Luxury Beliefs And The Victim Mentality

The writer Rob Henderson coined the term ‘luxury belief’ in recent years. He was referring to views that a person can promote to acquire status within their own in-group, which are in practice detrimental to less fortunate groups. His canonical example of a ‘luxury belief’ was advocacy for defunding the police. This was a view that was often promoted by more affluent people with left wing politics, who were unlikely to be directly impacted themselves by a reduction in the capacity of the police. The outcome sought by the privileged woke in expressing such views, was to burnish their reputation within their own in-group as having a social conscience about racist police. At the same time, the practical effect of such policies would be specific harms caused to less privileged groups who would suffer the direct results of under-policing.

Many people have argued that transgender self-identification is another example of a ‘luxury belief’. Those with far-left political views can seek reputational advantage within their own woke in-group, by arguing that anyone who merely identifies themselves as a woman must immediately be considered to be a woman. However, less fortunate women often suffer the consequences of these ideas. For example, women who are incarcerated are entitled to expect that they will be housed within female-only prisons. Against that, policies allowing for transgender self-identification facilitate male sex offenders in being locked up with women, where they can carry out further assaults. That is, those promoting transgender self-identification have the luxury of doing so merely to benefit their own reputation within a far-left clique, while others suffer the practical consequences of their positions.

Another harmful effect of transgender self-identification relates to female athletes who are confronted with male sporting competitors. In almost all circumstances, when women are asked to compete physically against men it is unsafe or unfair or both. However, in the video clip below those expressing this ‘luxury belief’ about men in “women’s spaces and women’s sports”, are overtly and proudly callous in relation to these harms.

“Nobody cares! That doesn’t matter!”.

Quote from short video clip below

Their only concern is polishing their own woke credentials, and they’re perfectly happy to throw other women under the bus to achieve this end.

It is difficult to imagine a more unambiguous example of a ‘luxury belief’ than such advocacy for transgender self-identification, which facilitates men in entering both “women’s spaces and women’s sports”. The intended effect when promoting these views is to burnish a reputation for supporting transgender ideology among a woke in-group. The actual effect of the policies though, is to place less fortunate women in danger. This is why I described the views expressed in this video clip as ‘luxury beliefs’ within the Twitter exchange illustrated below.

I have no idea who the person behind the ‘Relief Belief’ account is, but one of those promoting the ‘luxury beliefs’ in the video clip above took exception to what that account had tweeted here. Since I’m not acquainted with the person who uses that account, my view was that they could explain what they meant by their own tweets themselves, such that I was neither supporting nor condemning the phrasing that they used.

For completeness, here is the statement referred to in my tweet above, which insists that the unnecessary sterilisation of children is “not the end of the world”. This is a further example of the same people callously dismissing the real harms that others will suffer from their ‘luxury beliefs’.

Another related term that is relevant to the same far-left woke mindset, is the ‘oppression olympics’. Once this group decided that possessing ‘lived experience’ on any given topic would give someone the authority to pronounce truth on that subject, they created a competition whereby they each sought to achieve the greatest victimhood. This inevitably created behaviour such as that famously associated with Jussie Smollett and Amber Heard, and many others who faked victimhood by inventing false stories. Their desire to be the victim of some transgression, which they perceived would give them a moral and epistemological high ground, was sufficient motivation for them to manufacture their own fake victimisation that never actually occurred.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the response to highlighting the ‘luxury beliefs’ described in the video clip above, was for the victim mindset to fabricate false stories so absurd that they would embarrass even Smollett and Heard. This began with the utterly ludicrous inference that my “#LuxuryBeliefs” tweet demonstrated that I wanted the people in the video clip above to be raped. The only evidence for my supposed wishes in this regard, was my “#LuxuryBeliefs” tweet itself. Of course, it is entirely absurd to conclude from this tweet that I wanted anyone to be raped.

The idea that I wanted anyone to be raped is a scurrilous lie, invented out of whole cloth without any basis whatsoever. However, those who made the video clip above went on to hysterically manufacture several even more preposterous lies. This included the idea that I was fantasising about being the person who would actually commit the imagined sexual assaults; that I was making a threat to commit this particular concocted crime; and that I was actively seeking to place specific people in a situation where those individuals would suffer this pretend outcome. The only basis for any of this was my “#LuxuryBeliefs” tweet, from which my antagonists concluded that they were the actual victims of all the storybook crimes listed above. Needless to say, this is all pure fiction that belongs in the same category as using make up to create fake bruises.

Of course, none of this is remotely true and there is absolutely no evidence of anything that might suggest any of this vile nonsense. It is entirely the creation of hysterical fabulists. What is interesting about this screeching though, is how the broader culture seems to have lost patience with it. The Smollett story was never remotely credible, but the initial response to it was certainly credulous. However, it appears unlikely that the same story would elicit such an uncritical response today. Perhaps another example of this shift can be seen in how the initially fawning response to the “Emila Pérez” movie as a ‘trans parable’, recently changed to widespread lampooning.

Similarly, transparently false allegations of the sort illustrated above can no longer be given credibility with a formerly popular slogan like ‘believe all women’. Whatever the reasons were for so many people losing their minds in this way during The Great Awokening, the pendulum appears to be swinging back towards the centre now. The luxury beliefs and victim mentality of woke lunatics can no longer summon an angry mob, but can now only summon a collective audible sigh with an ostentatious eye-roll.

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