Paul Wilson on May contain Traces of Therapy

[Paul Wilson]

I so hear you, Jay. It is so tiring.

It’s always the same recycled moral panic ‘threats to the vulnerable’ ie. women and children that periodically resurfaces all through human history. David Frankfurter’s book ‘Evil Incarnate’ is an insightful exploration of this human phenomenon. https://www.amazon.com.au/Evil-Incarnate-Demonic-Conspiracy-Satanic/dp/0691136297

The people who write this stuff often have an authoritarian personality structure and difference fundamentally scares and disgusts them. Their latent authoritarian underbelly surfaces when they feel psychosocially threatened in some way. This is political psychologist Karen Stenner’s model of authoritarianism. https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/11/01/authoritarianism/

It’s emotionally driven, not rationally driven, and their fear is not going to lessen any time soon since it’s a form of unconscious death anxiety stirred up by societal stressors and change, namely the COVID pandemic. I think part of the issue is that social media has exposed people like this to a whole lot of diversity and difference that they previously didn’t know existed and they don’t cope well with that knowledge.

That’s why I work on calling it out so the moral panic doesn’t spread to the reachable mainstream who don’t get the underlying historical and psychological context.

*hugs*

[Jay]

Thank you for the work you do. It's so important, and so many of us are just too tired to do it.

For those of us who know this diversity well, it's just another Tuesday, but those people who have never known this diversity react in ways that I find unfathomable. So thank you for fathoming this reaction, and writing against it. I appreciate it more than I can find words for.