the suffering olympics

The pointless endeavor of comparing different tragedies or histories of oppression to one another by attempting to quantify the suffering and/or injustice of each, so as to determine which tragedy was more tragic, or which oppressed peoples were more unjustly oppressed.

Jamie: Did you heard about the bombing in Boston?
Frank: The Arab world suffers violence like this every day as a result of US foreign policy.
Jamie: ...let's not play the Suffering Olympics.

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Alan: The fight for LGBT rights is this generation's great civil rights movement.
Rob: Their is no comparison between the struggles African-Americans faced and the struggle of the LGBT community.
Allison: Neither compare to the struggle women have faced.
Alan: Do we really need to play the Suffering Olympics?

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