?There Are No Victims in This Class?: On Female Suffering and Anti-?Victim Feminism?

Abstract

I borrow the title for this article from a scene in the film Dangerous Minds. The movie depicts the true story of a former Marine, performed by the fetching Michelle Pfeiffer, who as a high school teacher transformed her students from potential criminals and welfare queens into responsible future citizens. Hollywood recruited Pfeiffer to engage in psychological combat, hence her mission, reforming the students' dangerous minds. At a crucial point in the narrative, Pfeiffer's students attempt to excuse their unruly behavior and appeal to her sense of guilt by attributing their failings to the impoverished conditions of their lives. In response Pfeiffer resolutely declares: There are no victims in this class! Pfeiffer's assertion encapsulates a current popular sentiment against victims and Victimhood-politicians and pundits tell usis a state of mind, and those who choose to view themselves as victims are self-indulgent, hopeless dependents. Over the last few years feminists have been the target of much criticism for allegedly inciting the rise of victimism. Critics blame the modern women's movement for encouraging the proliferation of individuals and groups who attempt to secure their status as victims in order to gain various material and psychological rewards (Dershowitz 1994; D'Souza 1991; Sykes 1992). These critics were joined recently by a group of self-described feminists, often referred to as third wave, power, neo, post, revisionist, dissident, or post-ideological feminists. While these labels designate a variety of critiques and individuals, the coterie of popular writers whom I examine share the conviction that women are no longer oppressed as a group, and that their progress as individuals is now impeded by the women's movement. It is feminism, they claim, that turns women into victims both in theory and in fact. In Katie Roiphe's words, feminists' conceptual framework-their lan

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