Playing the Victim

“Playing the Victim is a bold intervention into discussions of violence and victimhood, asking provocative questions about power, how it’s wielded, and how it maintains itself. As cable news panels and establishment magazines excuse or perpetuate systems that have led to the current moment, Kylie Cheung presents a daring challenge.”
—PREM THAKKER, journalist, Zeteo

“Playing the Victim sets the record straight on gender-based violence in the Palestinian genocide. In the process, Cheung writes a blueprint for building solidarity between everyone whose life has been made materially worse by an abuse of power—whether that abuse of power was a sexual assault or a state-sanctioned genocide. Cheung teaches readers how to recognize a power disparity, make sense of the violence taking place, and plant their feet firmly on the right side.”
— DR. NICOLE BEDERA, sociologist and author of On the Wrong Side

“One of the most incisive, unapologetic writers of her generation, Kylie Cheung writes what abusers don’t want named. She has never been more urgent than in Playing the Victim, tracing the abuser’s script across domestic and colonial violence. Not a page went unmarked—this is a book I will return to for years to come.”
— SAMAA KHULLAR, Palestinian–Indian investigative journalist

“Kylie Cheung fearlessly draws parallels between rhetoric that villainizes victims of domestic violence and discourse that labels victims of genocide as the aggressors. She is unflinching in her dissection of power, violence, and gender, whether the perpetrator is an abusive partner or a militarized state. Playing the Victim is an essential understanding of how victim-blaming enables all forms of injustice, and Cheung has proven to be an indispensable voice.”
—KAT TENBARGE, founder of Spitfire News

“A searing, incisive examination of how the state wields the same playbook of domestic abusers to manufacture consent to the unthinkable. Kylie Cheung is a proven and unflinching feminist thought leader.”
— TAYLOR LORENZ, founder of User Mag and author of Extremely Online

“Kylie Cheung’s work has long exposed the connections between modern empire, bodily autonomy, and rape culture. Playing the Victim’s necessary application of DARVO to today’s crises is a continuation of that labor. It could not come at a more urgent moment.”
—LEX MCMENAMIN, The Guardian

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, and The Guardian.

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.

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