood narrative to pre-empt any objections to the chosen course of action by getting a victim to endorse that course of action. Once a given solution has been endorsed by a victim, any objection to that course of action can be used as evidence that the objector is heartless, cruel, and is “blaming the victim.”
Needless to say, this doesn’t help anyone.
There are a large number of difficult social problems that need solving, and they are not going to be solved by simply outsourcing the solution to the victims of those social problems. That one is that victim of a social pathology does not mean that one has insight into the cause or solutions to that social pathology. Lots of social problems are intractable, and more often than not the best response to those social problems involves trade-offs rather than solutions. As much as it might appeal to our sense of justice to “let victims lead” there is often no justification for doing so. While it is important to give voice to the effects of injustice and to allow a victim to explain how they have been impacted by various social pathologies, it does not follow from this principle that victims have the moral authority and knowledge required to determine the best course of action in response to those questions.
I have no problem with victims being given an opportunity to tell their stories and to advocate for social change; it is important to hear from people who have been harmed by various social pathologies. The problem occurs when the victim-hood status of a person is elevated to the point that it has the effect of stopping or shutting down debate, or results in cynical actors using their victim-hood status as a way of putting on trial the empathy of people who disagree with a victims proposed solutions. Using victim-hood as a shield for bad ideas, as a method of shutting down debates, or as a tool for creating a social stigma around objecting to the particular solutions preferred by victims is a great way to make sure problems go unsolved.
Sincerely,
Wokal_distance.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/principal-deputy-director-allison-randall-delivers-remarks-institute-violence-abuse-and