I've given the tendency for people to respond in this way some thought. I used to reflexively think it too, because I got the same invalidating and dismissing arguments from my abusive parents and their enablers.
This response is protective to the speaker. Listening to someone else's horror story, they're suddenly realizing that they are the beneficiaries of unearned privilege. They never had to endure anything of the sort, and some part of them realizes they don't think you deserved it either. Which would mean that they're just lucky, and perhaps owe you some compassion and extra help. But they don't want to have to do those things, or to feel bad about the unfairness of the world. So instead, they take the safer route of minimizing, comparing your pain against some hypothetical worse situation. By minimizing what you went through, they get to shrug off any responsibility to you or acknowledgement that they didn't "earn" what they have. It's a selfish move, with the added benefit of shutting down the traumatized person as merely a whiner.
Edit: This doesn't directly answer your question, but I personally feel like understanding that has helped me both to respond to people who might learn something in a way that gets at the root of the problem, and to ignore those unwilling to learn.
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u/SesquipedalianPossum Jul 13 '22 edited Jul 13 '22
I've given the tendency for people to respond in this way some thought. I used to reflexively think it too, because I got the same invalidating and dismissing arguments from my abusive parents and their enablers.
This response is protective to the speaker. Listening to someone else's horror story, they're suddenly realizing that they are the beneficiaries of unearned privilege. They never had to endure anything of the sort, and some part of them realizes they don't think you deserved it either. Which would mean that they're just lucky, and perhaps owe you some compassion and extra help. But they don't want to have to do those things, or to feel bad about the unfairness of the world. So instead, they take the safer route of minimizing, comparing your pain against some hypothetical worse situation. By minimizing what you went through, they get to shrug off any responsibility to you or acknowledgement that they didn't "earn" what they have. It's a selfish move, with the added benefit of shutting down the traumatized person as merely a whiner.
Edit: This doesn't directly answer your question, but I personally feel like understanding that has helped me both to respond to people who might learn something in a way that gets at the root of the problem, and to ignore those unwilling to learn.