Title: Some Thoughts on Victimhood and Feminism

Abstract: In her book Conflict Is Not Abuse (2016), Sarah Schulman argues that, in many domains of public and private life, false accusations of harm allow (groups of) people to conflate “conflict,” which is quotidian, and “abuse,” which is more problematic but infrequent. The general tendency to mis-identify difficult situations as instances of “abuse” leads to an inability to mediate social problems, and thus prevents the realization of progressive politics. This, she argues, is a reason for socially-minded feminists and activists to reconsider their relationship to so-called victimhood culture.

I understand Schulman’s book as a distinctive contribution to the genre of “anti-victimhood” literature that has recently gained prominence, including among some feminist (and many other anti-feminist) scholars. In this talk, I argue that Schulman’s arguments rely on assumptions about the nature of abuse and victimhood that deserve to be made explicit—notably, the assumptions that (1) there is always a fact of the matter about who, in any one situation, is the victim, and (2) that this fact is always available to be uncovered by rational agents. I argue that these assumptions do not stand up to empirical or philosophical scrutiny. Feminist philosophers should consequently find ways of thinking about victimhood that allow us to learn from the best version of Schulman’s ideas while nevertheless rejecting such assumptions.