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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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Yesterday, I heard a woman casually, as though it were self-evident, explain an undesirable outcome in her life with "because I'm a woman." I have heard this used by many women to explain: -Why they are not managers -Why their students cannot read -Why they follow pointless workplace rules that no one ever enforces and most employees don't follow -Why they live in fear of the disapproval of superiors -Why a waiter was rude to them -Why a waitress was rude to them -Why they must conform to community norms

Though the explanation sounds like a confession ( "I can't be a manager, I'm just a girl!"), in all cases it is an accusation, intended to imply that the patriarchy is manipulating things behind the scenes, or that "everyone knows" men never get punished/demoted/frowned upon, so only women have to actually worry about their behavior/reputations/whatever. I have been shocked both by how readily this explanation is confirmed/affirmed by other women present when it is offered, and also the wild confirmation bias on display. The women are not managers, but they never applied for the job, and their bosses are women. They have never been reprimanded at work, but neither has anyone else. The male students can't read, but neither can the female ones. None of this is considered. It boggles the mind.

Nevertheless, it is a fact about how a certain class of Western woman explains the world to herself. If people so privileged are so certain of how the deck is stacked against them, what hope is there for people with stronger evidence for that belief about themselves? How does a standard right-thinking (from "to right-think") respectable Westerner expect anyone else to transcend their culture or overcome oppression or break the cycle when their default, axiomatic explanation for why they only make 100k and three trips to Mexico per year is "society cheated me." What is a black kid supposed to think? Or a kid on a reservation? "I'll give it my best shot"? I have heard black dissidents make this argument against the idea of systemic racism- that even if it is real, thinking about it stops black people from trying things. But how can self-exculpatory models of the world be eradicated in people with somewhat credible claims to oppression when they are so popular even among the most privileged members of society? How do the "it's the culture" people expect the culture to change if the winning culture tells itself the same story as the losing one?

Not that anyone is obligated to play along, but I'm not getting many answers to my question. There's lots of "no, women don't do that" and lots of "preach, king!" but the question stands. How does a run-of-the-mill progressive expect people with much more credible claims to oppression than middle-class women to talk themselves into striving when the highly privileged are so consistently talking themselves out of it? Anyone?

How does a run-of-the-mill progressive expect people with much more credible claims to oppression than middle-class women to talk themselves into striving when the highly privileged are so consistently talking themselves out of it? Anyone?

We do it by politically organizing our communities to vote our candidates into power, who will then abolish systemic structures and usher forth a better world, everybody knows this you dummy. We stand on the right side of history, oppression will be defeated and all the people liberated. In the meantime using critical thinking and calling out centers of power who benefit from their unjust privilege and who perpetuate injustice is us doing the work. Remember, the question is not: Did racism sexism take place? but rather How did racism sexism manifest in that situation?

You see, the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.

Whether or not the OP is begging for it, assembling a strawman is still against the rules. Honestly, there’s less credible ones in this very thread, so you’d probably be in the clear if it wasn’t for the facetious framing device. Speak plainly, and try to avoid putting words in others’ mouths.

What exactly is the strawman in my argument? That progressives in general believe that there is a thing called privilege, that it manifests itself not necessarily in any particular situation or person (e.g. that somebody is sexist) but that it manifests itself in systemic ways? So yes, the fact the somebody has more privilege - e.g. they are white woman as opposed to black woman - it does not mean that no sexism or racism takes place. Maybe the thing about the revolution is a little bit too on the nose, but in the end it is closer to the truth: the fact that there are women in managerial position in our company is not the issue, the systemic sexism (AKA patriarchy) is the issue.

Or let me put it this way: do you think it is strawman to think, that "run of the mill progressive" believes that there is such a thing like systemic racism or systemic sexism (AKA white supremacy and patriarchy) respectively and that it is present and can be detected in mundane situations like workplace interactions? Does run of the mill progressive believe in privilege in context of gender or race? If not, what does run of the mill progressive believe in this area?

Talking about privilege or oppression is not a strawman. The problem is adding all the snide, self-righteous bits. They make any position a lot more punchable. It’s occupying the bailey.

You shouldn’t be setting up the most annoying, least defensible version. You especially shouldn’t do so by pretending to hold that position.

I also took that question as rhetorical.

How does a run-of-the-mill progressive expect people with much more credible claims to oppression than middle-class women to talk themselves into striving when the highly privileged are so consistently talking themselves out of it?

Do they?

Do you get the impression the women in question are really into "grit" and "growth mindset" and all that? That seems like a conservative thing, along with lots of emphasis on math and trades and Economically Important Skills. I would have expected them to be more into dispensing with mandatory algebra courses in favor of more Indigenous Education or rapping as Literature or other such things. There was a fairly charming class at one school where the teens got an English credit for beading while someone read a book out loud. The assumption was that they just needed to graduate and get on with their lives of catching fish, ricing, beading, and probably working at the casino or something. That seemed... plausibly realistic? Like another high school with very strong Cosmetology and Culinary Arts programs -- if communism isn't forthcoming, might as well work in a restaurant or a hair salon, since that's what Society is setting you up for.

Not that anyone is obligated to play along, but I'm not getting many answers to my question. There's lots of "no, women don't do that" and lots of "preach, king!" but the question stands. How does a run-of-the-mill progressive expect people with much more credible claims to oppression than middle-class women to talk themselves into striving when the highly privileged are so consistently talking themselves out of it? Anyone?

To be honest, I took the question as rhetorical garnish to the meat of dunking on groups of people and ideas you disapprove of.

The run-of-the-mill progressive does not consider striving and can-do attitudes an important part of success, but an ex post facto justification of privilege, so they wouldn't see your concerns as a problem. 'We don't need to convince Blacks to try hard, Blacks are already trying just as hard as anyone; we just need to dismantle the systems of oppression to unleash their human capital' would be their framing.

The run-of-the-mill progressive does not consider striving and can-do attitudes an important part of success

Yeah, it's this. The median progressive thinks that "a pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality" is a bad-faith rhetorical device drempt up by right-wingers as an excuse to cut welfare. The progressive solution to black and/or female underachievement is affirmative action and redistribution, not inculcating a culture of grit and determination. Self-reliance is suspicious, not laudable, to them: believing yourself to be master of your own fate is heterodoxy to the left's no-man-is-an-island axiom.

Possible answers: Because the interaction between middle class white women (blue tribe) and say working class urban black people is close to zero, they don't hold the same opinions and while they might be on the same "side" when reduced to left/right they are not homogenous. A white middle class woman not striving has basically no impact on why a black teen in the projects might not strive. Entirely separate living conditions and ecosystems.

In addition, it would pretty easy for oppressed black people to feel that white women complaining is co-opting the arguments of the oppressed for their own advantage. See "Karen" as a meme. This can either be used to fuel you to strive more, or as an excuse to strive less dependent on each individuals locus of control. They are not a single united group.

Your question is predicated that what middle class white women do has a sizable impact on the mind set of what others might do. But you first you have to find out if that assumption is true or not. Just like some middle class white male programmer blaming him not getting promoted on affirmative action might not have any real impact on why a poor rural white guy living in a hollowed out ex steel-town turns to opioids rather than trying to pull himself up by his boot straps.

The other assumption is that a progressive might expect people to talk themselves into striving at all. I suspect they would be more likely to look at addressing the systematic reasons why people might not be striving than put the expectations on the individual to strive in poor circumstances. "We're all one bad day away from living on the streets" and the like. Whether you strive or not is not going to help you against a system. So the answer might be "I don't expect anyone to strive when the system is against them, which is why we must change the system. " You can't transcend a culture or system that is keeping you down, you can only strive to replace that system with another.

In other words are you sure you are even asking a question that makes sense to progressives?

Because the interaction between middle class white women (blue tribe) and say working class urban black people is close to zero, they don't hold the same opinions and while they might be on the same "side" when reduced to left/right they are not homogenous. A white middle class woman not striving has basically no impact on why a black teen in the projects might not strive. Entirely separate living conditions and ecosystems.

In addition, it would pretty easy for oppressed black people to feel that white women complaining is co-opting the arguments of the oppressed for their own advantage. See "Karen" as a meme. This can either be used to fuel you to strive more, or as an excuse to strive less dependent on each individuals locus of control. They are not a single united group.

I'm going to second that blue tribe women are unpopular in actual working class communities, including among blacks, and that my experience has been that a black person complaining about "white people" more often than not is referring upper middle/upper class and politically liberal women.

I'm not asking about how these sorts of people affect poor black kids. I'm asking how someone like a middle-class woman explains the wider world to themselves. There is a pretty big group of people who fall between the extremes of "systemic racism has totally rigged the game against the underclass" and "HBD is true and there is no hope for any of them." This group is not super ideological, feels bad for poor people most of the time, but thinks that if the underclass had fewer kids at 14 (via abstinence or abortion or whatever) and worked hard at school, etc, then many of them would rise into the middle class themselves. Does the thought process only go as far as entry into the middle class? In that, hard work and respectability gets you across the threshold, but then further advancement is obsructed by shadowy puppet-masters? Is it just brute Karenism, in that there is no wider world to them, or that it consists only of NPCs? Is it an aloof acceptance of the hard facts of life, and requires no explanation? I'm asking here because there is no polite way to ask these people in real life. I used middle-class women as an example, but as many of the comments have pointed out, lots of people make these sorts of excuses. They can't all be HBD realists or DEI ideologues, can they?

I'm asking how someone like a middle-class woman explains the wider world to themselves. There is a pretty big group of people who fall between the extremes of "systemic racism has totally rigged the game against the underclass" and "HBD is true and there is no hope for any of them."

If you are talking about moderates then the answer is they probably think there is some level of racism and sexism, but don't support affirmative action or CRT, and much as almost everyone else, they simply do not think too deeply about the situation beyond that. They probably vaguely sad when they see on the news some black kid was killed by the police, and probably hold vaguely "normie" views about not seeing colour personally, but of course the racist history of the United States is terrible. They probably think racism and sexism is real, but somewhat overstated. And of course like everyone else they are likely to see their own situation as the important one. If Bob was promoted and she was not, it is possible that it's because of sexism. Just like in the opposite situation Bob might complain that it was only because they wanted a woman in the C-Suite that he lost out. We are all the main character in our own story after all. When we do badly it is because of other people and when we do well it is on our own merits. It takes a huge amount of self-awareness and introspection to move beyond that. And for most people there is no real need to. Our selfish journey continues regardless.

The vast majority of people do not reason hard about their positions and about the wider world. Because for the vast majority of day to day lives it is entirely irrelevant. They hold the positions they hold because they are the positions their communities hold. Just as the average Christian does not think too deeply about the exact theological underpinnings of why they are a Methodist rather than a Catholic.

My experience is that no matter your station in life, you earned it, your boss deserves it but depended on luck, and his boss is a know-nothing jerk who relied on nepotism and backstabbing.

My mother is not, personally, very progressive. She is, however, a normie retired teacher and has definitely stewed in the general beliefs of the 'teacher' milieu. She sometimes says things like "you white men have it easy" not out of genuine belief- she knows full well that the poor behavior of blacks is the main reason they haven't caught up to whites, and that teachers simply don't make as much and have fewer advancement opportunities compared to male-typical careers with the same education requirements(she believes this is due to government payscales, not the patriarchy), and that women choosing to become teachers instead of engineers is mostly due to the decisions women make, and that sexual harassment in STEM is mostly perpetrated by east Indians but not the main factor in those decisions anyway- but because it's her coworkers' socially acceptable response to adversity and she picked up the habit.

It is extremely predictable that feminism is popular among teachers because it's a class interest movement for the sorts of women who hold a teaching career(and I think hold a teaching career is a key thing- the statistics on teachers leaving the workforce once they have kids make it kind of inevitable that the field will lean a bit to the left). Throwing race in there has been the cause du jour for long enough that we can just expect it to be a thing they say. And we should probably circle back to the class thing; this is a class of woman who, in every society ever, have been expected to work not-very-hard-compared-to-the-median and engage in a lifestyle with copious amounts of status display. Complaining about first world problems- which these people are aware of as being first world problems- is just part and parcel of that and "it's the patriarchy" is just the current-year formulation.

I think you’re right that it’s probably privilege. It’s something you give out because as a privileged PMC or STEM woman with every other advantage, you’re expecting to simply rise up the ladder, and likely have never had any real failures that couldn’t be blamed on other people holding them down. They’ve also generally never been in a do or die situation— one where they have to come through. So they can’t understand failure states as anything other than “I can’t have failed, I was obviously cheated.”

That's interesting. Anecdotally, I don't think I've ever heard a woman make such an argument around me, even though I live in a heavily politically "progressive" area. Not even the most fervent SJWs have done it around me. I wonder what kind of social circles you are moving in that you see so much of it.

Oh, I barely move in any social circles at all. This is all at work, which is a high school, and therefore maybe selects for people without much ambition . . .

In high schools, being tall with a deep voice is an actual advantage. I’m not sure about your area, but where I live, laws and courts have been gradually stripping away all tools for enforcing order in schools aside from primal force of personal presence, which most people generally don’t have, but it’s easy for women to suppose men have more of.

I also work at a school with over 90% women, but it’s a bit conservative, so they want more predictable, enforceable consequences for children who disrupt everyone else. But I think some people have been saddened to learn that more social workers and counselors haven’t actually solved all the problems of keeping order in schools.

Being imposing is absolutely a huge advantage when dealing with students in an anarchic environment. Even in Canada. But the complaints are never about that. They're about how some man got to go on (="he organized") a field trip, or how some guy rear-ended their car "but that would never happen to my husband" or whatever.

I've definitely heard a lot of it. "God give me the confidence of a mediocre white man" "What I could achieve if I were a white man" "It must be so easy being a white man" "I had to twice as much to get half as much recognition as I would get if I were a white man."

These are stock memes. It beggars belief that you've never heard anything like that, so I'd tend to suggest you weren't listening "right." You might have heard a more subtle variation than the rather extreme example in OP. Though I also tend to feel sometimes like I move in significantly less SJW heavy circles.

And of course I hear the inverse quite often. "I coulda been a contenda if only it hadn't been for [affirmative action/the Conspiracy/women/Jews]."

Neither Tribe has a monopoly on the external locus of control. It's a trait of identity politics, and one of the reasons I decry the rise of identity politics on the Right, it's ineffective.

Not just ineffective, but corrosive and distinctly Left-Wing/Rousseauean in nature.

I find myself wanting to ask them; are you not the Captain of your soul?.

The idea that identity politics are not effective is simply false. The dominant coalitions rely on identity politics and use it for the advantage of the groups that it comprises.

Part of what claims to be the right has embraced the refusal to do identity politics for its base, in fact to support cancel culture in that direction and tolerating and doing identity politics for progressive associated groups, so your proposal is simply repeating what has failed.

Beyond the issue of effectiveness, it is possible for others to be keeping you down, and it is actually good to oppose that. There is no reason to treat the same all complaints as some might be valid, and others invalid.

The truth is that even invalid blaming others and wanting more for your group at their expense can be effective though.

The problem with much of the current political establishment and this includes people who falsely claim to be on the right or center, is that they tolerate and support excessive rights for progressive stack groups, and don't respect the rights for the right wing groups like white christian men. This also relates to who they are demonizing and overly praising, and historical narratives.

At such it would be both effective and the moral path for the right, and center to sideline this authoritarian racist faction, which slanders and discriminates and favors the replacement of its base. To oppose anti-white and anti-male discrimination is good for society, and good also because it avoids an injustice at the particular groups and challenges directly the logic of the radical far left.

The idea that identity politics are not effective is simply false. The dominant coalitions rely on identity politics and use it for the advantage of the groups that it comprises.

For all of that alleged "dominance" what have they actually accomplished? What great works have been produced? Are the environments where the Identitarians hold sway happier, healthier, and more equanimous? Or are they more often than not complete (and occasionally literal) shit-shows?

What great works have been produced? Are the environments where the Identitarians hold sway happier, healthier, and more equanimous?

No, but that's not what "dominance" means. Kim Jong Un did not produce any great works, the environment where he holds sway is not happier, healthier, and more equanimous, but I don't know how you can describe him as anything other than "dominant" in North Korea.

No, but that's not what "dominance" means.

We're not debating the definition of "dominance" we're debating the definition of "effective", and in either case @Belisarius appears to disagree with you else it begs the question; "What's the point?"

For that, we have to go to one of your favorite writer's contemporaries, John Milton. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven". And to the obvious rejoinder, it is worse than either to serve in Hell.

"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven"

Is it though?

Sounds a lot like hubris to me. All men must serve, even a King. There are no rights nor privileges without responsibilities.

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No. It's not. It's ineffective at delivering results. We can tell because identity politics projects fail, consistently， to deliver results.

It delivers the results its pushers care about. Hiring, university, and medical school preferences for favored groups. Impunity or at least reduced punishments for criminals of favored groups and prosecution for those who defend themselves against said criminals. Censorship of things favored groups wouldn't like. A falsified version of history glorifying those favored groups and demonizing unfavored groups, taught to all. And so on. It does not result in good government, racial harmony, scientific advancement, or economic uplift, but those things aren't what it's going for anyway.

So what you seem to be saying is that Democrats are the real racists. I'm glad we can finally agree on something.

I heard such arguments several times from women in STEM.

It's just standard internal vs external Locus of Control.

It doesn't matter what your politics or background is. An external locus of control is poisonous and will result in worse outcomes over your lifetime.

This concept gets obfuscated with people trolling 'just pull yourself up by your bootstraps' when there are clearly external factors preventing success. Even in those cases when the deck is stacked against you, you are better off doing what you can with what you have rather than just giving up and succumbing to Learned Helplessness.

It doesn't matter what your politics or background is. An external locus of control is poisonous and will result in worse outcomes over your lifetime.

An internal locus of control, when the reality is that "external forces (beyond their influence), have control over the outcome of events in their lives", is literally insane. As @Belisarius points out, "There is no reason to treat the same all complaints as some might be valid, and others invalid."

"I suffer this discrimination because people like me are unwilling to exert political influence in sufficient number to stop it."

Is this internal or external locus of control?

External.

So what's the internal way of saying this?

"I suffer this discrimination because I cannot rally enough political support from people like me to stop it."?

"I suffer this discrimination because I can't muster an army capable of conquering the United States."?

"I suffer this discrimination because I won't strap a bomb to my chest a blow up some government functionaries."?

Yes, especially the first two. Having an internal locus of control means you accept that anything bad that happens to you is entirely your fault.

I'm not sure I find "fault" in any of them

What if I engage in a form of magical thinking where every choice I make steers the universe into a timeline where people like me are more likely to make the same choice?

Internal, but acausal decision theory is nuts.

So is holding a hot iron as your hand sizzles and boils.

External forces there may be, but you need a certain mindset to move from under them.

An internal locus of control gives you better outcomes, regardless of how valid a particular complaint is. Even if it is insanity, it's a useful insanity.

I have no idea if the particular woman in the example above actually faced unfairness or not (she probably has; at some point we all have). But I do know she'd be in a better position, financially and psychologically, if she spent less time introspecting about how mean and terrible and unjust the world is to her and more time embracing her agency.

I can't speak for others. But in my experience, blaming myself for my problems makes me very depressed.

-> And that’s your fault and you need to overcome it because no one else can do that for you.

Just gotta take it one level deeper.

Of course, there’s depression and then there’s depression, and seeking necessary external help is part of taking responsibly.

(I have not fully embraced radical self-ownership, but I think there’s a lot of merit to it.)

Seeking external help is not having an internal locus of control. And I agree that my depression is my own fault, and evidence that I am a bad person.

What no.

Blaming external forces or only relying on external assistance is a lack of an internal locus of control. That can lead to learned helplessness.

Accurately perceiving one needs external support for something and seeking it is being agentic. Not seeking external help when it is needed is an unhelpful avoidance pattern and rarely leads to good outcomes.

Well, we've come around from 'seeking external help is always bad' to 'sometimes seeking external help is good and sometimes it's not'. I guess I can't argue with that.

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An internal locus of control gives you better outcomes, regardless of how valid a particular complaint is. Even if it is insanity, it's a useful insanity.

How positive can we be about the correlation/causation here? For reasons described elsewhere in this thread, people who succeed attribute it to their own agency, while people who fail blame circumstances. The cross-sectional cohort studies I see with a quick search don't impress me with their rigor in dismissing that explanation of LoC/outcome correlations. They seem to assume that if a 4th grader has internal LoC and experiences better outcomes later, then internal LoC was the cause; as opposed to that 4th grader having developed an internal LoC by age 10 due to having more friends, a likeable personality, having demonstrated demonstrated competency in the past, etc. The studies might include a line about controlling for IQ, but that's about it.

I dislike psychology as a field and this always sounded like one of those "just so" stories, to my biased ears.

EDIT: Scott wrote a lot about a related topic, the growth mindset, and my views against it are probably more eloquently argued by him.

Or trying to change things, or getting out. Or just resigning yourself to suffering.

I think you’re mostly right but ‘not playing rigged games’ is also in your locus of control.

I think you’re mostly right but ‘not playing rigged games’ is also in your locus of control.

Sometimes. But often enough you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.

Agreed. If you have identified the rigged game and made a conscious choice to not play, accepting the consequences of doing so.

The identifying the choice and making it is the important thing. Not allowing the choice to be made for you or deluding yourself that there is no choice to be made. The price may be high, but it is still a price that can be paid.

It reminds me of 'The Box Trap' in Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (Pg 108. Warning libertarian text - Please don't call the Firemen on me).

I suppose you aren’t ‘Dedicated Pessimist’ for nothing :)

You say "even Trump" as though that makes the idea stronger when it actually makes it weaker. Women blaming problems on feminism is something of note because more than one woman does it and more than one member of society supports them doing it. The fact that Trump specifically does something means little in this context; Trump is one person.

The specifics absolutely do matter. It's easy to find and notice examples of women blaming problems on feminist reasons. When they do, society approves of it and doesn't question it. These two factors make it matter to point it out.

You can't find more than one Donald Trump doing it, and when you do, the media won't defend him.

Less antagonism, please.

It's one thing to have it alongside a cogent, substantial argument, as you have here, even though I think it hurts your presentation. The problem is with your adjacent shots at the OP.

That is to say, after many years, I've finally let go of caring about what strangers on an internet forum think about me.

Well, if that's what happened, maybe I need to re-evaluate my stance on having votes removed from this site. It seems you're in a happier and healthier place now.

On the other hand I'm not sure I buy it since you're complaining about being downvoted in this very comment, and sound rather bitter.

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Sorry for killing the mood /s

This comment has good points, the base idea is good and I'd have read more if you'd elaborated more, but including this last bit of snark hurt you.

This makes a lot more sense than the stuff about Trump. Trump is getting up there with Hitler as a very common but thought killing basis of comparison.

I don't find the original complaint to be well formulated. They're the sorts of things that are hard to evaluate without specifics and context, and that are mostly not worth evaluating. Especially among teachers, who are always complaining and venting about random stuff, since it's a job that entails being around a lot of student drama all the time, and sometimes parent and administrator drama, with nothing much to be done about most of it.

Whether a set of complaints is a social problem, and in general whether a set of complaints is something to take note of, is a fact-specific thing.

The wrong way to look at this is to say "it's a complaint, and every complaint is just as good or bad as every other complaint that sounds grammatically similar", which is what you've been doing.

As the classic /r9k/ meme alleges, in life man often faces a binary choice that can be neatly summarized as “cope or rope”.

Most of human civilization is the product of the former, because the latter is by definition final. This is why self-pity is the most powerful emotion, because its nuances sort our response to each failure into one category or the other.

Some story is always necessary to explain failure. Universal self-criticism is an evolutionary dead-end; very few successful people always blame themselves, because this is the route to rope (in spirit or reality). So an alternative is necessary. If you can find someone else to blame for each defeat, you live to fight another day.

Broke: "It's my fault that I failed so I should just give up."

Woke: "It's other people's fault that I failed, so I should try again."

Bespoke: "I am responsible for everything that happens to me and everything that happens to everyone else. I have failed before and I always will fail, but I'll keep trying anyway because as the Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith I embrace the absurd. God is that all things are possible, and that all things are possible is God."

From Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapter 90:

She was aware now that tears were sliding down her cheeks, again. "Harry - Harry, you have to believe that this isn't your fault!"

"Of course it's my fault. There's no one else here who could be responsible for anything."

"No! You-Know-Who killed Hermione!" She was hardly aware of what she was saying, that she hadn't screened the room against who might be listening. "Not you! No matter what else you could've done, it's not you who killed her, it was Voldemort! If you can't believe that you'll go mad, Harry!"

"That's not how responsibility works, Professor." Harry's voice was patient, like he was explaining things to a child who was certain not to understand. He wasn't looking at her anymore, just staring off at the wall to her right side. "When you do a fault analysis, there's no point in assigning fault to a part of the system you can't change afterward, it's like stepping off a cliff and blaming gravity. Gravity isn't going to change next time. There's no point in trying to allocate responsibility to people who aren't going to alter their actions. Once you look at it from that perspective, you realize that allocating blame never helps anything unless you blame yourself, because you're the only one whose actions you can change by putting blame there. That's why Dumbledore has his room full of broken wands. He understands that part, at least."

People really run away from agency/blame when it casts shade on their own actions or their political commitments. This is an incredibly basic egoistic primitive. E.g., when you have an abortion, you're not "killing" it, you're simply removing it from the uterus, and it's not your 'fault' that it doesn't survive out in the elements. Might as well be pushing a stroller off a cliff and blaming gravity.

you're the only one whose actions you can change by putting blame there.

That's absurd. You are able to do things that affect, or at least incentivize, other people's actions. You can also change inanimate things which cause problems that are not nontrivially any person's fault.

That’s the point. You can do those things and therefore not doing them is on you.

Or to put it another way, blaming X so that you keep a closer eye on it in future is different from blaming X so you can distance yourself from responsibility.

I feel like the original quote is playing definitional games around 'responsibility' in exactly the way you just laid out. Both of the types of blame you describe are totally coherent and acceptable concepts within the normal understanding of the word. That is, blaming other people can change your actions. Harry's advice to a young child who parents got run over by a drunk-driver would be "it was your fault," and he is clearly a monster. The best thing the kid can do is blame others, blame drunk-drivers, to end friendships with people if they drive drunk, etc. That at least could potentially save other peoples lives. Playing a definitional game such that the kids behavior is defined as 'holding yourself responsible for your parents death' is about as insightful as asking if a hotdog is a sandwich. To say nothing of the emotional component.

I agree. But by the same token, too many men are falling into the same trap: "I'm mediocre because the world is biased against me, giving unfair preferences to everyone else."

Sociologically, one or neither (or both!) may be true. But if you embrace victimhood as part of your identity, you're dooming yourself.

But if you embrace victimhood as part of your identity, you're dooming yourself.

Not if this leads to political action. See: feminism. The problem is men as a class have trouble getting to that part.

This is clearly not true as ethnic groups, and political groups that see themselves as victims have been rather successful.

Moreover, much of the overton window, including in the right is full of people who are angry when the victimhood status of certain groups related with the left is challenged. Even more so when it comes to history.

The successful PMC women in OP's example are not dooming themselves as women. They are benefiting from pro-discrimination policy.

Of course, seeing your group as victims is not in it self a recipe of success. But being entitled to better treatment and trying to convince others you deserve it because you are victimized, is going to be an aid in getting better treatment. While trying to avoid framing yourself as a victim at all costs can end up with you becoming an acceptable target with no organisation to oppose when others vilify you.

Now, I personally oppose people claiming victimhood too much when they don't deserve it, or as a trick to screw over others but that isn't because it is ineffective but because it would be unfair at the expense of others. So I oppose identity politics in those cases. And I support allowing space for the possibility of victimhood as an aspect of justice, and people presenting legitimate cases of them being victimized. There are also some tragedy of the commons problems that are also a good reason to oppose it, leading to a more dysfunctional society from such parasitical behavior. I guess another point would be that excessively disrespecting other groups can lead to backlash against yours. Hence we see a strategy to not allow the outgroup identity politics, so they don't stand up and dissuade this extremism.

So in theory and in practice, embracing victimhood where warranted is a necessary component of justice. Being pro your group for your legitimate rights and against mistreatment is being pro justice.

I also understand that the space that claims to be anti-identity politics has a problem with bad actors who concern troll to oppose identity politics when it comes to white, or male or christian identity politics and support a default of jewish, or woman, black, or other progressive identity politics. In fact part of their problem and what they identify as extreme with the identity politics they complain, is the criticism against excessive jewish (especially for Jewish identity politics there are those making exceptions), or female, or black identity politics, or LGBT, general progressive stack groups.

And are rather extremist, machiavelian chauvinists for it. Some of them also are fanatical about some progressive identity politics and only willing to oppose progressive identity politics after a point, while being intolerant of any identity politics or victimhood status for right wing groups. Or are adopting this perspective because they have noticed that this faction has grabbed influence and are trying to pander to it.

Others are not considering seriously the implications of opposing groups embracing victimhood and how much measures it would justify against the institutions and replacing those who run Google/silicon valley mega corps, ethnic activist NGOs, Hollywood, netlifx, have captured political power in all sorts of institutions, including in political parties. To be promoting something like this in a consistent manner and not just to demoralize the right wing outgroup will require a significant effort to dismantle things as they are now. Just dissuading right wingers doesn't' cut it. Indeed it would require going further than my stance of opposing people using illegitimate/excessive grievances, which aren't proportionate to the situation.

In reality, license to act without a counterparty leads to abuse and excess. On net more identity politics exist where only some sides play the game. If other groups embraces victimhood at your expense where you have the role of the oppressor and starts mistreating yours, and you are unable to see yourself as victims, the end result would be a greater tyranny than if you did see the reality, of your group being victimized. Before that the possibility of groups being victims or victimizers should be embraced for sure as well.

One kind of identity politics, of which victimhood is a part of can restrain another since another group is going to have demands and oppose its own mistreatment and demand that other groups are more moderate. Just like people are less prone to go around murdering people if there is a police which will also act violently and arrest them, or people have a right to self defense and to use violence to stop people from killing them. Mutual respect and mutual fear lead to less violence that one party having no spine and an unwilligness to recognise its own rights. But I am more in favor of people having a valid concept of group rights even outside of just their own group.

Still, my choice would be for the dominant ideology to be skeptical of certain behaviors and tolerant of others, and actually trying to ascertain whether a group is promoting illegitimate grievances, trying to permanently screw over other groups of their legitimate rights and destroy them and their inheritance, or they are trying to retain/gain what they deserve. It is too reductive to either embrace that groups should be embracing victimhood and blaming others, or denying victimhood and blaming others.

Another way to see it is that if the dominant narrative and leadership in institution accepts this idea that one group's rights ends where other's begin and does so even if they are running and country represent as they ought primarily their nation's interests but while respecting the red lines of others, this itself results in less identity politic conflict.

Which is part of what some of the people complaining about identity politics, and groups embracing victimhood have a problem with. Having different factions accept a mutual compromise, and knowing if they push further that won't be tolerated and they will be laughed out of the room, can lead to peace and end culture war debates. And of course, the goal of justice includes in it after justice being done to stop milking those grievances.

I.E. You correctly complain about your group being portrayed in an one sided manner negatively in history and at present and discriminated against and being replaced and not having a right to exist. All these stop, as they should. You don't push to do the same things to other groups, and you don't pretend that they persist. You don't demand that your group is portrayed only positively and trying to portray other groups overwhelmingly negatively. You don't demand that your group must be given money to become as successful, if not more so. You compromise, and having succeeded you don't push further. So in some sense, certain types of identity politics/victimhood embracing must be out of bounds.

Huh. I am a woman, working primarily with women, and don't recall ever hearing any comments like that. I have heard people ascribe poor managerial tactics partly to the manager in question being a woman, and that a man wouldn't do that/get away with that. Also some comments about why the (mostly female managers) are not very good around "well of course it's hard to fill that role, with a lot of responsibility and not much more pay. I certainly wouldn't take the position." Different worlds, and all that, I suppose.

I've also lived a while in several native communities, and only experienced that attitude from a smattering of sullen teenagers. Shrug

In general, I would say, the healthier/less oppressed feeling women are generally at least as involved in their family and religious responsibilities as their job, and think of it as "a job," a way to make money for their other interests and responsibilities, not some kind of Career, Vocation, or Quest. The healthier Native American folks are invested both in multi generational family stuff, and heritage art/food/language projects. A kid out on some tundra who likes smoking fish, hunting moose, making stuff out of fur, and singing at church is... fine. As fine as pretty much anyone.

I've heard it myself a few times from young women, although I would describe it more as a flippant comment, in the vein of 'Oh, big oil will never let electric cars succeed'. I'm not sure about the extent that they literally believed it.

I also saw the 'I wish exceptional women had the confidence of mediocre white men' meme just this morning from a woman who literally has a PhD.

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