Victim Culture And The Death Of American Manhood...


Selene

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Very interesting article that is drawn from a scholarly article called, Microaggression and Moral Cultures, by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning [ http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15691330-12341332 ].

In Victim Culture Is Killing American Manhood [ http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424805/victim-culture-kills-american-manhood ], the author explains that when he:

grew up in rural Kentucky, where the process of becoming a man meant gaining toughness, shedding weakness, and learning how to take care of yourself and others. This was simply understood, not just by fathers and sons but also by mothers and teachers. In one grade-school incident, I got into a playground fight with another boy and knocked him to the ground. As the teacher rushed up to separate us, she demanded to know what happened. “He said I hit like a girl,” I told her. “Is this true?” She asked my friend. Rubbing his face, he nodded. “Well then, you deserved it,” she said. And that was that.

This is the concept that Greg has expressed here on OL:

I thought of that minor playground scrap — and many others like it — when reading through Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning’s brilliant new paper, “Microaggression and Moral Culture.” (The full article costs $30.00, but Jonathan Haidt has written an excellent summary on his website). Campbell and Manning contend that we’re in the midst of a key cultural change. Prior to the 18th and 19th centuries, we lived in an “honor culture,” “where people must earn honor and must therefore avenge insults on their own.” And while the honor culture tended to be somewhat violent — dueling is a classic response to an aggrieved sense of honor — it also carried with it an inherent limitation: Because personal insults required a personal response, people were more likely to count the cost of confrontation.

The links go to a synopsis of the scholarly article that is excellent also.

A...

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Please redo the links so we can click on them. Those brackets you used aren't helping.

Very interesting article that is drawn from a scholarly article called, Microaggression and Moral Cultures, by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15691330-12341332

In Victim Culture Is Killing American Manhood

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424805/victim-culture-kills-american-manhood

the author explains that when he:

grew up in rural Kentucky, where the process of becoming a man meant gaining toughness, shedding weakness, and learning how to take care of yourself and others. This was simply understood, not just by fathers and sons but also by mothers and teachers. In one grade-school incident, I got into a playground fight with another boy and knocked him to the ground. As the teacher rushed up to separate us, she demanded to know what happened. “He said I hit like a girl,” I told her. “Is this true?” She asked my friend. Rubbing his face, he nodded. “Well then, you deserved it,” she said. And that was that.

This is the concept that Greg has expressed here on OL:

I thought of that minor playground scrap — and many others like it — when reading through Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning’s brilliant new paper, “Microaggression and Moral Culture.” (The full article costs $30.00, but Jonathan Haidt has written an excellent summary on his website). Campbell and Manning contend that we’re in the midst of a key cultural change. Prior to the 18th and 19th centuries, we lived in an “honor culture,” “where people must earn honor and must therefore avenge insults on their own.” And while the honor culture tended to be somewhat violent — dueling is a classic response to an aggrieved sense of honor — it also carried with it an inherent limitation: Because personal insults required a personal response, people were more likely to count the cost of confrontation.

The links go to a synopsis of the scholarly article that is excellent also.

A...

It's hard to put up links in the body of a text. I know you tried hard. Keep trying so when you get it I can do my lazy parasite thingie

and cash in on your work.

--Brant

the OL Peter Keating wanna be (suggestions more than welcome [the Howard Roark wanna be says find Howard Roark and hold on--not helpful--he only works off architectural drawings, tantalized like Pavlov's dog])

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Jesus Christ: copy, open new window, paste.

As a parasite I win again and again and again. I've got all the Howard Roarks working for me while I sit on the veranda sipping rum on ice.

--Brant

halfway between Toohey and Keating: so far from God (Roark), so close to the United States (and loving it)

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There is nothing whatsoever honorable or respectable about teaching a boy that hitting like a girl is an insult, and opening the article (and the post) with that anecdote means the whole shebang should be ignored. I'm disappointed in you, Adam. I don't want to raise a man with a victim mentality, but I certainly don't want to raise one who has somehow deluded himself into believing that a woman can't kick his ass when he deserves an ass-kicking.

Like A Girl

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There is nothing whatsoever honorable or respectable about teaching a boy that hitting like a girl is an insult, and opening the article (and the post) with that anecdote means the whole shebang should be ignored. I'm disappointed in you, Adam. I don't want to raise a man with a victim mentality, but I certainly don't want to raise one who has somehow deluded himself into believing that a woman can't kick his ass when he deserves an ass-kicking.

Like A Girl

The fact is that women are not built as well as men for certain activities and vice-versa, so the insult is completely valid. It's saying that even though you have an advantage in an area, you're still no good at it.

And "like a man" certainly can be used as an insult to a girl or woman... I'm sure a female gymnast would not want to be told she executes certain movements "like a man," or a model to be told she walks "like a man," or any woman that any part of her looks "like a man."

The whole "like a girl" thing is just more double standard BS.

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There is nothing whatsoever honorable or respectable about teaching a boy that hitting like a girl is an insult, and opening the article (and the post) with that anecdote means the whole shebang should be ignored.  I'm disappointed in you, Adam.  I don't want to raise a man with a victim mentality, but I certainly don't want to raise one who has somehow deluded himself into believing that a woman can't kick his ass when he deserves an ass-kicking.

 

Like A Girl

 

Deanna:

 

I said it was an interesting article and my point in quoting that first paragraph was as an excellent anecdotal example of how things were that the author started with and that was quite revealing.

 

The point of putting the article and the study up here was to stimulate discussion.

 

I did not support or not support the positions in the article as yet.

 

 

“There are always going to be critics of women's boxing. We've been taught that women should be protected. A lot of people don't like women fighting, and I can understand that. But it ain't going to stop the show.”

—Laila Ali

 

I have a good friend and client who is tight with her and she is all girl and tough as nails.

 

 

Watch the first round and then go to about 7:10 - anybody want to step in the ring with her can be my guest.

 

A...

hates being castigated by an OL female poster because I would bet she hits quite well...

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There is nothing whatsoever honorable or respectable about teaching a boy that hitting like a girl is an insult, and opening the article (and the post) with that anecdote means the whole shebang should be ignored. I'm disappointed in you, Adam. I don't want to raise a man with a victim mentality, but I certainly don't want to raise one who has somehow deluded himself into believing that a woman can't kick his ass when he deserves an ass-kicking.

Like A Girl

Ah, Deanna,

Even in tennis women are at a great disadvantage to men because of different physical attributes. In fighting the differences are much more pronounced, to the extreme. Size, strength, aggressiveness, even the mass and density of bone in the skull and hands. Men are designed by nature to fight with each other, women not so much. "Hits like a girl" may not be an insult to you but it's very much an insult to a boy. My first marriage was to a women who owned a karate studio by the way. No, I never said "you hit like a girl". She was nearly my size with bigger wrists and grew up on a farm. I've seen her beat up men who were disrespectful, but I wasn't challenged by her strength and skills personally and was always gentle with her. At her strongest I was easily twice as strong and could run for hours, she hated to run. She was a terror with weapons however, I wouldn't last a half minute if she had a stick or a knife in her hands. To say nothing of a gun...

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The point of putting the article and the study up here was to stimulate discussion.

I did not support or not support the positions in the article as yet.

The authors have made available for download a full-text PDF of the journal article Microaggression and Moral Cultures. Jonathan Haidt gives a very full rendering of the article at his blog as noted at Adam's link.

I am firmly on the side of the authors (and Haidt). Microaggression is a concept that I think is best rendered with more descriptive words (such as 'a little verbal slight or put-down'). One could say I micro-aggress against another OLer each time I skewer religious beliefs and dogma, or each time I discuss something that triggers the vapours or triggers an emotional outburst or pearl-clutching. This process takes sometimes risible form, almost indiscernible putdowns engender indignant reaction, perceived slights against non-present victims are met with scolding, pursed-lips and hackles raised.

The offense taken each time is measured on the same microscopic scale, to my mind, which makes the entire campus concept a weird mirror to particle-physics. To measure the elementary particles, one needs to peer very very closely at the results of collisions to spy the by-products. This costs, on average, many millions of dollars for each smash.

The cost of investigating micro-aggression collisions is not clear, but I think it is (contra particle smashers) unlikely to pay off in knowledge of fundamentals. At best it adds iron to ethical suggestions drilled into each of us by school age. Don't be mean. Don't be racist. Don't be hateful. Don't be a bully.

With the other conceptually bizarre item, "triggers," I was there during its birth as a mind-closer, on Usenet satanic-ritual abuse news groups. Anything that could 'trigger' a full on PTSD attack, or make the multiple personalities therein more multiply weepy, anything that might set off the sensitive folk who claimed to have been abused by satanic cults ... you can imagine. Pathology grew like bacteria on agar.

So, I have a built-in prejudice against that word and the work it is meant to do, just as I carry prejudice against 'microaggression' ... if it is meant to signal a very small aggression, it merits being countered by a teeny sort of retaliation in kind, a micro-retaliation: >super-small biff! Super-small bam! back at ya<

Here is Haidt giving a bit of social-historical background in another blog post:

In a variety of ways, children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well.

These same children grew up in a culture that was (and still is) becoming more politically polarized. Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970s show that on average, their mutual dislike used to be surprisingly mild. Negative feelings have grown steadily stronger, however, particularly since the early 2000s. Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.

So it’s not hard to imagine why students arriving on campus today might be more desirous of protection and more hostile toward ideological opponents than in generations past. This hostility, and the self-righteousness fueled by strong partisan emotions, can be expected to add force to any moral crusade. A principle of moral psychology is that “morality binds and blinds.” Part of what we do when we make moral judgments is express allegiance to a team. But that can interfere with our ability to think critically. Acknowledging that the other side’s viewpoint has any merit is risky—your teammates may see you as a traitor.

[...]

The idea that words (or smells or any sensory input) can trigger searing memories of past trauma—and intense fear that it may be repeated—has been around at least since World War I, when psychiatrists began treating soldiers for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. But explicit trigger warnings are believed to have originated much more recently, on message boards in the early days of the Internet. Trigger warnings became particularly prevalent in self-help and feminist forums, where they allowed readers who had suffered from traumatic events like sexual assault to avoid graphic content that might trigger flashbacks or panic attacks. Search-engine trends indicate that the phrase broke into mainstream use online around 2011, spiked in 2014, and reached an all-time high in 2015. The use of trigger warnings on campus appears to have followed a similar trajectory; seemingly overnight, students at universities across the country have begun demanding that their professors issue warnings before covering material that might evoke a negative emotional response.

I'm not quite ready to declare The Death of American Manhood. That would seem akin to the general end-times pessimism slash hysteria of an oracle or moralist or Randian Chicken Little.

"What country were you born in, Mei Wong?" "Same country as you, Miss White Arkansas ..." BIF BAM BOOM

Edited by william.scherk
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Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.

Again, the US is a Constitutional Republic not a democracy.

Ayn: Show me a compromise between food and poison.

Compromise is not a good concept when it comes to fundamental principles.

A...

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Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.

Again, the US is a Constitutional Republic not a democracy.

Ayn: Show me a compromise between food and poison.

Dilution?

--Brant

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Ayn: Show me a compromise between food and poison.

Dilution?

--Brant

Blasphemer...!!

slapping.gif

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I figure an assumption by a girl, (in the video) in her own estimation is not going to allow a minor epithet to lower her opinion of herself. If thats the case someone or something has been beating her down. This would be the case too with an average boy.

Its virtually always been directed towards boys as a way of saying man up, as a way of an offering not to allow yourself to fall into mediocrity, or to take the easy way out, to give a gentle reminder or coaxing to come from a place of strength even when you dont feel like it.

Btw, the girls in the video did throw, run like girls. I could spot it a mile away. When I was younger the boys who threw like that in baseball were generally less athletic. You can see a ball thrown like a girl even when thrown by a boy is not thrown as well or as far or as accurately.

Kinesiology is the science of breaking down motion to find efficiencies. Young baseball players have their pitching analyzed for proper motion. There are definite ways in which the arm moves that can make it less efficient in terms of what it is youre tring to do. I studied proper spacial positioning in Hapkido. Leverage, flow, tension all can help or to some extent get in the way.

Microagression? Oh boy, toughen up, stiff upper lip, stop crying about something that really doesnt hurt (youre pretending).

I have no accurate means to gauge whether boys are growing into hyper sensitive men, by my definition, although my feeling is that its true.

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This is a cutting edge issue.

In a June 15, 2015, this author discusses Nietzsche and Rand and applies it to today's victimology:

I found that to be an intriguing concept, given that Nietzsche lit the fuse for so much of the bloodshed of the 20th century in Europe. On this side of the pond, he also empowered much of the “Progressive” and anti-American movement of the first half of the 20th century. On the left, this included Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno of the infamous Frankfurt School, transplanted to America after a rival form of Nietzsche-worshipping socialism won the day in post-Weimar Germany. And (more or less) on the right, famed journalist H.L. Mencken, who was the first to translate Nietzsche in English in 1907 and whose later polemics are chockablock full of Nietzsche-inspired attacks on traditional American culture, democracy and religion. (Including, in a much more benign form Ayn Rand — whatever her later protestations, Objectivism shares a lot in common with Nietzsche’s Will to Power. And eventually Stanley Kubrick; it’s no coincidence that 2001: A Space Odyssey’s central leitmotif is Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra.)

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2015/06/19/will-to-power-via-victimhood/

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We could say Ayn came out of a totalitarian matrix bringing Nietzsche with her and turned him about and fought back at the totalitarians with him as one weapon, namely denying them exclusivity of the person. She fought fire with fire? Then she discovered her impotence of evil theme and reserved Nietzsche for her heroes' esthetics. Their will power was so powerful and so well ingrained into their persons they didn't even need to use Aikido; the villains just bounced off.

--Brant

and John Galt "stopped the motor of the world" by "doing nothing"

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The Atlantic chimes in with a September 17th, 2015, article which has "Readers Defend the Rise of the 'Microaggressions' Framework."

Hundreds of readers graciously responded to my articles “The Rise of Victimhood Culture” and “Why Critics of the ‘Microaggressions’ Framework Are Skeptical.” Starting today, I’ll be sharing their feedback in a series of installments. Correspondents in this first batch argue that “microaggressions culture” is beneficial. I’ve tried to engage their arguments and tease out our differences. I hope this helps to clarify both lines of disagreement and common ground. And I could always be wrong, so I encourage close attention to each reader’s argument and cognizance that other strong critiques are surely out there too.

let’s get right to it.

Then a self identified POC explains that:

Now this young Hispanic woman mentioned in your article, out of inexperience or just sheer stupidity, took a nuisance complaint to this court. And reasonable minded figures like yourself have denounced her and exposed her case for what it is, as you should. She is the one left with pie on her face.

The system works.

As a person of color myself, I am glad to know that the other party I'm dealing with knows that I have this option in my pocket. I won't use it unless I have a good reason to.

He continues:

Most POC, I believe, are like me. I am unconnected, my parents are immigrants who were allowed to leave their native country with a few hundred dollars in their pockets. I have the privilege of what you might call "the immigrant mentality," so despite having been poor most of my childhood, I have attained some degree of professional success. However, due to my success, almost everyone I deal with professionally has more connections through their family than I do. In conflicts that arise, I need the stick as well as the carrot. Without the perceived ability to hurt someone back in a meaningful way, people like me have to suffer untold indignities on a daily basis in order to advance professionally.

This "victim hood culture" protects people like me.

It gives us a shield so that we can more confidently conduct our affairs and a sword to let others know there is a consequence to crossing certain lines. Just because some people use this recklessly (in the early days of a new order, abuses will be common), please don't seek to disarm all of us.

Call out the offender and disarm only them.

"J Acuse!"

.

guilty- no trrial mother fucker and there is never any collateral damage. That only happens when those racist cops and conquering American racist soldiers are involved.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/why-critics-of-the-microaggressions-framework-are-skeptical/405106/

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  • 7 years later...

There's only a couple threads I could find talking specifically about victim culture, and this one is more recent so I'll revive it.

Just wanted to throw out a theory about victim culture, and more specifically the weaponization of victimhood. I think the reason it has happened in so many places at different times is quite natural. Society requires codified law to function, and because of this masculine behaviour is restrained. Committing crimes is not masculine, generally speaking, however there are some masculine acts that become criminal under the rigidness of a legal system meant to judge everyone equally based on decontextualized criteria.

Sometimes the legal "victim" is not the real victim, but because we favor systems over leadership/authority, playing the victim becomes a powerful weapon. With any weapon comes fear, and with fear comes a shift of social dynamics. As it becomes more accepted that victims have power, it becomes a bit of a vicious cycle of people trying to get on the winning team, as victims themselves or as allies to victims.

The simple answer to why the left is so violent--because the police protect them.

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Rand wrote about a secular collectivist/altruist ethic that was essentially a religion that replaced God with "society". I think a mistake here is the idea that people are mainly driven by their desire to be ethical. People do not need God because they need something to serve. They need God because they need something to guide them.

In many ways God represents a father, or a leader of a tribe. God is the top of a dominance hierarchy. God represents leadership itself. Rand is right that God has been replaced, but not with "society" and not for the purpose of giving people something new to sacrifice themselves for.

Leadership has been replaced. People have been convinced that they do not need leaders to tell them what to do... and in the place of the leaders we have installed something without human faults... The System. We believe that a system can exist at the top of a dominance hierarchy, for which no man is above. No man is above the law.

We have an abstraction leading society. The system is our new god. The system was designed with the primary function of protecting victims. Thomas Sowell said whenever you create an incentive for something you inevitably get more of that thing.

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