Victim-Schmictim

Have you heard of the ‘Dartmouth Scar (www.aknowbrainer.com/dartmout...) ’ project: a psychologist experiment investigating the impact of a victim mindset on self-perception, behaviour and well-being? A fake scar was applied to participants’ faces and then secretly removed before an interview to create a scenario where the participants believed they had a visible scar in order to foster a victim mindset. Nearly all displayed heightened feelings of powerlessness, self pity and a tendency to blame others for failures proving that regardless of whether there's actual discrimination, when we believe ourselves to be a victim, it results in negative consequences.
Stumbling across it, it reminded me of one of the things I got criticised for in my TedX ( • Is Modern Feminism sta... ) - pushing back on the victim mentality that I fear modern Feminism has been partly responsible for inducing in women.
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It was a nascent idea I threw in to generate debate (✔️) borne out of frustrating conversations with younger women I mentored. I'd frequently hear them say ‘I didn’t get that job/ funding/ opportunity because I’m a woman’ despite me being privy to deliberations (often including other women) and knowing that not to be the case. They simply weren’t as good on the day and this presumption proved hugely unhelpful as it closed them to questions of what they could have done better. Heresy!
What damage are we doing when we tell people they’re victims or paint them with broad-brushes of disadvantage when in reality, the world is much more complex plus more accepting of ‘difference’ than ever before (and on any measure e.g. here (www.kcl.ac.uk/news/uk-now-amo...) and here (unherd.com/newsroom/survey-uk...) ). Are we ok with potentially patronising people through affirmative action in a ‘you-can’t-be-what-you-can’t-see’ world, with its potential to set people up to fail? Or with creating a climate of fear around criticising or passing-over anyone on the victimhood hierarchy pyramid?
But of course, the concept of ‘meritocracy’ is now distinctly unfashionable given the modern belief that it is inherently unfair due to identity groups’ different starting points.
And there’s something to this when we look at data for different groups in population-wide terms but… a) is this primarily due to discrimination or might it also reflect many other complicated factors e.g. immigration patterns, cultural norms or a majority of fatherless families within certain identities - which we ignore at our (and the affected’s) peril? and b) how might it be a problem when applied simplistically to convince people of their disadvantage? Anyone who’s repeatedly told they are a victim will see it in every negative interaction, disempowering them in the process. Is it a real scar, or an imaginary one?
To take just one statistic: individuals of Indian heritage in the UK out-perform (www.ethnicity-facts-figures.s...) the white British average educationally and earnings-wise, whereas those of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage under-perform, despite a similar narrative of disadvantage ascribed to all. As a result, some of the most privileged in society can often be the beneficiaries of skin-deep, positive discrimination.
Attempts to combat can cause more harm than good. A famous study (dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/ha...) which claimed that blind orchestra auditions increased female representation by 50% is still widely cited despite having been discredited (reason.com/2019/10/22/orchest...) (non-replicable, tiny sample and with non-blind orchestras witnessing similar growth in female representation over the same time period due to rapidly changing conventions). In fact, blind applications have since been proven to harm (reason.com/2019/10/22/orchest...) not improve minority representation levels. Turns out that affirmative action is hard to practise if you don’t know who you’re evaluating. Who knew?
Victimhood is power. Hierarchies are evidenced in every big socio-political issue with different groups vying to be considered oppressed vs oppressor. As a result, we’ve had a few high-profile hoaxes of people fabricating victimhood from Jussie Smollet (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussie_...) (claiming to be a victim of a racist/ homophobic attack, since proven false); to Rachel Dolzeal (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_...) , (the white BLM activist who pretended to be black); and Hasan Minhaj (the comedian forced to admit to making up (nypost.com/2023/09/15/hasan-m....