The Super Victim in the Hierarchy of Victims

Commentary by Ms. Theary C. Seng

It has been said often that one should graduate from "victim" to "survivor", that it is derogatory to call someone a victim because it is dis-empowering.  Several thoughts come to mind whenever I hear this:

1.  To be a victim is dis-empowering only when she allows herself to be victimized, to wallow in the state of victimhood, to become a professional victim for pity or economic livelihood.

2.  There is a clear distinction between "victim" and "survivor", each with its own value.  I retain both terms for myself, using them at the relevant, convenient time and place.  For example, I am a "victim" at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal when I became the first civil party in international law (that is, before I renounced the KRT.)  Here, it is stronger and relevant because a "victim" carries legal rights, political weight.  Not so, a survivor.

3.  I have these thoughts before, but I am even more deeply disturbed recently by the actions of Mr. Chum Mey, the victim and survivor of Tuol Sleng.  It is deeply sorrowful that he has chosen to play out the "Super Victim" in the dangerous game of the Hierarchy of Victims.  Moreover, it is a great peril to personal healing and national reconciliation when he allows himself to be used by politics.

- Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, 4 June 2013

First published in July 2008 in The Phnom Penh Post as part of the Voice of Justice columns. The mentality of victimization is never a mentality of strength, never a mentality of healing. To the contrary, victimization mentality perpetuates the vicious cycle of helplessness and inferiority within the individual and within society. A fundamental first step rests with the Government to create enabling environment of opportunities (of education, of employment, of creative expression, etc.) to combat this destructive mentality of victimhood. Of course, at the end of the day, the final responsibility rests with each of us Cambodians. 

-  Theary C. Seng, Feb. 2010.

(Photo: Roland Neveu, Dec. 2009)

The Post-Modern Victim

Society's general permission to act darkly

We live in a society and under a leadership that gives liberal, general permission for individuals - both Khmers and foreigners - to engage and act from our darker human side, the part of our psyche where the seven deadly vices - pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth - agitate and fester, reigning supreme. Whereas a healthy society celebrates personal achievements and virtues, our current Khmer society encourages individual and state actors - again, both us Khmers and foreigners alike - to trample upon a Khmer person's rights and successes, impede individual excellence, and pride functioning at the lowest common denominator. We have implicitly, as a society, foregone our rights and dignity - unconsciously and gradually.

This social construct affronts and is devastating to personal growth, societal development and national integrity and honor. Why? Because Khmer individuals form the collective society (i.e., nation), and a nation that is comprised of mediocre individuals cannot be said to be a nation of greatness, integrity and valor.

Social conditioning

We, Khmers, are socially conditioned, through gradual cultural transmutation passed on through the decades - most emphatically during the Khmer Rouge years - to think of ourselves as less than others; we possess a collective low self-esteem. We have traded in our high culture for the low culture of meanness, banality, pettiness, materialism, counterfeits and violence, as manifested in the pervasive human rights abuses from trafficking to land-grabbing to impunity to constant fear.

We are no longer in control of our individual and collective lives; we are no longer the owner of our destiny; we are not the opinion-makers of our society. Rather, in this sea of lightning-paced, swirling changes, we are insecure, lost and drowning by a globalized, porous world of 2008, while our mentality is still one of feudalism or more generously, the bipolar Cold War world.

We, Khmers, are not the only ones being socially conditioned. Foreigners - the guests of our country - are also being conditioned, being further ingrained (oftentimes unconsciously, thus the nature of social conditioning) to think of themselves as superior. But remember, we have given them general, liberal permission - "Yes, you can grope our women in public and call them all manner of names, for we do the same" - for we have accepted our inferior status. The problem is not them; it is us.

Victimhood

One of the more devastating social patterns of this sociological phenomenon, which is homogenizing us Khmers into a distinctive mold, is our sense of victimization and victimhood.
I find Karpman Drama Triangle useful in helping to frame and contextualize the state of victimhood. Steven Karpman gives the following definitions:

A "Victim" is generally someone who believes in increasing personal vulnerability, has difficulty finding meaning and comprehension in the world, feels powerless, and views him/herself in a negative light. Therefore, a Victim looks for a rescuer to take care of them.

(As an aside, a legal victim, more narrowly, has been harmed directly by an individual or perpetrator - has suffered a "legal injury" that is physical/material and/or psychological - not just by society in general.)

A 'Rescuer' is someone who often does not own their own vulnerability and seeks instead to 'rescue' those whom they see as 'vulnerable' and in the process may feel "'hard done' or resentful, used or unappreciated in some way."

The "Persecutor" is unaware of his/her power and uses the power negatively, often destructively.

The Karpman Drama Triangle works at both the social level of observable behavior and at the internal dynamic level of a person's feelings and perceptions.

Related, I find transactional analysis - in understanding the ego states of an individual alone, in relationships, in social constructs and places like Cambodia - of immense interest.

Taking all the above ideas together - social conditioning, Drama Triangle, transactional analysis - and binding the individuals addressed by these ideas into a larger grouping of society or nation (i.e., Cambodia), we observe the current dark social pattern of Khmer collective vulnerability and powerlessness - the 'beggar's mentality' - in constant need of rescue.

Here, I am not talking about legal victim or the fact of having suffered; what I am concerned about is the mentality of victimhood - a state of being - which is oppressive, regressive, destructive.

Breaking the mold

We need to break this mold of intangible expectations and pressures - which are mostly negative, us as victims (adopted by us and foreigners) - for us Khmers to look and act a certain way. In this social construct, a Khmer cannot be audacious or tenacious or liberating. A Khmer should not be seen enjoying him/herself at the Elephant Bar; a Khmer should not be dressing too smart or sassy. To be so, to do so, is to go against the grain of the established, dark norms of inferiority, and to arouse the ire of our unreflecting, fellow Khmers and to challenge the unprocessed superiority of the foreign guests.

If we are to drown in our victimhood, we cannot glory in our successes as a victim but then not feel the smart when we are victimized. We need to learn to temper both our wins and losses with sobriety; both, when taken to an extreme high or an extreme low, are fabricated fictions. We need to be free; freedom requires that we erase from our mind victimhood mentality.
 

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Theary C. SENG, a member of the New York Bar Association, former director of Center for Social Development (March 2006—July 2009),  founding president of CIVICUS: Center for Cambodian Civic Education (of which the Center for Justice and Reconciliation is a major component), founding president of the 1st-ECCC-recognized, 1st-MOI-registered Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia, the 1st civil party in international law, chairperson on the Board of ANSA-EAP (a regional foundation based in Manila), a Trustee of the Baord of the Human Rights Resource Center for ASEAN (a regional foundation based in Jakarta), who is currently editing and punctuating the Khmer Bible, a labor of love, to illustrate the larger issue of the Khmer language in crisis.

For additional information, please visit Theary's website at thearyseng.com.