Thank you for all your suggestions. If I were able-bodied I would write about what I call “plantation wife syndrome,” the virulent retaliation of White people against White women (and men? idk) like myself who refuse to comply with the White Supremacist “infantilization of White women.”

I capitalize it to make it pop but also because it’s a proper noun—the name of a CULT. 😡

I would have added Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste to your student’s reading list—the audiobook though, to hear the emotion in Wilkerson’s voice.

When I used to teach (anthropology), I would tell people to think of a time they felt injustice done to themselves, to close their eyes and feel it in their body, and then imagine feeling that every day, over and over, 100 times worse. Then expand that feeling to everyone you know and love. Imagine being forced to march along the Trail of Tears or in chains across a continent you didn’t know, your loved ones dying and left behind. And now hone that grief and rage into a blade and strike up. That’s how to create visceral empathy.

Some White people look at me like I’m speaking jibberish; some react with existential rage. And all these people, fyi, are White Democrats. I don’t think I know any Republicans. Except that’s not entirely true—the Democratic Party got flooded with snobs like my family, who didn’t want to get cooties from the “white trash” that took over “their” party.

Maybe your student had kind parents, Tim Walz parents. Maybe her parents weren’t roaring on the front lines of the culture wars in a state like Florida 🙋‍♀️ or Texas. Not every White person carries the warped epigenetics and intergenerational trauma of people who dehumanize their own children so that those children can dehumanize others.

To me it feels like … a blank space, like parts of them have been excised. A lobotomy. Vacant eyes. Like I’m talking from the other side of a piece of glass, and they can’t hear or see me. I tried and failed—they don’t want to listen.

I’ve felt it since childhood—as the neurodivergent girl who couldn’t stay still while they tried to force me into the box of patriarchal conservative Christianity. ND kids are the most likely to be abused by parents. Girls who reject patriarchy are, too. I found it safer to fight for the social justice of others and to hope it would trickle down to me. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Those of us on whom the brainwashing didn’t work are left battered and broken from banging our bodies against broken glass, trying to break through, but like the dogs in that study on learned helplessness, we only get shocked for our efforts. “Let go or be dragged”—I got dragged.

And yes, I CRY—because it is still happening! I know it’s dangerous; it’s certainly embarrassing; even EMDR and a round of TMS can’t stop it. I’ve learned to just stay away from people. 😢

I haven’t listened to White Fragility—perhaps I should. But I FEEL the parallels between White Supremacy and domestic violence (I wrote a post). I simply cannot use a compassionate word like “fragile” to describe the entitled narcissistic rage of White people.

It was when I shared the Power & Control Wheel with my family during my divorce that they must have seen themselves in it. Something left them existentially triggered—subconscious allegiance to the caste system I think—and they took my ex’s side and smeared me as “crazy” to everyone we knew in common, even reaching out to my FB friends.

Victorian families locked non-compliant women like me in asylums all the time. Ironically while this was happening my son was reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” and learning about Elizabeth Packard in 10th grade English. 🤦‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️ If Mehmet Oz gives them the green light, they’ll try for real.

Domestic abusers abuse because they feel ENTITLED to the advantages it brings them. Ditto White Supremacists. I refuse to call them fragile. Intellectually I understand Black Americans’ need to frame White performative narcissistic rage as “fragility.” I admire it tbh.

But I think survival skills and strategic thinking require executive functioning that I lack. 😣 I am stubborn and spent half a century poking the bear, envisioning myself as Tank Man. The DNA of ancient Viking and Celt warriors, always vigilant and ready to ignore hunger and thirst to run into battle, might be too strong.

But if you tell me “Sara, put that book on your list once you finish that Michael Arcenaux one you’re currently listening to—I promise you’ll learn something,” I’ll do it.

But please be honest, bc if it enrages me instead, my neck muscles will spasm and squeeze the bone spurs the misogynist medical caste system refuses to help me with into my spine and leave me bed bound. I can’t risk that.

Thank you.