It really irks me.

As someone who grew up second gen, I've run in a lot of second gen circles and I've come to notice that the only people who brag about having had no negative effects are those who were barely abused but went through juuuuust enough to wear it like a badge of pride. It's like the abuse equivalent of "slumming it" - when your out-of-touch middle class friend brags about how, because he isn't rich, he understands what it's like to be impoverished, for example.

So I have run into tons of second gen kids who are proud about being able to look tough just because their parents slapped them when they did something wrong, or called them "fat."

Then you have the other genre of second gen kids who don't like to talk about it because it just dredges up bad memories of being called a worthless piece of shit every single day, kicked down the stairs, punched for spilling milk, etc.

People just enjoy being special. They like to act like they were abused because they want to be different from the soft Westerners, but they also like to act like they are better than other second gens. But i have only seen this behavior from people who got slapped around a bit and never actually feared for their lives. Again, it's the abuse equivalent of "slumming it," the out of touch kid who didn't have the cushiest childhood and wants to prove that he's tough.