Sometimes, when I am claiming any form of transgression or hurt at the hands of one or all of my four children, they are liable to surgically remove the teeth of any of my complaints by accusing me of ‘playing the victim’.
This is a charge that is hard to counter. For what is it to complain but to announce yourself as ‘the victim’? And if you are in a position of supposed power - that of father over child for instance - it is axiomatic that you cannot be the victim, only the oppressor.
This kind of power bargaining takes place not only within families but in the much larger field of society and politics. As I understand it, in the field of intersectional politics, the validity of one’s complaint is inextricably linked to one’s position in the societal power structure. For those deemed to be a member of an oppressed group, to be a victim is not a label to be spurned - as in ‘playing the victim’ - but a status to be claimed.
To some, it is axiomatic that a member of a religious or ethnic minority will be the victim of entrenched historical power structures. It is equally inevitable for people of such a world view that women are victims - economic, sexual and domestic - in a patriarchal society. LGBT+ activists point out that they are victims of homophobia, transphobia, bi-phobia and a substantial array of other phobias, given the ever-increasing number of gender and sexual variations that can now be imagined.
I have my doubts about this kind of one-size-fits-all all victim paradigm. Whatever the larger social picture, groups that lack power in the aggregate often have plenty of power in the individual case. Women may be more statistically likely to suffer domestic abuse, but in a one-in-one situation, a man can be the victim of a woman, both psychologically, and, more often than many might imagine according to the statistics, physically. Anyone of any race can be a victim of racism from any other race, though again at a mass level, some groups are certainly more vulnerable than others. And although parents have nominal power over children, children also hold plenty of cards. They can cry, for a start. And the potential of the modern parents to be made to feel guilty by their offspring is almost limitless.
The word ‘victim’, then, is loaded. As often as not, rather than a simple description, it is a blunt weapon to be wielded in the fray of argument.
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