There is a genre in ascendancy at the moment that I’ve labelled “romantic victimhood”. Content that falls within this category – ranging from literary screeds to TikTok confessionals – only ever characterises the players in two roles: villain or victim.
The villain is always a man. It is usually a man in a relationship with a woman, although sometimes it is a man dating a man. Nevertheless: man = villain. The victim is his romantic interest. They recount his behaviour, with the benefit of hindsight, and detail upsetting incidents, usually ones where they felt slighted in some way. These are typically imparted in the register now employed to describe a harm, which combines sombre, stark delivery with therapeutic jargon. The harm is not anything as easily categorisable as outright abuse, or sexual assault. It is a hurt, perhaps one of many, that have added up to create an ultimately “bad relationship”.
