"beast for sacrifice"

Why does being a victim make me feel so disposable?

May 14, 2020

It's been a helluva few weeks. First I dropped a piece about Tara Reade and Biden. Pleading people, no matter what these believed, to not use rape myths to defend Biden because it hurts all rape victims.

Unfortunately, people... Including the campaign, haven't been listening. Then, DeVos dropped her horrific, but expected, final Title IX changes. A lot of people are focusing on its impact on survivors, but it's important to include this change within context.

I--surprise!--got a lot of hate for it, including a nice blend of racism. Many trolls fixated on my ethnicity.

Honestly, this is the first time I’ve been told to go back to my country over my opinions on sexual assault and civil rights! 

This doesn’t rattle me since I know this is part of a phenomenon known as gendertrolling, a term coined by Whitney Philips. This is how Karla Mantilla describes is describes it in "Gendertrolling: Misogyny Adapts to New Media"

Gendertrolling is a relatively new kind of virulent, more threatening online phenomenon than the generic trolling described by Phillips. Crucially, it is not done only for the lulz — to simply upset the targets of the trolling—but it also often expresses sincere beliefs held by the trolls. While traditional trolls can certainly represent depraved values and behavior (the worst examples of which can be found on such sites as 4chan), and they certainly embody the worst of racist, ableist, and homophobic behavior...

Ah, the joys of being a Black feminist online.

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If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know I believe cancel culture doesn't exist. If there is a culture of disaposability, it’s not systemically used against abusers; it's for victims who are harassed, exploited, and exiled. I’ve been thinking how many people who loudly decried misogynist and racist trolling by Bernie supporters on Twitter and urged the senator to denounce it, but remain silent about—or worse, participate in—the trolling of rape victims have been receiving online post-Reade.

Victimhood opens the door to lifelong discrimination.

During some research about neoliberal feminism, I found an exploration of what victimhood means and how it shapes societal and our personal expectations of how survivors should behave and desire after trauma. Etymology of victim hit me in the gut:

The English term victim is derived from the Latin word for sacrificial animal, victima. The English language is not alone in calling persons affected by crime the sacrificed ones. In fact, all Western languages use words referring to sacrificial animals for victims of crime. — Jan Van Dijk, “Free the Victim: A Critique of the Western Conception of Victimhood”

This is disturbing and comforting. I’ve often compared rape victims to sacrificial lambs. We’re told to swallow our trauma and smile, lest everyone turns on us. And, ultimately, we learn that we’re never safe because there is no perfect victim—the best victim is the one who doesn’t divulge their victimhood at all.

I found this from reading Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times by Rebecca Stringer. That got me thinking about the influence of the Western world and how colonialism and imperialism in the name of Christianity has distorted how we view victims worldwide.

This use of ‘victim’ ‘will initially have impeded rather than facilitated a broadening of its meaning to ordinary human beings. Such usage would probably have struck religious people as blasphemous’ (p. 4). Eventually ‘victim’ was generalized to others, initially through a Christian perspective that in suffering one experiences the ‘passion of the Christ’: the suffering brought by victimization brings one close to Christ, directing the sufferer to follow Christ into self-sacrificing forgiveness. Ostensibly, the category ‘crime victim’ is secular, but in fact our constructions of and reactions to crime victims continue to respect Christian precepts, offering ‘compassion on condition of meekness’

“Compassion on the condition of meekness” — that’s what oppressors seek from the oppressed. White “allies” threaten to withdraw their anti-racist support if they don’t like a person of color’s tone. Men in Twitter mentions tell feminists gender oppression wouldn’t be such a problem if women weren’t so angry. The rich exploit and hoard wealth and then expect workers and people in poverty to jump through hoops to get the crumbs they offer.

Victimhood is not just about the self, but also how others view and treat victims. The identity of being a victim is constant, but a large point of vulnerability that the identity can be denied, revoked, or exploited by others. Compassion is necessary for healing yet we make it so rare for the people who need it the most.

I don’t know how to end this. I just wish things were better. And I hope when every new rape scandal appears, readers will think about the social construction of victimhood, what messages we’ve internatlized, and how we can change the culture of gatekeeping victimhood. Humans deserves to be seen as whole beings; that includes recognizing their victimhood, too, and stopping the avalanche of additional abuse and pain that often follows.

PHEW! That was heavy. Here’s a photo of my first bunny Simba (RIP). I miss the cute little furball.

‘til next time,

Wagatwe

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