‘Playing the victim’ is politically vital and morally serious

a post by Ashwini Vasanthakumar for the Big Think blog

Victims are moral agents rather than moral patients.

Those who speak out against bad treatment are often dismissed as 'playing the victim', accused of dwelling on imagined slights or indulging in an exaggerated sense of grievance. In the face of ridicule or, worse, the threat of violence, it would be easier to keep quiet. And yet, victims of injustice often do speak up: far from any desire for glory, they are often morally motivated, and act from a sense of duty.

Someone who is subjected to demeaning treatment might owe it to herself to protest and to undermine the apparatus of assumptions, stereotypes and norms that enable this treatment. But, importantly, she might also owe it to others who are vulnerable to similar treatment — fellow victims — to resist the injustices they face collectively and repeatedly. This is especially the case for what the US political theorist Iris Marion Young in 2003 called structural injustices, which are perpetuated through seemingly benign institutions, everyday practices, background assumptions and expected behaviours. Even where there is no explicit discriminatory policy, in fact when such discrimination is publicly, repeatedly and earnestly disavowed, oppression on the basis of, for example, class, race and sex prevails.

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