I suspect that the denial comes from people not wanting to accept that people who they know (or who are like those they know), people they have (and likely will) interact with positively, can do evil. It's really close to admitting that we all can and all might. At some point in our lives, we probably will. That's really terrifying both because of not wanting to be bad and because of not wanting to be vulnerable to our communities turning on us.
I find that most people I know have a really strong investment in denying that small evils committed by normal people are real things. History shows that they are, and people are still people decades, centuries, millennia on, but it's much easier to accept comfort and advantages/privilege if, somehow and abruptly, those old time ways of doing things aren't what underlies now.
Admitting the possibility of small evils also opens the door for terrifying things like wondering which of your friends are really safe with your children. It's very unsettling to have to look at people and understand that you can trust them for X and Y but absolutely not for Z.
And the idea that small evils pile up to be vast horrors... Well, it goes so far beyond terrifying that vast swathes of history have to be not-real to people in much the same way that horror movies are not-real or even more-- in the way that death is not-real in a TV show like Murder She Wrote, cumulative without being fenced off as having started then and ended so long after. Having the definite start and end makes it more like a hurricane or an earthquake than like something that real people-- like me-- did.
I think that I saw this partly because I liked the principal and partly because I'm disabled. My disabilities are largely invisible; I can pass. But it means that I know what passing is from the inside.
I'm lucky to be cis, het, white, and married to someone supportive. I try to be open about my disabilities because I'm in a position for it to be relatively safe for me to be. I wouldn't insist on anyone else revealing invisible disabilities publicly, though, because not everybody is safe doing that.
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I find that most people I know have a really strong investment in denying that small evils committed by normal people are real things. History shows that they are, and people are still people decades, centuries, millennia on, but it's much easier to accept comfort and advantages/privilege if, somehow and abruptly, those old time ways of doing things aren't what underlies now.
Admitting the possibility of small evils also opens the door for terrifying things like wondering which of your friends are really safe with your children. It's very unsettling to have to look at people and understand that you can trust them for X and Y but absolutely not for Z.
And the idea that small evils pile up to be vast horrors... Well, it goes so far beyond terrifying that vast swathes of history have to be not-real to people in much the same way that horror movies are not-real or even more-- in the way that death is not-real in a TV show like Murder She Wrote, cumulative without being fenced off as having started then and ended so long after. Having the definite start and end makes it more like a hurricane or an earthquake than like something that real people-- like me-- did.
I think that I saw this partly because I liked the principal and partly because I'm disabled. My disabilities are largely invisible; I can pass. But it means that I know what passing is from the inside.
I'm lucky to be cis, het, white, and married to someone supportive. I try to be open about my disabilities because I'm in a position for it to be relatively safe for me to be. I wouldn't insist on anyone else revealing invisible disabilities publicly, though, because not everybody is safe doing that.