Discourse 32: Rejecting Victimhood

An open letter to women, and my daughters

Everyone wants to be a victim in 2025. This is not only a product of conditioning, but without particular trained sentiments the label of victim has become like a badge of honor. Many look for ways to wear it.

It becomes empowering like a get out of jail free card. I can be excused for X because of Y. A shield against responsibility and accountability to be deployed whenever convenient. This power is seductive and appeals to the weak.

There are real victims in this world, but this authenticity is granted only by experiencing injustice directly as an individual. One cannot be a victim due to ancestral injustice. You did not live that life. Neither can one be a victim by proxy or based solely on an immutable characteristic. To claim otherwise is to believe that we are defined by things that did not happen to our person. It is also a form of mental capitulation to the world, identifying oneself to the psychology of the slave – forever bound by the spectre of invisible chains.

Of course, certain “groups” are excluded from the privilege of claiming victimhood, as they are used as scapegoats for the others.

Men. Caucasians. Heterosexuals.

Naturally there are indeed oppressors from the above categories, but not as a general rule. To say otherwise is inherently racist, sexist and discriminatory – using the correct definitions of the words.

Individual actions are what matters. Our character is the defining metric on the scales of virtue and identity, not our respective group inclusions. This should be axiomatic for anyone who has individualized or who is seeking to build themselves whole.

But the appeal to victimhood is strong and insidious. It is becoming baked in the cake of our social reality, delivered to us with emotional triggers and trappings. This engineering strategy has been successful because fewer and fewer people individualize and master their emotions- or even tend to them as the phenomenon they are. The thing about emotions is that they are most often wild. If you do not tame them, you will eventually regret some of your actions. Emotional outbursts are no longer frowned upon. Come unhinged, it is celebrated! It isn’t your fault “they made you feel that way”. “Your truth” is just a narcissistic excuse to enslave the external world to your petulant untrained spirit.

This makes you useful to cultural engineers.

Furthermore, the victim class will view those who are in control as detached or cold, when in reality they are just not slaves to their feelings. They feel, in fact, more authentically than the unhinged. For they speak, act, love, live, even hate, deliberately – instead of reacting by default or through a Pavlovian mechanism. They choose their path instead of being carried by it.

This topic of manufactured victimhood is part of the larger woke cultural slop I tend to avoid or write about. However, besides my daughters, some women and perhaps some parents, might benefit from this particular perspective I am about to offer. While this short essay is directed at women, it is not uncritical of men. I seek only to re-frame the entitled victim paradigm being pushed on women while simultaneously seeking to empower men to reach for higher things.

In essence, men are taught to respect women, but not what to expect. Women are taught what to expect, but not how to respect.

The genesis of this essay was this random seemingly innocent meme on the stack seeking to teach “our daughters” how to properly discern between different types of men.

It isn’t that I disagree with the advice in itself, but I am not considering this image in a vacuum. Like many others it puts the entire weight of the relationship on the shoulders of men.

To my daughters, of course I want you to delineate these traits. There are many awful men out there. This is not new and it is not changing any time soon. I agree that parents should train their sons in the art of proper manliness, which would eventually lead the young man to be the type that would love his wife the way Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. (Ephesians 5:25) The bar can be set no higher than Christ, so all requirements of the meme would be met. But I also think parents should teach their daughters several things as well.

So where are the moral lectures directed towards women to be worthy of such things in the public?

Are you worthy of a compliment?

Are you worth the investment?

Do you conduct yourself properly?

Are you deserving of love and sacrifice?

Are you a gift to him?

Of course, these questions can and should be directed towards the man as well – but they always are. It is women who get a free ticket on the victimhood bus while men not only start at a disadvantage but are not permitted to fail. Ever. In our present artificial culture, for men, once a failure always a failure. For women- worth is innate and immutable. Many will act like an entitled prostitute yet demand to be treated like a queen and expect good quality men to grovel at their feet. Men must build their worth constantly and are all too often disposable.

To my girls, what most men want is rather simple. We do not have long checklists like many women of the present age demand. (6 foot 6 figures) Most men just need to feel respected and recognized for their efforts by those closest to them. The way society is, (not all relationships this is a generality) women demand to be recognized for even the most minor of efforts whereas men are expected to lift heavy things without complaint or desire for recognition…because we are expected to do it to even begin to have value.

While this does not describe my relationship with your mother, I do care for the respect and recognition of those whom I have a duty to. I suspect most men feel the same. That recognition alone can power a man through many dark nights of the soul as they know their sacrifice is seen and matters to those they need.

Girls, I have told you that if you want a good friend you can trust you must first be a good friend you can trust. If you want these things from a man listed in the meme…

…to be complimented

…to be invested in

…to be viewed properly

…to be loved

Be worthy of it. Respect yourself. Build yourself. Then you can demand it. If you are those things, you should not settle for less, but you are not entitled to the sacrifice of a man just because you are a woman. Just like him, you must earn it. Do not become a victim to your own hubris. With that said, if you find a good man remember what it is I say here. He does not require much, but what he needs is a must. See him. Respect him. Give him your full fidelity. Do this and he will give you the world or die trying.

Men may build civilizations, but it is women who maintain them. Weak women create weak men. Strong women lift strong men, and we need more strong men to fix all that is now broken.

This is why they have attacked women so ruthlessly. Weaponized feminism. Pornography. Transgenderism that disproportionately affects girls and women. They wanted to break you, make you a victim by birth alone.

Reject this.

Similar to what I said to men in Discourse 31, stop letting the world define you. You have a powerful orientation of spirit within you that cannot be diminished unless you let them. It is your sex that has been given the gift of life bringer- God did not bestow such a gift on something that was not innately powerful and beautiful. You are only a victim if you choose to be. You can also choose to be a queen.

Bend the knee and pick up your crown.