Word: victimhood
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...feminist intellectuals seem slightly out of touch, it's because they're preoccupied these days with their own factional matters, such as the great standoff over the subject of victimhood. On the pro-victimhood side are the legions of domestic-abuse specialists who see Lorena Bobbitt as one more martyr in women's long, weepy history of rape and abuse. On the anti side are feminist authors like Naomi Wolf and Wendy Kaminer, who claim that women have been turning away from feminism because they're sick and tired of hearing about victims and "victimology": foot binding, battering, genital mutilation...
...know, Katie, I think you are quite a jewel, and this book certainly proves that. Few authors I know can be so subversively ironic: your critique of feminism as a cult of professional victimhood is hilarious when juxtaposed with your constant complaints of being victimized by feminists everywhere! And your claim that date-rape hysteria infantalizes women and turns them into powerless waifs is so funny in light of you mocking and belittling those little women so relentlessly...
...accommodation they announced last week, though still very rough and capable of igniting bonfires of violence among opponents of compromise, had one transcendent merit. A deal negotiated in secret by foes who had chosen to meet face to face signaled that they could lay aside their perpetual sense of victimhood...
...that disadvantaged minorities have to work harder than others to achieve the same level of success. While this fact offends our notion of fairness, it is a truth that should not be covered over by the rubric of "diversity" or psychologized to the point of paralysis. The ideology of victimhood proves fatal to its victims if it is not quickly converted into a concept of self discipline and personal virtue. If anything, we need to cultivate a larger sphere in which individual responsibility and merit are unconditionally demanded and respected...
...when victimhood carries high status, the Jews are much and grotesquely envied for having suffered the greatest crime in history. Hence the common attempt to universalize the Holocaust: "It was a war against the Jews, but it could have been against any other nation...