The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars

Similar to "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff, sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning take a closer look at the phenomenon happening on certain college campuses: the introduction of concepts like microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, etc.It's important to emphasize (just like "Coddling") that these college incidents seem to be mostly isolated to elite universities and among affluent families and do not seem to be a reflection of the majority of colleges. Nevertheless, these incidents have become a source of ridicule in the mainstream, including an episode on South Park where Cartman sings a song about his "safe space".But what are these ideas exactly, and why do they keep coming up? The authors seek to help us better understand what they've termed "Victimhood Culture" by using past cultures of Honor and Dignity.𝐈𝐧 𝐚𝐧 𝐇𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 💪:📌 Reputation and Bravery are key factors of one’s moral status.🛡️ Small conflicts are responded to aggressively.🚨 Little to no appeals to authority, third-parties, and public opinion for justice.🙌 Examples of Honor Culture: the Old West, the mafia.🗣️ Phrases you’d hear:"𝘐 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘥𝘶𝘦𝘭!""𝘕𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺'𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘵."“𝘕𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴 𝘢 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘶𝘵 𝘶𝘱.”.𝐈𝐧 𝐚 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 👤:📌 Self-restraint and Civility are key factors of one’s moral status.🛡️ Small conflicts are responded to with non-violence and compromise.🚨 May sometimes appeal to authority, third-parties, or public opinion for justice.🙌 Examples of Dignity Culture: Formal debate, Court of Law, Due Process🗣️ Phrases you’d hear:"𝘚𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵 𝘮𝘦."“𝘐 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘱 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭.”“𝘓𝘦𝘵 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘶𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘶𝘴.”.𝐈𝐧 𝐚 𝐕𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 😨:📌 Suffering and Victimization are key factors of one’s moral status.🛡️ Small conflicts are responded to aggressively (like Honor culture).🚨 Mostly appeals to authority, third-parties, and public opinion for justice.🙌 Examples of Victimhood Culture: Callout/Cancel Culture, Microaggressions, Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces🗣️ Phrases you’d hear:"𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦.”"𝘐'𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭.""𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴; 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘺𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘺!"Throughout the book, the authors continue to remain impartial and reasonable in explaining the situation and its consequences. If you're looking for a book that seeks to ridicule Victimhood Culture, this is NOT the book. It's an academic read: their arguments are balanced, rational, and heavily sourced.Perhaps it's because I embrace Dignity Culture, but I admit there were times the authors cited instances of grievances from individuals and I nearly laughed in disbelief: "These people have to be joking, right?!"It's important we all understand this idea of Victimhood Culture not only for the explanation it entails, but also in seeing that this isn't limited to college campuses. These ideas have seeped out into our modern society.We have many cultural movements which have a distinct focus based upon victimhood (e.g. Callout/Cancel Culture, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter). Let me emphasize, I'm NOT saying Victimhood Culture is inherently a "bad thing" and neither are the authors of this book. Each culture brings with it a new set of solutions and problems.In Victimhood Culture, we have provided a platform and spotlight to victims of injustices that would have never been addressed prior to this (e.g. crimes of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby). That's fantastic, and I am all for that!But on the flip side, Victimhood Culture has also overextended its reach, inadvertently supporting instances of victimhood where there is none to be found. False allegations have been made towards individuals whose reputations are now ruined because of them. Even if allegations turned out to be false, the damage was still done, and the person making the accusations suffered little to no consequences.The irony of Victimhood Culture is you can receive more popularity and sympathy just by being a victim, whether real or imagined.Without any consequences for false accusations, an accuser's social status being raised regardless of the truth, why wouldn't someone feel more inclined to lie if it benefited them?Because of Victimhood Culture's need to always believe the victim over the accused, we've let it get in the way of seeing situations in a more balanced, critical way. This unintentional elevation of false victims have done a massive disservice to those who are actual victims of injustice.This is an important book illuminating not just what's happening on some college campuses but also in how Victimhood Culture has also spread outside college walls. If we're going to solve society's problem, we need to also be willing to acknowledge there is a problem, even when it's in our own backyards.But on a lighter note, it seems as of late Victimhood Culture is having the tide turned. More people are starting to be more skeptical of allegations rather than simply jumping to conclusions. Celebrities like Jussie Smollett whose racial accusations turned out to be false is now facing criminal charges for his lies.Perhaps this book will become pretty outdated within the next few years. But for now, I recommend a read!

As a person who has run afoul of these activists because of my refusal to cooperate with plans they had for my skills, and who has since been trying to make sense of their motives and behaviour, this book provides the most comprehensive and insightful explanation. Their framework of the three cultures is extremely useful here and jives so well with what I have seen and experienced. Here in Montreal, I have seen, from the point of observation of a central character (as their Trojan Horse), how these activists – very skilful populist demagogues – have managed to move this activism out from the campus and directly into the community through the use of social media. This has been going on since around 1990 and, by now, reaches an incredibly large audience in the city, especially among students from the city’s four universities – obviously their main target. This is an alarming turn of events in my opinion. Politically, I am left of centre and I am profoundly disturbed by the degree to which the mainstream left here in Montreal has been so easily seduced by the extreme left. They very much need to read this book. Thank you so much to both authors for providing readers with such clarity on this new social environment.

This book is solid but uninspiring. If you want to know the issues, the book is good. For some deep analysis of the issues, the book is quite weak. Why has the left in the US turned to identity politics and left-fascism? What is wrong with the strategy of shaming members of privileged groups and rejecting free speech and civil discourse? No answers here.I have nothing but systematic contempt for this new strategy on the Left. As a young member of the Left I fought against the Vietnam war, against racial and sexual discrimination, and for tolerance of diversity. We won LOTS of battles. The new authoritarian Left thinks it can move forward by shaming privileged groups into relinquishing their achieved positions. What a sick joke! The authoritarian Left is too pathetic for words.I am a scientist and an intellectual. I am proud of the contributions my generation of progressives made towards an emancipatory ethic and vision. The current authoritarian Left is completely intellectually bankrupt. There is not a single book or article that has any intellectual cogency. Just a bunch of dirty, racist bigots huddling together for warmth.What has brought this situation about? Frankly, I am still searching for answers.

This is a outstanding analysis of victimhood culture by two sociologists. It shows how even the victims themselves are harmed by promoting this hypersensitive / always looking for offense or harm environment. Of course it is primarily centered in nations campuses but it is spreading to the wider culture.This is an incredibiy rigorous and fair critic of this alarming trend and I definitely recommend it to everyone.

This is certainly one of the most timely and relevant books to appear this year. The book can be seen as building on a well-received scholarly article from the authors that gained wider public interest in a review that appeared in The Atlantic. The central topic of the book involves how, for the last few years, various disturbing events in universities in the US and in Britain have been a symptom of the emergence of a new set of ideas and values that is at odds with our values and our society. These ideas have spread to many other areas and organisations, such as the newspapers, social media, unions, political parties, and so on. Many, and possibly most people in wider society, can immediately perceive how these changes are divisive, damaging, and ultimately a danger to the values and freedoms that have been the foundation of our democratic societies for the past three centuries. Many have attempted to explain this movement as simply a right vs left issue, however many previous descriptions fail to explain a number of key aspects of these changes that distinguish them from previous debates or conflicts in society.Therefore, the authors, two US sociologists, aim in this book is to accurately characterise and describe the core reason we are seeing phenomena such as beliefs in micro-aggression, calls for "safe spaces", increases in hoaxes and false accusations of crimes, and also calls for censorship on free speech. They present a solid explanation of behaviour that seems absolutely astounding and incomprehensible to most of us today, such as students in the US demanding from their universities the creation of racially segregated spaces where white people would be banned from entering, such as at Northwestern University where black students demanded that white student not be allowed to join them in the cafeteria, so they could "enjoy their lunches in peace" (p.80). The reader will surely be aware that Martin Luther King certainly did not dream of separate cafeterias for black students, so how has it come to this?They start by explaining how different sets of values determine cultures and determine each individual's social and moral status. There are many forms of status, such as wealth and fame; moral status is often used in determining who is right and who is wrong, who has just cause and who does not. There are different cultures, or sets of values, that determine a person's moral status. For instance, in a culture of honour, an individual's status is determined by their reputation amongst their peers, and is enhanced by showing acts of bravery, strength, or prowess. Individuals defend their honour at all costs, and will retaliate against challenges to their reputation, e.g. by duelling after an insult or argument. Failing to retaliate is a sign of weakness and invites further attacks, therefore people must fight back against even the smallest offences. Criminal drug gangs are an example of groups living according to honour culture in the west today.However, honour culture was replaced in mainstream western societies during the last few centuries by a set of values centred on dignity. In a dignity culture, a person possesses an inherent dignity that cannot be dented by slights and insults. A person can however damage their social status by engaging in undignified behaviour, such as childishness, boorishness, violence and so on. Therefore, in a dignity culture, individuals learn to dismiss insults and minor offences as unworthy of response, as they stand to lose more than they can gain by escalating the conflict. To respond back with a petty insult is childish, to be aggressive is boorish, and to be violent is criminal.In a culture of dignity, more serious conflicts or arguments are resolved by reason, rather than strength or reputation, sometimes with the help of third parties as arbitrators. This describes how, in our society, conflicts are taken off the street and into courts of law, which seek to resolve disputes based on evidence and facts, using legal principles that apply equally to each individual. It is clear to the reader that cultures of dignity are part of the bedrock for free, democratic states centred on individual citizens who hold equal rights, regardless of who they are.Now, as the title of the book suggest, there is a third culture which has emerged and which does not consider the dignity of the individual, nor a person's individual reputation, as the key value of social status. Instead, it is a person's ability to claim a need for sympathy and pity that determines their position and hence validate their goals. Therefore, unlike honour culture where weakness is associated to inferiors status, individuals seek to publicize their victimization as much as possible, in order to attract favourable intervention from third parties. Thus victimhood culture is different from honour culture, as in an honour culture, reliance on third parties is another form of weakness.Although dignity and victimhood cultures both sometimes rely on third parties for arbitration, they do so differently. Instead of dignity culture's emphasis on arbitration based on evidence of actual offence, victimhood culture primarily seeks to appeal to emotions of sympathy and pity. This explains why such emphasis is placed on the feelings of the victim, rather than the actual objective presence or absence of an offence. Similar to honour cultures but unlike dignity cultures, victimhood culture makes it advantageous to react to every small offences and insult a person receives, since it enhances the sympathy and pity from their peers who also share victimhood values, especially if it is argued that these offences are not isolated incidents, but part of a wider "systemic" trend. Furthermore, since most minor offences are simply too minor for serious consideration from dignity culture, it is also highly advantageous in a victimhood culture to claim shared victimhood with members of a group, e.g. to take personal offence and make others party to a conflict that would otherwise not involve them. This is a good strategy if you want to bring people onto your side, and explains why victimhood culture is obsessed with historic injustices, despite no party having been involved in those events.The authors argue very convincingly that these main traits of victimhood cultures explain many of the things we see today. They go through many key examples, such as how micro-aggression theory downplay objective truth and proportionality and instead claim trivial incidents as part of "systemic bias" or even "rape culture". They explain how victimhood culture promotes false accusations and even hoaxes of crimes, since they generate the sympathy the supposed victim craves, without the need to provide a genuine example backed up by evidence.They further explain how victimhood culture is inherently tribal, as it emphasizes the role of group conflict. It promotes the view that society is simply composed of groups of oppressors and oppressed, despite the evidence of more equality and fairness than ever before in human history. Recall that a person's status and influence is determined by their ability to claim membership to a supposedly victimized group. This explains why, in a victimhood culture, people from non-victimized groups are considered inferior in moral status, as shown by how often we see claims that out-group members cannot hold valid opinions and should not be allowed to speak publicly, regardless of their own individual reasoning and arguments. Unlike dignity culture, victimhood culture is inherently a partisan culture, where adhering "moral commitment to always support alleged victims" is paramount, and the act of seeking the truth is seen itself as an offence. This is illustrated in the attacks on the journalist who first pointed out the inconsistencies in a rape accusation at the University of Virginia in 2014 (p.125), which upon further investigation revealed that the accusation was fabricated, which ranged from the ad-hominem to claims that the due process and safe-guards of free society are institutional abuses of power ("institutions will bring their power to bear to obfuscate violence.", p 125). The reader can't help but think of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird given the disturbing parallels with the moral panics and mob justice that are present in these examples.The concept of victimhood culture even explains how would-be victim groups compete for victimhood. For instance, in 2017, three Jewish participants were asked to leave an annual LGBT event called "Dyke March" in Chicago, because they were carrying a rainbow flag with the star of David, on the basis that it "made people feel unsafe" and that the march was "pro-Palestinian" and "anti-Zionist". It's initially hard to understand how they cannot see the contradiction in having a march for minority rights being so blatantly anti-semitic, but inside victimhood culture, it is inevitable that multiple groups will emerge to compete for maximum victimhood status, and will seek to portray other groups as oppressors to raise their status.In the later parts of the book, the authors examine how victimhood culture has come to be and how it spreads. They argue that it arises primarily in environments with high but somewhat imperfect levels of equality, high levels of access to potential sympathy to third parties (e.g. twitter) high levels of overarching authority for acting as enforcers, overly protective parenting, and lack of developmental opportunities for dealing individually with even minor challenges, such as attending a interview, as an independent dignified individual. This explains why victimhood culture has not arisen in challenging poor neighbourhoods, but instead in the affluent elite universities. The authors then go on to consider what are the possible future outcomes of victimhood behaviour, such as increased tribal conflicts in society, maybe even the return of racial segregation. More broadly, victimhood culture challenges the core beliefs of dignity culture, namely that we are each reasonable and responsible citizens of our society, that we are not guilty of our ancestors crimes, that our individual behaviour determines our dignity and that reasoned thinking determines right and wrong.Ultimately, I think the book is simply excellent. The authors write clearly, lucidly and present a very solid line of reasoning for their description of this new phenomenon. From the lens of mainstream dignity culture, much of what happens in victimhood culture is alien to our moral compass, and thus the authors do a great service to provide a consistent description and explanation of victimhood culture behaviour. The fact that many immature young people are misbehaving is one thing, but the miscarriages of justice by adults in positions of responsibility is deeply concerning for wider society. Many surely know that it is our responsibility as adults in society to take note of these alarming developments, to be conscious of the manipulations of victimhood cultures, and, especially for those in positions of authority, to safeguard the practices of due process based on evidence and investigation when arbitrating conflict. An important principle of justice that has seemingly been forgotten is that the action of the authorities in redressing a harm should not be disproportionate to the actual objective harm of an initial offence. It is time for us to have a grown up conversation about why so many of us live in fear of being the next victim of the twitter lynch mob, of losing our jobs, our livelihoods and our families to possible misinterpretations, exaggerations or even fabrications about our persons.TLDR: The authors hit the nail on the head. You need to read this book.

Very informative about the frightening culture of victimhood which has been spilling out of North American universities for the past few years and is now also infecting elite UK and Australian universities. I read the whole book hoping against hope that there would be some sensible suggestions about how this tide can be turned. There are a few suggestions but I fear they may not be enough. Anyone with children - and especially those who will be going to university - needs to read this before they apply. Parents of younger children need to prepare them so that the don't succumb to culture of microaggression, victimhood, and safe spaces.

Honour, Respect and Victim cultures explained. Including the terrifying combination of hypersensitivity of honour culture with the appeals (in extremis) to authority from Respect cultures leads to twitter mobs, social-justice-vigilantism and, inevitably, to rape hoax culture.Putting aside the content, I like the writers’ style. It’s very accessible.

Buyers of this book should know that they may receive a book printed on-demand by Amazon. This involves undesirable features such as icons for clickable links (I assume the files of the ebook were used for the reprint). As a matter of honesty, there should be an indication of the fact that this is not a professionally produced book.

This book is good and informative. I found the chapter on the field of Sociology and how it’s become dogmatic to be very interesting.