[rjbwork]

Here's an article that has some links talking about this phenomenon a few years ago.

http://reason.com/blog/2015/09/11/victimhood-culture-in-amer...

TL;DR There are traditionally 2 kinds of culture - honor, and dignity. The west tends to be predominantly Dignity culture. Asia and Africa tend to be predominantly Honor cultures. This idea is that we are seeing a shift into a culture that combines both of these - the victim culture.

[mparr4]

Jonathan Haidt does a great job explaining Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood cultures: https://youtu.be/Gatn5ameRr8?t=27m32s (whole talk is excellent)

His take is a little different (that Victimhood culture is a result of a march through time from Honor to Dignity to Victimhood). He's referencing the same paper [1] mentioned in the reason.com article.

[1] - Microaggression and Moral Cultures http://www.academia.edu/10541921/Microaggression_and_Moral_C...

[imartin2k]

I watched the Haidt video, it's incredibly enlightening and in fact explains almost all the dynamics that played out over the past days.

[totalperspectiv]

That was a very good and level headed article about a difficult topic. To those scrolling by this later, it's worth the read.

[vinceguidry]

The thing that strikes me about victimhood is that when it's used in a pejorative sense, it's always non-interested and often uninformed persons assigning judgment to another's highly-interested behavior.

Once you look more deeply into the situation, the story changes. A good example of this is the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit. You should go do some reading about it if you haven't.

Generating moral outrage, as a tool for solving individual problems, isn't ever going to go away. You had it in honor cultures, dignity cultures. "Blaming the victim" is one of the costs of the strategy and if you aren't prepared for this going in, you're going to get burned pretty badly.

Or sometimes you get thrust into it. The only reason we know anything about that particular lawsuit is because McDonalds' PR team turned it into a media circus. The initial lawsuit asked only for medical costs, no punitive damages.

[leereeves]

Non-interested and often uninformed persons like the author of this article?

FTA: I have the feeling that we’ve been only addressing one side of the story. It’s the side where women are victims.

I think you've just seen an example where "victimhood culture" was called out by someone who benefited from it.