The Morality Of Victimhood

The morality of victimhood is not a matter that can be philosophically sidestepped without disastrous results.  On one hand, defending or tolerating injustices--particularly when they are inflicted on someone because they are a man, woman, black, white, or a member of some other non-ideological category--is a grievous offense against reason and Biblical morality.  On the other hand, treating victims as if their experience with injustice means that they are competent at identifying actual injustices or as if it means they are themselves righteous by default is likewise a grievous offense against reason and Biblical morality.

In other words, if objective morality exists, any abuser is evil [1], but victims of abuse are not morally good simply for having been treated unjustly.  It is irrational and unjust to automatically consider someone an abuser or victim because of their gender, ethnicity, nationality, or economic class, but it is also irrational to think that everyone who has been formally abused is a morally good person.  What of victims who are themselves abusers?  What of people who have been victimized by atrocious behaviors and yet are examples of the philosophical ignorance and apathy that marks so many members of the human race?  What of those who respond to sexism, racism, and classism with sexism, racism, and classism?

Indeed, most people are irrational, hypocritical, and arrogant regardless of whether they are truly an abuser or a victim in a given context.  This does not trivialize the evils of abuse on the Christian worldview, as certain kinds of unjust treatment of others are the most foundational and severe types of sin people could possibly commit.  It merely means that having been treated unjustly does not make a person worthy of moral admiration or praise.  At most, it means that those who treat others in an unjust manner deserve whatever Biblical penalty (ranging from financial damages or a limited number of lashes to capital punishment) their deeds merit.

To side with those who practice injustice is itself a grave offense.  However, to exalt victimhood as something that reflects moral character on the part of the victims is also asinine!  Knowing that someone has been mistreated and that their abusers deserve the proportionate wrath of justice in no way illuminates anything else about the victim's intellectual and moral status.  They might endorse sexism, racism, classism, or other fallacious or unjust ideas of their own, even if they do not consistently or thoroughly act upon them in the same ways as abusers motivated by some form of such unjust discrimination.

Western culture has rightly made great strides to eliminate sexism, racism, and classism in recent decades, even if those things are only selectively opposed by the typical philosophically inept Westerner.  At the same time, it has become more tolerant of those who think that feeling victimized, whether their oppression is genuine or imagined, grants them some special epistemological or moral status.  However, even true victims are not rational or correct in their ideological responses to oppression simply because they are victims.  Like in all things, only those who have intentionally aligned themselves with reason deserve intellectual attention.


[1].  It does not follow from the existence of objective morality that any particular predatory or harmful act is immoral, as that would depend on the nature of the objective values in question, but the concept of abuse is tied to the concept of mistreatment, which is a concept that could only have validity if there are indeed evil ways to treat others.