Central to Chouliaraki’s exploration is the distinction she draws between victimhood and vulnerability. She argues that victimhood is not a condition but a claim—that you’re a victim not when something bad happens to you, but when you say, “I am wronged!” Anyone, of course, can make this declaration, no matter the scale (or even reality) of the wrong they’ve suffered. For this reason, per Chouliaraki, victimhood should be a less important barometer for public decision making than vulnerability, which is a condition. Some forms of it are physical or natural, and cannot be changed through human intervention. As a transplant patient, Chouliaraki is forever more vulnerable to illness than she used to be. Other sorts of vulnerability are more mutable. A borrower with poor credit is vulnerable to payday lenders, but regulatory change could make that untrue (or could make payday loans affordable). Such an intervention, crucially, would protect not just present borrowers but future ones. Focusing on vulnerability rather than victimhood, she suggests, is a better way to prevent harm.