My favorite part of this post is your comment on how rejection of your own victim mentality helped you develop empathy for the difficult dating experiences of women. I experienced the same thing, and it strikes me as both true and counterintuitive.
My hesitancy is around weaving together so many areas of life under the title “victimhood.” I’m not ready to accept that Palestine’s problems are due to millions of Palestinians refusing to cast off their victim mentality. Their experience is structurally different from that of a man having a tough time dating, or a person falling for a scam. It’s totally fair to critique left wing activists for not having an in depth understanding of the issue.
Although I’m no longer a leftist, I was in college. I don’t think it’s quite fair to say they’re all in it to burnish their radical credentials. Instead, I’d say that their collective anxiety about acceptance by the others is part of what inhibits them from that in-depth research. It’s all too easy to cast victimology as the new oppressor, and I fear that this post teeters on the verge of that.
But I do like this post. The victim narrative is about demanding empathy from others, and people who support it fear that if people reject the narrative, then they are rejecting empathy. Not so. Empathy can be two-fold: acknowledging the unique external difficulties another person faces, while also feeling compassion for the ways in which their attitude and actions may compound those problems.
My favorite part of this post is your comment on how rejection of your own victim mentality helped you develop empathy for the difficult dating experiences of women. I experienced the same thing, and it strikes me as both true and counterintuitive.
My hesitancy is around weaving together so many areas of life under the title “victimhood.” I’m not ready to accept that Palestine’s problems are due to millions of Palestinians refusing to cast off their victim mentality. Their experience is structurally different from that of a man having a tough time dating, or a person falling for a scam. It’s totally fair to critique left wing activists for not having an in depth understanding of the issue.
Although I’m no longer a leftist, I was in college. I don’t think it’s quite fair to say they’re all in it to burnish their radical credentials. Instead, I’d say that their collective anxiety about acceptance by the others is part of what inhibits them from that in-depth research. It’s all too easy to cast victimology as the new oppressor, and I fear that this post teeters on the verge of that.
But I do like this post. The victim narrative is about demanding empathy from others, and people who support it fear that if people reject the narrative, then they are rejecting empathy. Not so. Empathy can be two-fold: acknowledging the unique external difficulties another person faces, while also feeling compassion for the ways in which their attitude and actions may compound those problems.