In November 2014, Sabrina Elderly, wrote an article for the Rolling stones magazine that has since became a case study for incompetent journalism. The article, “A rape on campus” describes (as its name would suggest) a horrific gang rape that occurred at the university of Virginia. The story was rather fantastical, but not so fantastical as to have no consequences for real life people. Thus, after the public began to doubt the veracity of the story, Rolling Stones magazine hired on the Columbia University School of Journalism to investigate whether Elderly made any journalistic errors.
In every aspect of Journalism, Elderly had made serious errors. Her mistakes were so grave that Rolling Stones retracted the story, and now they face a $25 million lawsuit from the accused rapists. One of Elderly’s stand-out failures was that she refused to fact check the accusers’ version of events. This has caused a lot of people to comment on what motivated Elderly to believe, write and publish a story without any objective information or evidence corroborating it.
I think Elderly’s gullibility is actually part of a much wider problem within society. And that is the desire to believe self-identified victims against all reason.
Self-identification of victim-hood
This stems from the fact that victim-hood rests solely on self-identification. There is no longer any objective measurement as to whether someone is a victim or not. If they feel victimised, then they are a victim. For if we considered what they went through as trivial, we would be disrespecting them. If we consider what they went through as something of their own making, we would be blaming the victim. And if we at all question the plausibility of their tale, we would be considered callous and disbelieving.
It is perfectly understandable how agonizing it must be to have gone through trauma and have people question aspects of your tale. But a person’s tale of suffering cannot automatically mean they are telling the truth.
You must experience victim-hood to talk about it
Milton Friedman (go to 3:45) had many statements regarding poverty and how to economically rise above your situation. In one of his lectures, an audience member asked him how he can have an opinion on poverty without having experienced it. He responded that if he needs treatment for cancer, he doesn’t need a doctor who has had cancer, he just needs a doctor. This illustrates another reason for the unwillingness of people to question self-declared victims. If they haven’t gone through it themselves, they have no right to say anything on the topic.
Essentially, only the victim has the right to talk about his suffering, nobody else has that right. And furthermore, that right is granted by virtue of his suffering. A classic case came recently in the form of Australia’s notorious 18C racial vilification law, which I have written about here. The complainant in this case has been out of work for a few years now due to stress, anxiety and fear. She has also requested a personal security detail, which has been declined. A colleague dared to question whether the complainant actually contributed to her current situation by breaking regulations. Her response to this, was that she felt “sick, furious and distraught”. In other words, how dare anyone question my own role in this situation. I am the victim.
For the average person reading this case, they would believe the complainant is massively over-reacting to the point of absurdity. But, as it is only her subjective perception of the situation that matters, it does not matter how ridiculous the situation objectively looks.