Playing the Victim
How the Powerful Deny and Attack Survivors of Violence, from Domestic Abuse to Genocide
Will be published approx. on 20. October 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
200 pages
979-8-88984-402-0 (ISBN)
Description
Journalist Kylie Cheung delivers an urgent, incisive look at how abusers—from empires to intimate partners—use the same gaslighting playbook to oppress victims, silence their voice, and stay in power
Who has the right to their own body? Who has the right to self-defense? Who gets to walk away?
From the genocide in Gaza to the state-sanctioned control of women’s bodies, Kylie Cheung confronts the most urgent moral and political crises of our time through an incisive, illuminating lens: DARVO—Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
While DARVO originated in the psychology of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence, Cheung shows how it’s deployed en masse, at every level—and how it can become the blueprint for empire itself.
From the spectacle of Depp v. Heard to horrors perpetrated by Israeli prison guards, Cheung exposes how abusers both individual and institutional flip the script and perform victimhood to justify domination. With unflinching clarity, Playing the Victim traces how these tactics shape everything from media propaganda and imperial warfare to anti-feminist backlash, transphobic legislation, and racialized state violence. Each chapter peels back another layer of the mirror-world machine that distorts oppressors into victims and twists resistance into crime.
Essential for anyone seeking to understand how power works in the 21st century—and at whose cost—this book is piercing, clear-eyed, and rigorously researched. Unpacking how domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, colonial violence, and capitalist cruelty function as interlocking systems of control, Cheung helps readers understand how power hides behind ersatz victimhood—and how this plays us all.
Who has the right to their own body? Who has the right to self-defense? Who gets to walk away?
From the genocide in Gaza to the state-sanctioned control of women’s bodies, Kylie Cheung confronts the most urgent moral and political crises of our time through an incisive, illuminating lens: DARVO—Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
While DARVO originated in the psychology of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence, Cheung shows how it’s deployed en masse, at every level—and how it can become the blueprint for empire itself.
From the spectacle of Depp v. Heard to horrors perpetrated by Israeli prison guards, Cheung exposes how abusers both individual and institutional flip the script and perform victimhood to justify domination. With unflinching clarity, Playing the Victim traces how these tactics shape everything from media propaganda and imperial warfare to anti-feminist backlash, transphobic legislation, and racialized state violence. Each chapter peels back another layer of the mirror-world machine that distorts oppressors into victims and twists resistance into crime.
Essential for anyone seeking to understand how power works in the 21st century—and at whose cost—this book is piercing, clear-eyed, and rigorously researched. Unpacking how domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, colonial violence, and capitalist cruelty function as interlocking systems of control, Cheung helps readers understand how power hides behind ersatz victimhood—and how this plays us all.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkeley, CA
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Weight
367 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-88984-402-0 (9798889844020)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Kylie Cheung is a journalist who reports on gender and power at the intersections of politics, culture, and state violence. She is the staff reporter on reproductive rights, health, and justice for Abortion, Every Day, and previously worked on staff at Jezebel and Salon. She is the author of four books on feminist politics, including Coercion: Surviving and Resisting Abortion Bans and Survivor Injustice: State-Sanctioned Abuse, Domestic Violence, and the Fight for Bodily Autonomy. Her reporting and commentary have appeared in outlets such as Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, The Guardian, and others. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Cheung writes from Brooklyn, bringing an Asian American, feminist perspective to her work on reproductive justice and state power.