if you do not conform, if you are too much of a lone wolf or an individualist, you’re going to be shunned....

Tammy Bruce, in an interview with John Hawkins. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

That is so damned true.

The paradox, though, is that those who are shunned in this way are victims of the shunning, in much the same way that a scapegoat is a victim. And isn't being a victim supposed to be good?

Well, not exactly. In Berkeley, I fell into the trap of being a landlord in a town where tenants are automatically considered a class of victims who are victimized by the landlord class. My frustration over the fact that landlords were not allowed to be victims despite Berkeley's draconian rent control led me into much insane thinking, caused largely by my attempts to be logical. If you see logic as a way out of insanity, prepare for a long haul.

More from the interview:

With an identity that’s based in victimhood, if you find either that you’re not a victim or you find personal independence and power, it literally becomes a threat. (If) your identity (is) based in victimhood (and) that is removed, it literally strikes at the core of the identity of that person.

It literally becomes consciously and subconsciously, a fight for life and death, and oddly in a very macabre way, it is that being a victim is what keeps you alive in your own mind... It’s the ultimate world of the looking glass that getting out of victimhood will cause you to die and that is, I think, at the root, the psychological root of identity as victim. Many people have no concept of what life would be like not in that environment. That is their power, it is their passion, it is their sense of themselves. It’s a real pathology that is massaged and fomented by left wing leadership.

Homosexuality is traditionally seen as guaranteed victim status, but as Tammy points out, only some homosexuals are allowed to be victims:

if you’re a homosexual you’d better identify as gay, you’d better say it is an orientation, that it’s not a preference, that all of these singular lines should be adhered to so that you have a united front.

Well, I say bunk with that and how absurd that the community that says that it is the most different and the most unique demands such serious conformity on its own members. So I think it’s certainly time for some level of honesty in that discussion about the nature of it...

Insane as it may sound, classical liberals can similarly be seen the new victims -- of the left.

In today’s day and age, I am a conservative, in the sense of what that stands for. Today’s conservative is yesterday’s classical liberal and I’m determined to try to help make that label more popular, more broad, more accepted, and more understood and I hope I’m doing a good job.

What this means is that a true individual can never be a victim. Maybe a true individual really isn't a victim.

Might that mean that victimhood has to be chosen? No, that can't be, because the traditional definition of victimhood indicates a lack of control. (Crime victim, cancer victim, accident victim.)

To conclude the victim paradox, my favorite victim was a Berkeley landlord who used to conduct one man demonstrations in front of City Hall. He'd pace back and forth, martyr-style, bearing a gigantic cross which said "WHY CRUCIFY ME?" along with signs calling Berkeley's Rent Board the "Slave Board." Believe me, this really used to piss off left wing activists, and the fact that the latter were mostly white and the landlord was black did not go unnoticed in a city which tended to see race as a major factor in awarding victim status. I thought the guy was a great satirist, despite the fact that he was deadly serious. Another paradox, I guess....

It's all so unfair.