Feminization and Victimhood Culture
Some speculative sociology
Helen Andrews recently stirred the pot with this claim:1
Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently
I am going to wade into this one.
First, every reasonable person will acknowledge that when it comes to personality characteristics, average differences do not apply to every woman and every man. Think in terms of height. On average, men are taller than women. But I am a man who is shorter than the average woman. And there are many women who are taller than the average man.
Second, there is quite an argument to be had concerning nature vs. nurture. To what extent do average personality differences between men and women reflect evolutionary psychology vs. cultural socialization? Presumably, the latter is more malleable.
Third, Leonora Barclay characterizes Andrews as saying that men are rational and women are not. I did not read Andrews that way. If Andrews’ views were that crude, I would reject them.
For myself, I take the view that some average personality differences reflect nature. I base this on my reading of Warriors and Worriers, by Joyce Benenson. (Andrews also cites Benenson.) Her views in turn come from empirical observation of boys and girls, in a variety of cultures.
My own observation from working in organizations is that when a department or process is not working, men often gravitate toward a structural solution, such as a reorganization or an external audit or a better computer system. Women often gravitate toward a personal solution—identifying someone who seems to be the source of the problems.
I think that organizations with good management are able to address problems of both structure and personality. Organizations that are too heavily male (like the Fed when I was there) or too heavily female (like many HR departments today) will not have the balance that I believe makes for good management.
But even granted Benenson’s findings and my casual observations, the overall causal connection from feminization (meaning women playing more important roles in institutions) to Woke Progressivism is highly speculative. I prefer to make a narrower claim.
Victimhood Culture
I hold feminization responsible for the rise of what Jason Manning and Bradley Campbell call victimhood culture. In academia and other institutions, victimhood culture has replaced dignity culture.
Dignity culture, as the sociologists describe it, is distinguished from honor culture. I asked ChatGPT for some history of the sociological concepts of honor culture and dignity culture.2 The way I would put it is that in an honor culture, everyone had better respect me, or else. In a dignity culture, everyone is entitled to be treated with respect.
In an honor culture, there can be social relations without equality under the law. A powerful person can get away with a lot, and the enemy of a powerful person is going to be in trouble.
Donald Trump’s personality and behavior strike me as fitting the honor culture mode. Even though I might agree with him on some issues, I much prefer a dignity culture.
In a dignity culture, or a society of contract (in Henry Maine’s terminology), the powerful and the powerless are equal under the law. That ideal probably never obtains completely, but the attempt to live up to it has been a great source of our country’s moral and material strength.
In the 1960s, giving Civil Rights to blacks and opening the Ivy League to women seemed like necessary steps in order to live up to the ideal of a dignity culture. Unequal treatment was a violation of the principles of a society of contract, and getting rid of unequal treatment was appropriate.
But when gaps in average outcomes between blacks and whites persisted, this was not considered acceptable. It was blamed on systemic racism.3 This led to the doctrine of affirmative action. More corrosively, it led to the suppression of any explanation of the gaps in average outcomes other than the appeal to systemic racism.
And when women became the dominant influence on campus and elsewhere, they did not adhere to the dignity culture. They replaced it with a victimhood culture. In a victimhood culture, certain classes of individuals are entitled to special rights and privileges. This job opening is for a woman because there should be more women in these positions. In a victimhood culture, people who claim to speak for marginalized groups can exercise censorship. Freedom of speech is not a defense for comments that offend someone from a marginalized group. The mean girls get together in a digital mob to expel the person who offends them.
As I read Benenson, the boys on the playground are obsessed with competition under rules that they adopt. The girls are looking for ways to undermine an important rival and for adults to guard their safety. This does not necessarily guarantee that when they grow up men will reinforce a dignity culture and women will form a victimhood culture, but I think that speculating about such a connection is well founded.
substacks referenced above: @
1. Origins and Developers
Bradley Campbell (California State University, Los Angeles) and Jason Manning (West Virginia University) are the main theorists.
Their framework builds on earlier anthropological and sociological analyses:
Julian Pitt-Rivers and J.G. Peristiany on honor and shame cultures (1950s–60s).
Peter Berger and Philip Rieff on dignity and moral order.
Sociologist Donald Black’s theory of moral conflict and social control, which heavily influenced Campbell and Manning’s analytical approach.
2. The Three Moral Cultures
Campbell and Manning identify three broad moral cultures that correspond to different social norms and mechanisms for handling conflict and moral status:
(a) Honor Culture
Where it appears: Small-scale, traditional, often pastoral or clan-based societies.
Core idea: A person’s worth (honor) depends on reputation and public recognition of courage, strength, and loyalty.
Moral logic: Insults are serious moral offenses that must be avenged personally, often through violence or dueling.
Social control: Decentralized—people defend their own honor; law and authority are weak or distrusted.
Example: The American South in earlier centuries, Mediterranean societies, or Bedouin tribes.
(b) Dignity Culture
Where it appears: Modern, urban, market-based societies with strong legal institutions.
Core idea: Every person possesses inherent worth (dignity) that cannot easily be taken away by insult or reputation.
Moral logic: People are expected to ignore minor slights and appeal to law or authority for serious offenses.
Social control: Centralized—formal institutions (courts, police) replace personal vengeance.
Example: Anglo-American liberal societies from the 19th to late 20th centuries.
(c) Victimhood Culture
Campbell and Manning’s innovation is to describe a new, emerging form:
Core idea: Moral status comes from being recognized as a victim of oppression or mistreatment.
Moral logic: People gain prestige by publicizing grievances and calling on third parties (institutions, media, or social networks) to intervene.
Social control: Through public complaint, social media shaming, and institutional enforcement rather than personal retaliation.
Example: Campus activism, online moral outrage, or “call-out” culture.
3. Main Themes
Changing sources of moral status:
Honor → status from reputation for strength.
Dignity → status from inherent worth and moral restraint.
Victimhood → status from suffering and moral vulnerability.
Conflict resolution:
Honor: Retaliate.
Dignity: Ignore or seek legal redress.
Victimhood: Appeal to third-party intervention and moral sympathy.
There is such a thing as systemic racism. I grew up in suburban St. Louis, and the entire political configuration of St. Louis and its suburbs as designed to enable whites to live separately from blacks.
> I did not read Andrews that way.
I find myself having this reaction to a lot of what gets written on this topic. Most are not trying very hard to understand her argument.
Blaming women for the rise of victimhood culture seems like a stretch historically speaking. That culture was already well established by the blacks and Jews long before women arrived on the scene. The women just dusted off the victimhood playbook and applied it to themselves, perhaps more successfully than others.
To me, most of victimhood culture appears to take some genuine societal shortcomings and then extrapolates them long past the point of believability where every slight, however inconsequential, turns into a condemnation of the culture into perpetuity. And then, this gets amplified, by the victimhood Olympics where each supposedly aggrieved group vies for attention and top billing in the hierarchy of victims.