Episode 40 | Is Whinnie the Pooh A WS Cult? - Hey White Women

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
have I told you my Winnie the Pooh is a cult thing yet?

(00:05):
my gosh, so we're doing it.
Okay, so like Tigger is the cult leader, right?
He makes up his own name.
He tells you he's the only one.
He's bouncing around, like creating havoc and then like.
Rabbit is the cult uncle who's actually running around behind him like trying to putstructure in things and clean up the cult leader's messes and like make what he makes make

(00:26):
sense.
Kanga is the cult auntie so she's only like worthwhile for her womb and her labor.
um Poo and Piglet are both just two types of cult joiners.
Owl's the resistance.
Eeyore, he's the grumpy one, right?
Eeyore.
is the second generation cult baby that is always in trouble because he won't keep hisdepression out of being obvious.

(00:53):
And then Rue's the cult baby who grows up and writes the book.
But all of that was about getting to Eeyore where it's like, especially as children raisedin these controlling systems, we are expected to be happy all the time.

(01:13):
I have, I put off going to the eye doctor for three years as my LASIK has been wearing offand I think I've known, but I was just like putting it off.
So I finally went, I think I got the first good prescription of my life, which is wherethey realized that my two eyes are different prescriptions.
It's like binocular vision.
But it also reminded me that one of my favorite ways of explaining privilege to people istalking about eyesight.

(01:40):
Like if you've never had to pay to use your eyes.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
it hasn't been politicized the way skin color has, people just get it.
You know, like my husband and my child, like literally when I got a prescription again, Iwas like, it's like when you get LASIK, you go through not needing glasses and like how

(02:03):
lovely it is and how easy everything it is.
And it was like, I had to go through that in reverse and be like, yep, I need a tool toaccess my vision now.
and it triggered all the times as a child, the glasses had been taken away from me.
But then also just like the privilege of like, you know, when I was dropped off in the US,I still needed glasses, but I couldn't afford them.

(02:25):
So I just didn't have them.
um And other people talking about how it was really like used as an abusive thing.
But then even just like, you know, cause I said I would always break my glasses.
And then people were like,
I never broke a pair of glasses because they could only be set down in exactly one spot.
Because there are people that don't even have the privilege of being able to find theirglasses without their glasses.

(02:52):
Right.
And it's just taken it.
And I remember having that moment because to be honest, these are blue light.
I don't need glasses.
Right.
However, both of my parents wore glasses.
Right.
And I'm not saying my parents are black, but so I wanted to wear glasses all the time.
Like I wanted to be prescribed glasses.

(03:12):
And, but, know, at the time I was dating someone who wore glasses, very like
heavy prescription, thought they were cute.
I like put them on and there was just like this one day a couple of years ago where I waslike, whoa, you need these.
Like there was just some moment of like when I was learning about whiteness and privilegeand stuff where I was like, ah, this is whoa.

(03:40):
And they're so expensive.
And you know, I was just able to be like, that was a privilege of mine to even
To say that is just understanding and being able to accept those moments and go like,whoa.
That is.
it's just, and that it's just something you were born with, right?
Something you were born with that I, that you were not born with that I was born with thatmeans that like I had a disadvantage in this area.

(04:05):
And then just like privilege too, it has levels, right?
Because being born, having to pay to access your eyesight is very different based on thedifferent amounts of money, the people you are born to have, right?
So then there's just like,
yeah.
Well, no, but even so it gets even deeper than that.

(04:27):
Right.
So because being with my ex, like so he had this story as well.
Like it opened up a lot for me in terms of my blackness.
So he comes up lot.
um But his you know, he would tell me a story of someone in his family who didn't know heneeded glasses till he was 40 just because he happened to put on someone's glasses.

(04:48):
Right.
He didn't go to a doctor.
Like that just wasn't a part of it.
It was just kind of like, Oh, this is what I'm raising that.
Right.
So there's that.
But then there's this other side is that my ex was very tall and black and his glasseswere like round and kind of made him look less threatening and like more academic.

(05:14):
Right.
They were apart.
you know, when you'd make those decisions, that's also part of it.
So a white person with glasses and a black person with glasses are just experiencingsomething different.
Right.
And I don't have to have that, you know, it's just like, I can extrapolate and also I'musing my perspective as it, instead of avoiding it and being like, Oh, I didn't know.

(05:36):
I'm sorry.
Like, I don't know what white people are doing about that.
Like I didn't have a full understanding and I still don't cause I don't wear glasses.
Um, but this is more just like also, so it doesn't, I can't see it.
And I feel like maybe less strain on them.
I don't know.
I'm just trying anything because my eye has been hurting.
I should go to an eye doctor.
It's red and like, it's been a couple of days, you know, but I just doing anything, but,that's on me.

(06:02):
levels where you were saying, so like I, when I got the glasses this time, right?
Like my audience immediately was like, oh yeah, you're not squinting at the comments.
You're not like, it's very obvious.
And Rebecca, the way I had to grieve for like 12 year old me that would get punished sooften for scowling at the word of God and like having like literally,

(06:27):
struggling to see being punished for like my demeanor not being appropriate, right?
And like, yes, yes, I would get in so, people, I mean, people would literally walk by andthey'd be like, what are you reading that you're so angry at?
And so if like the wrong adult saw me like reading our literature and being in a bad moodabout it,

(06:55):
I could get extremely punished with like additional hard labor, sometimes physical stuff,sometimes just getting yelled at, but still, you know, and it's kind of, it's like, it was
like such, so much attitude policing and it was literally because I couldn't see.
Like don't get me wrong, I was reading their stuff thinking it was crazy, but.

(07:15):
It might not, okay, here's the thing that might've been an autism and not a vision thing.
What I don't think there's sometimes when I'm reading, you know, resting bitch face typeof thing.
You know, I remember when I was, I used to, I was a captain of my flag twirling team.
Right.
And I found out at the end, I'm the, was one of the mean ones.
Now I'm realizing a lot about this.

(07:37):
Right.
And like, but this was even
it was mostly black people.
So this wasn't even that I think this was an autism thing is that when I watch like Ifound myself like head forward eyes like just the way I was focusing to me didn't feel
like whatever and people would catch me just like you look people thought I was
no, I have wondered if resting bitch faces all neurodivergent people for sure, you know,like.

(08:03):
we're not smiling.
It's not a, that doesn't, I've never heard that until white people, gotta say.
And then, you know, the acronym RBF, like that's all white people stuff.
That's as far as, I got, she's stuck up.
Maybe that's the black version.
and the appearance policing, which is always about behavior control, right?
And
have I told you my Winnie the Pooh is a cult thing yet?

(08:25):
my gosh, so we're doing it.
Okay, so like Tigger is the cult leader, right?
He makes up his own name.
He tells you he's the only one.
He's bouncing around, like creating havoc and then like.
Rabbit is the cult uncle who's actually running around behind him like trying to putstructure in things and clean up the cult leader's messes and like make what he makes make

(08:47):
sense.
Kanga is the cult auntie so she's only like worthwhile for her womb and her labor.
um Poo and Piglet are both just two types of cult joiners.
Owl's the resistance.
Eeyore, he's the grumpy one, right?
Eeyore.
is the second generation cult baby that is always in trouble because he won't keep hisdepression out of being obvious.

(09:13):
And then Rue's the cult baby who grows up and writes the book.
But all of that was about getting to Eeyore where it's like, especially as children raisedin these controlling systems, we are expected to be happy all the time.
To be like.
never making your internal negative feelings like anyone else's

(09:37):
Mm-hmm.
Interesting.
Interesting.
in there.
fact.
I- we stopped- sorry, we stopped watching Winnie the Pooh.
Or at least one particular, like, movie, because my son loved it.
Because I straight down- because I didn't expect it- Tigger's dancing around doing- doinghis thing, and then he stops and he says, wait, just a cotton picking second.

(10:04):
And I'm like, I...
don't like that.
And didn't expect that.
And I'm like, Jonah, I don't think I watch Winnie the Pooh anymore.
Because now I don't know what's going to come up.
And I don't really want to deal with him with Gideon saying stuff like that at his mostlyblack school.

(10:27):
Right.
don't think you have to decide on anything based on that, you know?
I don't think it's...
All your old stuff is bad.
Yeah.
Dumbo.
Terrible.
My mom loves Dumbo.
But like...
You just gotta know those crows?

(10:47):
Right?
What the heck is that?
I wouldn't start someone on these things now, is what I would say.
Like there's so much stuff that isn't this.
We don't need a new Snow White.
Why can't we tell a better story?
There are so many better stories out there than whatever these are.
And we're just like, let's do them again.
That's whiteness.
like risk averse, do something we've seen before and never do anything different becausethat's, you know, happily ever, whatever.

(11:16):
I don't care.
Like, you know, anything you got is racist.
Oh, did white men produce it?
There's going to be stuff in there.
I'm reading books now that are from very well-meaning white people now with all theirawareness.
And I still read it and go, ah, because of how much I'm understanding.
So like, No.

(11:40):
And no, no.
Right.
But I'm going to, I didn't send you that.
I'm going to send it.
I just, I have notes on the thing, but.
It's about acknowledging it.
It's like anyone who doesn't say I am a white woman writing right now is doing harm.
Honestly, cause if she's going to talk about, cause the second she says this is whatmotherhood is like for women, that, that, that, that like you, you lost me literally.

(12:06):
Like you threw me out actually.
You didn't lose.
Well, I'd be trying.
Right.
So, um, so it's always about, I think, leading with your limitations.
And less so labels, but leading with your limitations and going, okay, what's, what arethe limitations here?
I know this can be a white people book.
I would say your book is probably a white people book.
Mostly I black people can and do, and will enjoy it.

(12:30):
Just like my work is for white people, but, but you know what I'm saying?
If it's really good, then it's really good no matter what.
And we can identify with anybody because we've had to, you know, representation andwhatnot.
So.
I think it's having the nuanced lens because you don't want to say anything that hurtsblack people's feelings is you can't like you.

(12:54):
It's just too much.
That's too much.
And it's like a negative association.
That's negative reinforcement.
I don't know.
Like we can have conversations about why we don't say this because one, what even is that?
They probably they don't.
You're giving it so much more emotional weight than.
anybody else.
It's like, you see what they say, cotton picking.

(13:14):
It's like, Ooh, but no one would say that now.
But if you watch an old movie, they go say, so I don't know.
It's just like all your media is terrible.
Uh, sorry.
You know, like I'm struggling with it right now, unless I look at it from a, this is awhite people thing lens.
that was part of the realization I would say that got me here.
And it was literally my mom growing up in a cult that came out of the 60s, right?

(13:40):
And all of the cults, all of the white people cults out of the 60s were aboutdesegregation.
They were about, literally about keeping us away from you, right?
So as an expression that my mom who was not raised in the US would say when you wouldlike,
pick on food, she would literally slap your hand and say, get your cotton picking fingersoff of that.

(14:03):
And so I was a grown, I mean, I was, I think it was in the army, right?
So I was like 22, 23 years old.
And I went to say that to someone.
And like, as it was coming out of my mouth, I was like, ah, and the thing was, yeah, likeit wasn't, I think to dwell on that sentence, it was just to realize like, that runs so

(14:24):
deep.
Mm-hmm.
like even to the point where like my mom and I both grew up in non-white people countries.
We did not grow up in America.
We grew up with displaced American racism outside of the US and it still made it throughmultiple generations.
this.
Like, I, so I hear it and this is how pervasive it is and how much you have to accept itand not like make decisions on it.

(14:51):
Right.
Uh, backlash.
What's that?
You know, when, and I didn't see until I wrote it for something and I'm thinking there'sliterally no other use for this word, right?
Backlash.
What happens when you get in trouble?
When you say something you shouldn't, you get backlash.
Only some of us get that though, you know, or like what we talk about.

(15:12):
And that's why use it.
White Lash was the response or something.
don't know, but like, I hear it differently now.
even the term earn your stripes, I've always felt has had like, that can have twodifferent meanings, right?
Like it comes from the military and you get stripes for going to combat.
So it's basically like you've earned your respect, you've earned your, you know, on thejob experience.

(15:36):
But I always just thought through like an American Christian tradition that that soundedlike.
you know, feeding someone, like earning stripes.
and even the concept is weird.
It's like, and it's a negative.
It's like, you have to go through terrible times.
Inherently.
That's what they mean by earn your stripes.
Like they don't mean, I mean, put in the hard work.

(15:58):
Yeah, right.
Not there.
Like it's, you have to suffer like we did.
You have to, get, there's,
go through this crazy experience.
So people, the parade just happened, right?
When y'all are listening to this, it'll be like a week removed, but the military paradejust happened this last weekend.

(16:19):
And one of the rumors, right, was that he just gave a bunch of uniforms to regular peopleand like hired it out.
And I'm like, no, no, no, because there's so like, you can't just be like,
this is how you act like a soldier, right?
Like there's just so many ways you're gonna give yourself away because you haven't beenthrough it.
You haven't earned the, you haven't like gone through that horrible situation.

(16:43):
Like I'm not saying like that as a good thing.
I'm just saying it's like we know someone who hasn't been through, yeah, yeah.
If you took 100 people and put them in military uniforms and gave them like,
brief or like anything short of a few weeks of training like yeah, there's gonna be like amillion things that

(17:04):
No, but like from whatever you watched, like would you, could you tell from what youwatched that they weren't?
Yeah, okay.
So I think that's what, that's what I would go.
could see was that the Army understood the assignment.
They showed Donald Trump that they did not give two fucks about him and what he thinks,because that was like, it was just all kinds of malicious compliance in the parade.

(17:28):
But if you had put 100 people in uniform that were not soldiers, yeah, there would be amillion little tells that all of us who,
a different thing.
Yeah.
It's like you never try to, if you're a spy, you never try to pass yourself off as fromthe country you're spying in because that's too easy.
You're, you know, like I wouldn't say I'm from Brazil, I would say I'm from Portugal, youknow, and then like try to pass myself off as that.

(17:56):
a privilege of knowledge though.
You know, like there are certain things that you have to give them a few points less thanyou.
And that's what people are kind of saying.
It's like at home, there's just so much room for that.
and I don't know what the point of that would even be.
That's a whole different thing.
I don't care at all about that, to be honest.
Like the, his, I don't deal with white, white man stuff.

(18:19):
Um, but what I do deal with is white woman stuff.
And white women had their own parade again that Saturday again.
Um, and we're very proud and moved and angry again with signs again.

(18:40):
And, um, fine.
Right?
Like, cool.
I think there's difference between demonstration and a protest.
That was a demonstration.
Good one.
Big turnout.
Now what?
I'm not sure.
They didn't say, they just said, we're mad about this, right?
Okay, oh yeah, we like, um what about, okay.

(19:01):
And then I wanna talk about the first time, right?
What's different between this and the pink one?
um Okay.
You know what's the same?
The signs.
There's one sign in particular that I had my own journey with watching a video of
someone following their mom behind her and she's got a sign.

(19:22):
You can't see what the sign says.
And she's walking through the crowd and everyone's going, Oh, we love that.
Oh my God.
That's a great sign.
And we're capturing all these montage.
You don't see the sign yet.
And everyone loves that.
sign.
Sign is, if Kamala had won, we'd be at brunch.
And yeah, yeah, yeah.

(19:44):
Yeah.
You would.
And I had feelings about it.
I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to say much, but I also happened to go live at, guessduring the same day and someone came into my life and said, why aren't you at a protest?
This protest question mark, question mark, question mark.
And then part of it to tell me what it is, what blah, blah, blah.

(20:06):
Right.
This is.
exhausting, right?
I did end up saying something, but is brunch the goal?
Because did you know that there are signs from if Hillary won, we'd be in a brunch rightnow?
There was multiple signs.
In 2017, they said the same thing.
Why is brunch the end all be all?

(20:30):
And the right to comfort, white to comfort is so disturbing.
And in my right to comfort video, do the quote from Martin Luther King that I don't havein front of me, but he talks about that white people that prefer the absence of tension
rather than positive justice, a presence of justice, sorry, because I think it's positivepeace versus negative peace.

(20:53):
um Negative peace is absence of tension, positive peace is presence of justice.
ah That he, what was one of his least favorite from the white women quotes of MLK.
uh once you realize it's not the harmful people necessarily.
It's not the K's, the Karens or the Kloops, right?

(21:14):
It's not them.
It's the people that are just like, I just want to go to brunch again.
While black women are.
And I put that in someone honestly said who had an SOS American flag in their bio said,I'm not fully understanding.
I'm not sure if Kamala were president.
Are you saying we would still have reason to protest?

(21:36):
And I don't know if I may, I may take that down, but I said, white women, y'all deal withthis because I believe that she means this sincerely.
I believe that that's an honest question.
I actually think that's the most true thing.
But at the same time, like, yeah, maybe it wouldn't be, and so many white women in there,like, it wouldn't be this, I don't know what they're doing.
I don't know, I might, I don't know.
you excited or what are you upset about?

(21:58):
And I mean, Haley, our producer actually said this very well during the election, whichwas like, we are voting for the conditions we want to protest under.
And I do think like, I was kind of excited for the things that we could push for underKamala.

(22:19):
That like having...
Having this woman in office, I think, in the seat of power is gonna make such a bigdifference, and then we're gonna be able to push it further.
And now instead, like we are on this pendulum swing, but we still, like we were stillgonna have to fight for justice under whoever took over.

(22:40):
No, and that like, I...
not feel the need to, you know, and I think that's what felt, I remember, and I don't knowif I discussed it on the podcast, I probably did, but when she was, became the nominee, I
said, hey, uh, y'all already given up.
That's the, it's because you don't feel, it's looking for back to business as usual.

(23:06):
And what is business?
Busyness, it's literally the name of it, y'all.
They're keeping you busy.
Back to work, that was why I stopped going to that place.
I couldn't believe we were having conversations about what the sales reps and the mark andwhatever, when people were breaking into the Capitol uh and the curfew was about to hit

(23:27):
and I really thought someone was gonna happen to white people and often happened.
And then a lot happened in my brain.
And then I became white woman whisperer.
But anyway.
Also, I just think for as much energy and attention that white women of my demographiclike to take up, 30 and 40 year old white millennial women were not the heavily

(23:48):
represented demographic in those protests.
It was still mostly boomers and people from the LGBTQ community who are being affected andsmatterings of other demographics.
was very upset by who did not show up from my neighborhood.

(24:11):
um And very just like, yeah, they're literally at brunch.
Like that's what they're doing.
They're at brunch and they're not here and they don't care.
And if they did show up, that would be their good, great deed though.
And it's how do you get those people out of their brunch?

(24:34):
Geez, with the brunch?
And then some person was like, honestly, just for, she started with, what it's worth.
That's it.
Um, white women, know, brunches are only, only place white women have that isn't corruptedor stolen or whatever by white men heart emoji.
I said, this is why I'm not on TikTok anymore.

(24:55):
I can't with y'all.
there's that's your only place for community spending money at brunch.
And what are you talking about?
And, and that's how you got into MLMs.
And that's what I realized I had to get back to is that I've been watching.
Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, I discussed last week, and the MLM overlap, they're like,here's a little bit of something that you can feel proud of that isn't being a mom.

(25:22):
ah And you're like, going out to brunch and having conversations away from my husband.
Great.
Tia Levings who does content about the patriarchy, Christian patriarchy, she talked aboutthis, that like the ruling male class will let the women get together once in a while and

(25:45):
they learn to live for that.
And they learn to shut to any critical complaint.
And I think that's white women in America just in general.
It's like, we'll let you be a little safer.
We'll let you be a little higher up on the kind of misogyny, patriarchy totem pole if youplay our game.

(26:07):
That's bread crumbing.
See, I always thought, I don't know if I talked about this last week, but bread crumbing,I thought was you give a little, you like lead them, I don't know, like lead them to a
place.
I don't know why I thought that, but it's that, you know, you're living off of breadcrumbs because they've taught you to starve yourself so much that now all they got to give

(26:28):
you is this little bit.
And you're like, oh, he's so sweet.
He didn't yell at me for three days and whatever, like so get out, know, hear yourself,stand up for yourself.
But the idea that, hey, quit it with the brunch.
Like it's one thing to feel, but the sign, you drew and colored and like this is there.

(26:51):
This is in lieu of doing something meaningful in my opinion, because it gets out thatdiscomfort.
that you have with what's going on because you did the thing everyone already agreed ondoing.
You did the socially acceptable thing, the SAT answer, and now you're done.

(27:12):
Yeah, and something that I've had to call out several times already is white women beinglike, yeah, okay, we did it.
We got 3.5 people needed for a revolution.
Now if only our brothers and sisters of color would join us.
And first of all, not mention of the fact that that well-known number came from a blackwoman, I'm pretty sure, who did that study.

(27:39):
and they don't even know.
Do you have any, the pink hat?
Listen, we got everyone to come out on a Saturday to say that this is a bad guy.
oh listen.
And what I call that, because people have done that at me literally about this protest.
uh That's mathematical language manipulation.

(28:01):
MLM again.
You're back in an MLM.
m
All we gotta do is 3.5 and then boom.
That's not how we use numbers.
It's supposed to be motivational to say not everyone has to be on board.
Focus on those.
Murmuration.
Black women talk about murmuration, what the starlings do.
And then anytime I bring this up, white people are like, that's an invasive species.
They can go up to a million birds moving in sync because each bird focuses on the sevenaround them.

(28:28):
And they're very in tune with each other.
And it looks like they're a million.
I'm not even making that number up.
It's an emergent strategy and in other things.
Biomimicry is really a word that I love.
Like we are a part of nature.
We're not separate from nature.
White men came in and were like, we're actually better than nature and we deserve tocolonize it.

(28:50):
And so I have two thoughts about that.
One is like, well, it would make patriarchy very uncomfortable because patriarchy is ahierarchy and it's top down and that's not top down.
This is also why our military is agile and hard to beat because we actually took theGermans.

(29:12):
The reason that Germany almost won World War II.
for a while was because they had a non top-down military.
They had a doctrine called Aufraufs-Taktik Mission Command, which is you push thedecisions down to the lowest level, right?
And then we took that and we added the Americanness of we don't even always follow our owndoctrine.

(29:34):
So it has been famously said about the American military that the reason they're so hardto beat is because they don't even follow their own doctrine, because we sort of run the
way you were talking about.
Like we are fast and agile because the highest ranking person is the person in charge andif that changes it goes to the next person.
And we are in tune with each other and we're making decisions based on what's actuallygoing on on the ground at the fastest time.

(30:03):
Right.
what you can actually impact and who and how you can impact the best.
You don't have to go up to the president every time you need to make a decision, but in acorporation you do, kind of.
if your lieutenant is taken out, you're just sitting there waiting for the top to sendanother lieutenant down to you to be the person in charge.

(30:23):
Whereas, you know, I have this story in my book where there's an ambush and most of theteam is killed and this very bad leader is yelling, you know, get me a leader on the
phone.
And this private
19 year old kid picks up the phone and he's like, sir, you got me.
I'm it, you know, now let's go.
And that patriarchy doesn't like that, right?

(30:50):
And does not like when things can move on their own and don't fall apart if they're notunder this kind of hierarchical game.
And that's why, and that's how I think groups within communities can work.
Cause it's a group of these people individually in a community that are coming together todo one thing.

(31:13):
Right.
And so I also think authority and leadership should flow to based on circumstance.
Right.
Who's the authority here?
The one who knows the most about the current situation we're in, not let's look at thesheet for number of years, but
they like to be able to remove decisions from individuals and say, no, no, no, you don'tknow.

(31:36):
The gaslighting right there in taking care of that for you.
I've also been thinking about that phrase, I love you a lot.
Taking care of, what is that?
That's not a sentence.
You're taking care of me.
from me?
You're a caregiver, caretaker, those confuse me as well, but that's, I don't know.
It's almost like making fun of.
I don't think that's how that works.

(31:57):
You know, making fun out of something.
I don't know.
you know, this, things that we could, if we slow down and question, how are weparticipating or like, what is happening right now that I can just stop doing it.
can question.
And those are the questions that maybe crack it for people.
It's let's study people who got out of cults and ask them, what was your moment?

(32:19):
And usually it's not one moment.
It's and like, let's find commonality there.
versus focusing on all the groups and how are they good?
Are they bad?
What do they mean?
What does this mean?
What is this?
Like for you, I don't mean this for you, obviously that's your job, but like, you know, incertain aspects of social dynamics.

(32:40):
definitely been saying this to white women when they're like, what can we do?
How can we get, you know, MAGA out and all that stuff?
And I'm like, again, like from a high level, I don't know how to engineer someone's crackin the brainwashing, but I know that as white women, can do your work and learn to talk
about what worked for you.
And just because you weren't ever in MAGA, like you were in white supremacist America,right?

(33:06):
Like you did, if you are woke right now,
Yeah.
point you woke up, right?
And before then, you were just kind of absorbing, you know, this is my conclusion in thenext book, Deconstructing Whiteness, which is just like, I think white supremacy starts

(33:26):
radicalizing you the second you step foot in America.
I just happened to be already almost 16 and be able to watch that happen.
Mm-hmm.
for most people, it's just happening around you.
But it's kind of like you said, like when you realize like, oh, even in Winnie the Pooh,there's racist phraseology, right?
Like it's in everything in our world and our job right now, I really think is to learn,like to learn to tell it better, to learn to figure out these phrases that are good at

(33:58):
waking people up, right?
To like learn to talk about what worked for you.
You know, like when I tell the story of how I explained male privilege to my husband thathelped break it through to him, that's helpful to other people to like just have those
because the best way to get someone to realize they've been under coercive control orprogramming or any of these things is to recognize it in a parallel context, right?

(34:28):
As soon as you started studying like the cult stuff with
business and corporate world, then obviously you're able to see the cult influences inwhite supremacy that you've been under.
And so that, like, I think that's really important work right now.
I'm just like, everyone's going around screaming at people why they're not freaking out.

(34:49):
And I'm like, you're screaming at me from the comfort of your air conditioned home on youriPhone.
Like, how about using this time where you're just in.
hypothetical danger, right?
You're not even in real danger yet.
Use this time to like get ready for the fight, right?
Like.
maybe it's not a fight.

(35:11):
Like, y'all are terrible fighters.
Have you seen?
You're not good.
I would maybe like...
You're right.
Get ready for the conversations.
The hard conversations.
like...
it to be a fight, you know, you're showing up dressed with fighting gloves on.
Am I fighting y'all?
No.
I mean, no.

(35:32):
You know what I mean?
Now that I think it's just like, just talking.
language way too easily.
think that's really a white women thing too.
Yeah, yeah, everything's like war.
mean, even in corporate America, hear like I saw some ice cream shot of it.
It was like job layoffs is the bloodshed.

(35:54):
But it's like, OK, you had fires, fire drills when there weren't fires.
And that confused me.
But now it's like, calm down, white people.
like stop saying execute in job interviews as I did something.
And we executed the plant, like, because you don't know what that civilian is thinkingwhen you say execute.

(36:18):
Honestly, if they're a white man, they're like, this guy's it.
I like this guy.
And that's the problem.
That's why I can't be there.
and this is something else I've been really having to explain to people is that like onlywhite men's view of the military has been validated, right?
My book in 2022 was one of the first memoirs by a woman veteran in the mass market.

(36:45):
And that woman is a straight presenting white officer.
So like, we don't like,
everything you see in the media.
Like I called people out on owing me an apology after that parade, because I was like,I've been telling y'all from the beginning that like, he doesn't just have the whole
military in his pocket.

(37:06):
The military is more than 50 % not white, straight white men, right?
All the other demographics, all of America is here getting a vote.
But the only thing,
that is being confirmed for people is the straight white male military, because that'ssort of the only thing we have featured in the cultural conversation.

(37:29):
is just uh a word.
It's an organization.
It's Nike.
These are just people that follow.
It's the soldiers, right?
Literally, watch Game of Thrones.
what we view in media is that people do what they're told no matter what the king is.
They make the crowds cheer no matter what is decided.

(37:51):
I don't think that would happen.
Oh, the king just said, cut off his head.
Even though we loved him yesterday.
yeah, sometime, but look at how media depicts crowds of people.
Now, yes, sometimes, but not always.
They usually have signed up for things.
You know, I just like, then they go and they just will murder because all, every singleone of them unsullied because we, they'll just, they have no other purpose for the rest of

(38:20):
their lives.
Even when they get this new leader that freed them, they still want to be, anyway.
I think it's going back to this brunch thing, right?
That like, think like white women right now are like, it's brunch or battle, right?
Like which one?
Which one are we in, right?
Are we going to brunch or are we going to battle?
And not understanding that like, that's not how freedom deteriorates, right?

(38:45):
It's not like all of a sudden, it's like all of a sudden last Saturday I was going tobrunch and this Saturday I'm going to battle, right?
And it's not that clear.
And if you're waiting for shots to be fired, know, like everyone literally coming to mebeing like, so when are gonna tell us to panic?
So when are you gonna tell us it's bad?
And I'm like, I am a cult scholar talking about national politics, right?

(39:10):
Like it has been bad since I started.
I'm here giving you the threat brief.
But like how, yes.
granting them the give up pass.
And they're like, we want to scream and you keep saying that won't help basically.

(39:31):
so scream, like, but why?
They were like, you're the problem actually.
I feel really proud act right now.
Cause I feel like, you know, they're just certain, not that, not that I'm, you know,trying to take credit for what's going on there, but I'm just saying, yeah.
This is the energy.
But of course they don't like it.
And in some ways, you know, you're like an ex-cult member of something that they're like,hold on.

(39:54):
I could be, hold on.
and again, part of the reason I'm not freaking out is because I live surrounded by blackpeople.
Like, literally every time I am freaking out, we're meeting our friends for happy hour andeither a black man or a woman is like, honey, sit.
Welcome, welcome, take a seat, pull out your journals.

(40:17):
And people hate when they say that.
No, and I think that to me, was what's most concerning.
It was like, yeah, exactly, they would be a brunch.
And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing because it's one, like I said, it's one thing tothink it, it's another thing to write it, say it, feel proud, go home, be done, yourself
on the back and say, I am a good.

(40:37):
Check, I'm on the good list.
It's like, oh.
You wanted the black woman to come mammy the whole country and the woman who said, um, areyou saying we wouldn't, whatever.
And the SOS gets me right.
The SOS tells me a lot.
Who are you talking to?
You're talking to black women.
Come save us.
We're here.
We've been here the whole time.

(40:58):
do we save you?
Like that's crazy.
And I, by existing and trying every day, we're, we're doing our part, right?
We haven't given up.
And how dare you panic?
But she didn't, you know, like I thought policies would change, right?

(41:19):
Her policies would change.
Maybe not her, but her policies.
Policies don't change people.
People change policies.
But like, people either follow them or don't.
She's a black woman giving orders.
What do you, I mean, regardless.
women inside of patriarchy are only gonna have so much effect even from the top, right?
A black woman inside white supremacist system is only gonna have also so much power, youknow?

(41:46):
We had a black one already.
I thought so too.
We had, and what happened?
And also time continues.
What happens after that?
What can she, the limit of what can be done?
Police brutality has every single day.
Look at what police feel entitled to under the guise of being police.
The costume does so much for y'all.

(42:07):
And I wanted to stop calling them uniforms and call them costumes because they're takingon a character.
freaking the fuck out because the Marines detained someone.
Meanwhile, LAPD is literally terrorizing citizens.
And y'all are here focused on the military and how everything's about to blow up.

(42:32):
The cult-ability is the problem.
The fact that when Rodney Hinton Jr.
experienced a terrible experience with police, went out and reacted and caused harm topolice as a result because someone fit the description.
We paid for a wall of costume dressed officers to stand there and let him know they were,like that cult behavior, right?

(42:59):
And then within the cult,
There's gangs in it that we know about and it involves killing people.
There are things going on in California.
Like the thought that the black woman should come make rules that you think just peoplewill follow rules.
I think is what it comes down to.
Like you see people as inhumane aside from you, right?

(43:22):
It's always like, but not you, not you.
Everybody else will just do what they're told.
It's just like, they say.
Who are you talking to?
Who, like, wait, I mean, just in the ether, just announcing things.
Everyone's got a megaphone.
No one can hear anything.
Y'all are all with the...
that's part of what has pissed me off so much about this narrative of like, the militaryis just gonna turn our weapons on us.

(43:46):
Like, look, I've written two very critical books about the military.
I, my brand is criticizing the military, but like, you're literally flattening us, right?
Like soldiers and veterans, you're trying to flatten us into one thing.
And it's just like, that's not the way it is.

(44:06):
but it's designed for us to fear, revere.
like we've had a lot of propaganda, you know?
I mean, let's face it, the whole 20 year war was pretty much a propaganda thing that wasplayed on our whole country to get us to like give up freedoms and.

(44:28):
the discomfort people need to sit with is like, oh, we were in like something I've noticedbetween when people wake up, right?
Or something that draws people to realize is when their leader or something deceivesitself.
Like there is just proof in the own words of the system.

(44:49):
That is when people are because because they believe that no matter what, but if they canwitness you say one thing and do another.
Like when some people realize that, the leader is sleeping with little girls, that changeseverything.
He's been lying.
Or just he cheated on his wife, right?
Or something like that.
Not this one, but.
But here's what's important, right?

(45:09):
So I was on Election Day 2016.
I was listening to an NPR segment on October Surprise.
And it was specifically about, you know, because of the grab them by the pussy tape,right?
And this was on Election Day.
And it was talking about how October Surprises historically only changed the outcome ofthe election if they

(45:32):
fundamentally changed the basis perception of who that person was.
So what we saw with Grab My the Pussy, and I think what we are actively seeing with Elonsaying, Like Elon saying, he's on the Epstein list.
Who was surprised by that?
Right.
I saw so many black people like, and the sky is blue.

(45:55):
that was his nuclear weapon, only to realize that everyone, his base and his enemies,every single American pretty much believes he's on that list.
So that changed nothing.
It changed nothing.
They're already brainwashed into the idea that that's okay.

(46:15):
Like Mark Vicente from NXIVM said that once he realized, I think that he said, I don'twanna say that exactly, but like, he believed that Keith was a renunciate, but then once
he realized he was actually, he would ignore all the signs, But because he would, thesmells, the everything, and then once he realized actually he is doing this, that changed

(46:37):
the actual perception of him.
like.
fundamentally changed his idea of the way Keith Raniere presented himself, right?
And one of the things I'm trying to say is like Donald Trump has not tried to belaw-abiding.
He's not tried to pretend like he has character.
He's not tried to pretend like he doesn't rape children.
So it's not surprising like to find out these horrible things, you know, and I feel likethat's kind it's just like every time I hear about another group, high control group like

(47:08):
having sexual predators in the leadership, like not surprised.
Right?
It's just like, I was expecting this.
I didn't have it yet, but yeah.
So anyway, all that to say is.
by other white women all the time when they're their favorite, whoever talks aboutsomething they agree with is, oh, a white woman who doesn't listen to black women.

(47:31):
And then that's something going around.
But black women always say, yeah, guys.
I mean, hate to see it, but expect to see it.
You know, we're more impressed with someone who goes, my bad, didn't, I stepped too far, Ioverstepped.
The concept doesn't exist in whiteness.

(47:52):
You know, being wrong in the moment, never.
Only like in hindsight as a weapon.
no, perfect.
I was talking about, so the group of soldiers that stood behind Donald Trump at Fort Braggthat was like all white men, like one black man, and they were cheering, right, and booing
and whatever.
And it was like, this was a cherry picked group of soldiers.

(48:16):
And one of the things that was put out that the military is obsessed with skinny, right?
But Donald Trump is especially obsessed with it.
And he literally was like, nope, no fatties, you know?
So I was talking about that and I fell into fat phobia, right?
I was like, even though he himself is a fat fuh, and I just had to stop in the minute andbe like, y'all, I'm so sorry.

(48:41):
Like, I'm not even delete this because like, this is me with the fat phobia.
Like it's there, right?
Like as soon as I wanted to, as soon as I wanted to like talk about this dude that Ihated, like it just came back, you know?
But also like,
To me, it's so pretentious to be like, stop and re-film that and not just be like, we'reall undoing the bad programming all the time.

(49:07):
And if you are a learning adult and you are engaging with ideas, like you're gonna makemistakes.
Like aren't what do you, cause otherwise what are you doing?
You're just teaching everybody.
Why are you speaking just to teach?
That's weird.
And that's a white people thing.
And I think that was the other like for what it's worth, blah, blah, all my stuff.
It feels like white people sometimes view my work and think they're a teacher and, andthey're like every, cause it was like everything else.

(49:34):
Fire.
No, not the forward.
It's worth.
it was someone who said, when I said center women, if you're a woman talking aboutdecentering men, center women.
And they're like, well, it kind of excludes this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But everything else is fire.
I hate that.
I hate that more than someone calling me the N-word, honestly.
I don't, because it doesn't happen that often.

(49:55):
like, because then, ew, with the, and then that also, with the fire and just, but thenjust continually doubling down.
This is about me, essentially.
I don't identify with womanhood.
So I wasn't talking to you then.
But then if.
But then it's like, you're not talking to me.
If you're not like other girls, then don't participate when other girls are talking.

(50:18):
People try this one with me whenever I talk about any given group, right?
And they'll be like, well, I was a Mormon for so many years and I never heard of I'lllike, if you've never heard of it, then why are you talking right now?
Like, I've been collecting these stories, thousands of stories for years.
Like, it's not hard.
You can go put this on your social media.
You can ask people for their negative, like, you're to shut me down because you've neverheard of this?

(50:41):
Why are you talking?
Clearly, you don't need to give your expertise here.
duh, duh.
Like, I don't, ew.
And then to give the compliment at the end, gross.
Gotta tell you, creepy, right?
I just wanna compliment you.
And then the next thing was, uh I just made a video about that and said, know, cause I hadgiven them a red flag after that.

(51:02):
That's all, I just commented red flag.
And they said, I don't know why it's a red flag.
More things about me, I don't know.
And I was just like.
Let me make a video.
So I did just to say white people, when you see a red flag, that's your opportunity tocome in and understand.
If you did the red flagging, you sit and you accept it.
she says she was going to go Google to find out why it's a red flag.

(51:23):
Not just watch my videos or think on it or journal or anything.
She's going to go Google white.
I gotta go check if someone else has said this that I can listen to.
an article about it that got published by some other white man.
Like what, or you could just take it and, but no, right.
And then I made the video just saying that.
And it's, said, I don't know why you're angry or you're angry, but I validate your anger.

(51:48):
She validated my anger.
But however you misgendered me, I actually didn't.
I was talking about myself in the third person, but okay.
Like, but it's like the whiteness, it just like.
You other yourself so much and then dehumanize it and you talk like, what about me?
I literally have any pronouns up there because you don't know what it's like to be a blackwoman, but white women always come in and they're the loudest ones.

(52:09):
And then they're like, you misgendered me.
Stop being a white woman.
I don't care if you're white, you identify as white.
And if you do want a white woman, I've done a white woman before.
Well, you know what I mean?
I heard it too many times and now I'm like, I just said.
I've pulled a PAM, sometimes I call it a PAM, problematic ally moment.

(52:30):
But if you are going to double down and then, this is about me, you just hurt my feelings,I don't care.
You didn't care about me, but I'm supposed to care about you not feeling.
It started with women.
If you are a woman who decenters men.
And I thank my followers for this.
And this is where white women helped me out because I'm not going to sit here and digestwhy this is all wrong, but y'all can.

(52:51):
I don't mind that.
She started with, if you are a woman who does decentering men's stuff, blah, blah, blah,blah.
And then you came in like this centers white woman whisperer.
You are in the wrong place if you're a, but maybe you're actually in the right points andyou're just so mad about it.
But somehow that's my fault.

(53:12):
You know, all these, gave so many, so many chances and that just makes me say, go withyour gut girl.
Like when the red flag is red flagging.
Yeah, and also, it's, so I was talking about you today in my life, because someone triedthis with me, where they just showed up and their first thing was competency checking, and
then I was like, no, I'm not, and then they tried to double down, and then they tried tosay they were reading my book, that's why they sharp-shot me on the term expert, Rebecca,

(53:40):
I don't call myself an expert, but they literally tried to use I'm reading your book tostop me when they clearly hadn't been reading my book.
And then their final thing was like, I'm an academic and I'm a woman and I have a PhD.
And I was like, well then stop misogynying out loud.
I, she's like, I've never been treated like this by an academic.
And I literally, I was like, at this point, I don't believe you're a woman.

(54:03):
I don't believe, you know, whatever.
And if you are, yeah, cause I was like, this is what people do to Rebecca all the time.
And if you are, let's talk about internalized misogyny.
And if you're not, like yikes.
If you have to say it.
experts have been thinking about you.
And like, really, you're a woman with a PhD and you're in here competency checking anotherwoman?

(54:25):
Ooh, gross.
came into my life saying, aren't you the protest?
Are they, are you at the protest?
And if you are, this is what you're doing at it?
Yelling at a black woman on the internet, talking to white women about anti-racism.
This is what you're doing with your time and I'm supposed to care what you think of me?
That's my point.
It's like, I want people to realize, where do you spend your energy?

(54:47):
I'm a clown and real quick, but like, you have to see that white women aren't a monolith,but you guys have to start.
Also agree, right?
Like soldiers are in a monolith.
People are in a monolith, including yourself.
like, you're not special.
And like, we always come back to that in so many ways, but like see other people just asrelevant as you, even if they don't, whatever.

(55:11):
If they're in the cult, they're still a person in a cult.
You're better than them.
Ooh, great.
But I think that's all we got.
than them, then use your betterness to help them out of the cult, right?
Or like, this I've decided because I have a brand of follower that likes to come yell atme whenever something's on the news, right?

(55:33):
So it's happened to me twice, 10 o'clock at night on a Friday and a Saturday, these womenliterally have the nerve to try to demand as though I'm some kind of public asset.
as though they don't give me like you don't give me at 7 30 every morning and also at 10p.m.
like no stop it um and and they just you said you said the blah blah blah you said hewasn't gonna be able to deploy it's never what i actually said and i've just started being

(56:01):
like okay i hope you're getting ready to fight i hope you're getting ready to fightbecause i am i am for sure yeah and i had to say this to people they were like well you
say i'm like i am sure
that the right answer to the President of the United States deploying troops to, ormobilizing troops to California is not go yell at the private lady on the internet who's

(56:22):
just trying to use her knowledge to help you.
Like, I'm sure that wasn't the answer.
So like...
doing, you're having the wrong conversations.
If you're, and that's sometimes I have to zoom out and look at people like that.
I humanize those people and that's what you've done too.
You humanize them in a way where it's not like these are the haters, dah, dah, dah, dah,dah.

(56:43):
It's kind of like, these are the people sitting and waiting for me to say something, tofeel something.
if you're mad about the negative stereotypes about like Karens and Beckys, like go policethe Karens and the Beckys, right?
It's not go yell at the people telling you about the problem.

(57:04):
But there's something about naming like white people and naming things is the thing.
All right.
The label is the thing.
Once you name it, then it exists.
America, new world.
I'm seeing it.
If you know it or you name it, it exists and otherwise it's non-existent.
No named or non-existent.

(57:27):
to white people, I literally had the brunch lady who said like, there's no white men.
I was like, that's weird also.
There's no white men involved in brunch.
That's just not, there's so much not to.
Also that alcoholism and whiteness go like this because a wine mom could never be black.
uh And all she had to say was just like, I don't know any men that agreed to brunch.

(57:48):
I've never seen that.
And so a bunch of white women were like, blah, blah, blah, blah.
80, white gay men are at brunch all the time.
That's like their thing.
And then like, right.
And then there was, it's all these, so many brunch.
And then there was a white guy with one of the Kamala brunch signs.
So like extra, extra, right?
was like validation on validation.
It's like violent validation.

(58:08):
And she just said, I've never experienced that.
And that was it.
And that's white, like I would say like narcissism, right?
That's nice-icism.
It's this kind of like, but it's still the same like gaslighting.
People are telling you they've seen it you're like, well, that's just, that's how I havemy community is that brunch.
So.
it's also a complete lack of empathy.
Like you've never experienced it.

(58:29):
Like, I mean, I don't know if I've ever been at brunch with a black man and now I'm kindof sad about that and think maybe you should go out that experience.
You know, I mean, like just being like, don't know.
When my child understood that black church and white church are different, like I swearshe's low key mad now and she expects to be taken to black church at some point.

(58:52):
She's never been taken to white church.
no, actually she has with her Catholic friends.
She was like literally watching, she's literally watching and she was like looking at usand looking over there and then she was like, wait, why are there no white people there?
And then we explained black church and white church and she's like, mom, black churchlooks really fun.

(59:16):
And is, and is, because there's like, why just be miserable?
That's a white people thing.
And I think that's like a big, the lack of every, identity, the anti identity that iswhiteness.
the Puritan religion was literally just allergic to fun.
Like Calvin and Hobbes just wanted you to have no fun in your whole life.

(59:39):
That was not the cartoon, the real man.
And that's why you think it's fight, you know, the only answer is that's how white peopleanswer.
That's like a white man answer specifically, fight.
Cause even white women, you gotta use some of that energy just.
I have to tell you this one, you'll love this one, because people are like, I don't freakout until Knitting Coat Lady freaks out.

(59:59):
And they're like, until the craft stores are out of yarn, she's not gonna freak out.
And I was like, y'all, people have yarn.
Craft stores have yarn.
Private entrepreneurs have yarn.
You can make plastic bags into yarn.
Like, we're gonna be okay.
Like, why are we waiting?
That's when it's really bad.
We're waiting for this year to end.

(01:00:21):
stores, when the craft stores can't give us our stuff, that's when it's bad.
Like, oh, honey.
Was slavery not enough, guys?
It just feels like white people are just like, you know.
I bet, yeah, they're waiting for like this moment where it all clicks and makes sense andthen you just go vote for it.

(01:00:42):
Ranked choice voting would be great.
I think would solve a lot of things.
But why can't, why don't I say that?
Because you're so far from the place.
What?
I mean, I've said it.
That's actually true.
I've said it a bunch of times, but like...
would say like why I feel the most chastised as a white person from doing this project isjust like, no, it's been bad the whole time.

(01:01:04):
Like, why did it take?
Like, why did it take whatever it took to get me to realize it, right?
And it's just like, and I think there's something to sit with, you know?
Like, I...
It's not a rhetorical question, right?
So that's like a white people questioning, right?
My question is when I'm asking you like, why did it take, like what did it take for, I'masking what did it take?

(01:01:27):
Mostly I'm not asking you like, why are you surprised rhetorical?
Why didn't you wake up earlier rhetorical?
None of that.
I'm saying, I don't even care about all that.
I'm saying what brought you here so that we can bring more on.
Like it's.
been this long, I'm impatient, I guess, maybe as part of it too.

(01:01:47):
But that's fine.
I just want you to help me, you know?
Angela Davis, right, was the one that says like, we do better once we know better, right?
Like, I do think, like I, like I will never like forgive my younger self for the fact thatI didn't pay attention to racism and Black women's treatment in America during my military

(01:02:16):
career.
because I could have made a difference, right?
I could have made a difference.
I could have put myself in between things.
Like I actually could have done things and I didn't.
And it doesn't matter that I was well-intentioned and it doesn't matter that I know now,right?
Like it's just something that I wish I had, no, right?

(01:02:36):
Any number of things had made me pay attention.
And that's why I think it's worth it to go back through my whole life and likedeconstruct.
where this came in.
Yeah, but again, this goes to like maybe this goes to the neurodivergent thing where it'sjust like, oh, now I know that.

(01:02:58):
because you will be able to see how it connects.
Because we are meant to be here.
Biomimicry, right?
So like those things aren't once in a lifetime, connecting with another person or not, orprotecting another person or not.
But by going back and saying, oh, I did this because I felt like it was safer.
But you know, I gossiped about this girl, even though I didn't believe it.

(01:03:20):
And I called her hair whatever, because, blah, blah, blah.
And by acknowledging that, says, OK, I see that now.
Cool, I've grown.
Now I know just, I feel different.
That can reassure you and have a sense of self.
Because when you lived beyond it, even when you didn't realize you were doing a bad,right?
So if you're doing one now, you'll be all right.

(01:03:40):
And I understand the whole, like what we talked about last week, the whole like I'm scaredto offend thing that people are free.
I understand from the white centered perspective of like, that's nice.
I don't want to hurt your feelings is what you're saying.
Whoa, feelings?
That's my business.
Get out of my business, you know what I mean?
And it's like.

(01:04:01):
And I just don't even think it's scared to offend.
It's scared to be called out on it, right?
Because it's very easy to see at least once you start your journey, right?
It's like, yeah, I know I offended now, but I'm not gonna do it anymore.
And if you hadn't told me, I was gonna continue to do that stuff.
That's literally, you know, and then I'm the one people are like afraid of because I'lltell you so that you don't do it again.

(01:04:27):
But it's like black women are the most, there's a trend going on right now.
and I was started by this for black women.
gets up on the camera and she goes, Hey, my boyfriend's going to show you his plants andhe's gonna, and you better clap for him and say some nice things.
Come on, boo boo.
And he comes, it's so cute.
And he shows you the plants and then she's in the back and it's this trend that's justprogressing.
It's very black woman coded.

(01:04:48):
And like, that's what y'all are afraid of.
Is that understood?
But that's what we do.
Like, that's what's happening.
That's our tough love is literally just saying it.
on this podcast, y'all can go back and listen.
I think it was the first episode.
And when I asked my husband initially, I was like, hey, can you just go run these things?

(01:05:09):
Because we need numbers.
And he came in and he was like, geez, she was harsh on you.
And like, Rebecca, have you ever been harsh on me?
Have you ever said like one rude thing to me ever?
Like, no, no.
No, you have been extreme.
Like, no, I literally had to be like, babe, stop.

(01:05:29):
She was so nice.
Like this was when I said I compared like touching a black woman's hair to someonetouching her belly when you were pregnant and you were like, no, honey, no.
And like, I was like, she was right, but she was very kind about it.
Like not like, I know how to be mean to people on the internet.
I do it regularly and like, no.

(01:05:49):
no interest in hurting anyone's feelings.
It's just a weird concept, right?
That's a very white people thinking.
That's all you really, well, white woman, I guess white men too, but like manipulation,right?
How, what I say is going to impact this person's feelings.
The words matter so much to white people.
Words, the big words, the bad words, strong words.

(01:06:10):
If I say cult, so that was one of those things in one of the white books that I'm readingthat I was like, this is a white lady book, but she does a good intro.
So it's about MLMs.
sales, sisterhood and supremacy.
And the intro was so good in terms of like setting up, I'm white, right?
And we're going to talk about that and that's going to be involved in here.
And I have my limitations and stuff like that.
So I was going to give you that as just like a really good, I felt comfortable going inand it's like, this person knows that they're not done.

(01:06:38):
It's not whatever they're not like, I'm there's different ways to do it, but you are havebeen open, but it's like,
I even felt at that time, I remember the pregnant bellies thing because that happened somuch in the Midwest.
Like when I would say the thing, they would say this pregnant bellies thing.
And I was like, and back then I was like super, I kind of believe black squares, right?

(01:06:59):
So I was giving lots of benefit of the doubt, but the fact that it kept happening, I waslike, Ooh, and I know black women are watching.
And so when I have that centered, I had to, you know, I wonder if I,
In real life, I probably wouldn't have said anything.
And I may have said this at the time, because it's easier, but like doing this work, thisis literally one of those things.

(01:07:21):
And I just want to share how it makes me feel.
And I just, but I can, I felt the like, careful.
Now I don't know how much I'm good at actually being careful because people call me meanall the time.
And I don't know, I've been trying, but in the black community, there's like, I wonder ifthere's a word for uppity maybe.
in whiteness, it, do white people have more property?

(01:07:42):
I don't know.
But I got a lot of like, she thinks she's all that.
She thinks she's this.
And I don't know if that could be combo light skin.
we definitely wanna punish white women for not being humble.
I think that's we use a lot.
They'll be like, or they'll call us attention seeking or like, someone was just doing itto me today and I was like, yeah, I built these channels to get attention.

(01:08:04):
I think I have very interesting stories that other people don't have and I'm literallytrying to get your attention every day.
Like that's what I'm doing.
don't like, why is that a problem?
they see it as a currency, like a non-directional currency.
Attention is attention is attention because it's theirs.
Like that's how they would view it.
Good.
That's like dollars.
That's capitalism in real life.

(01:08:26):
In real life, it matters.
What kind of attention, attention for what finished the sentence.
I'm trying to draw attention to white women's, you know, behavior and participation in thepatriarchy.
Yeah.
Is that so bad?
I'm drawing attention to the harm that was done.
Okay.
But just like they see it as a currency, like it does something, paying attention.

(01:08:49):
You think about that?
And it's like, you have to be nice.
And I think, like, obviously, there's the stereotype of the angry black woman.
So I know there's like your version of it.
But someone had actually made a video of me and like all the calling me a Psy-op and allthe whatever.
And they're like, we have a specific sort of social punishment for white women who speakthe truth and refuse to be nice about it.

(01:09:15):
uh And I think it's very similar to just wearing color.
Right?
And I mean, just one of the things I've started to really believe is like color is a formof resistance, whether that's like existing as a person of color in America, or whether
that's as a white woman, like resisting the urge to like bland yourself.

(01:09:38):
You know, and I think that's the difference with me.
Like I was beautiful, I was hot, I was intelligent, and I was mostly completelyforgettable.
And like,
The lead roles.
Yep.
my own safety.
And now, like even I just went from my knitting cult lady, like debut era to my mini era,which is called Try and Come from My Job.

(01:10:03):
um And it's come with a lot more cleavage.
And it's because yeah, like I don't, I'm not playing this game anymore where I need tolike, bland myself down.
Like I've written two books in my area of expertise, which is extremely niche.
Like.
do whatever you want.
They're going to say, they're going the freedom and saying they're going to say whateverthey want.

(01:10:24):
But what I realized is like lead roles are the most replaceable, right?
In order to put yourself up at the top, know, you're the most visible, but that's becauseyou did so much to make yourself replaceable that you're trying to fill a role.
That's a void.
what, what, if you just be just

(01:10:47):
You know, you start to realize some stuff.
because that ties so well into like the the expertise and the credentials, right?
Like the more I rest on my credentials, the more my job is replaceable.
Right.
Even like the name group behavior gal.
Right.
Like the more professional I try to be, the more and and this guy, actually the straightwhite man, like helped me realize this when he was like, I don't understand what sets you

(01:11:14):
apart.
like as I was trying to professionalize and I was like, fuck, then I'm gonna stay here.
We're like, everyone understands what sets me apart and that like this is original andlike when I bring my full perspective to bear, literally nobody else has this perspective
in my field.

(01:11:34):
And so, and by the way, speaking of capitalism, like this is what everyone wants, the blueocean strategy.
You build your own market.
Like you and I have both built our
own market, built it, and now we're like sitting at the top of it and people are mad.
But it's like, and I keep saying that I'm like, nobody knew the market for knitting andtalking about bad guys was so big.

(01:11:55):
That's why I'm at the top of it.
But now that I've established it, like other people are gonna come up, you know, likeother people are gonna come up in this field and that's fine.
But the
that's why you have to do it without that competition scarcity mindset at play.
it's just so like, because as a white woman, I have been told my whole life, stop makingeverything about you, right?

(01:12:18):
And like, yes, that's right.
On the one hand, like white women need to hear that message from people of color a lot,but the message that we're getting from the patriarchy is very different, right?
It's like, don't take up one cent of attention for yourself.
How dare you?
Have I told you about my portrait?

(01:12:38):
I have a portrait done by a very fancy, very good artist who did a portrait of me when Iwas 24.
And until I got married, almost every person that walked in my house was like, why do havea portrait of yourself in your house?
And I just started being like, why does that bother you?
It literally was this like, oh, you think you're beautiful enough to have a portrait?

(01:13:01):
Like you think you're like special enough?
to have like yourself be the topic of art.
And by the way, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see I have this very diversepiece of artwork called All Labias Are Beautiful.
And someone just told me they had a portrait of their labia done by an artist.
And I'm a little tempted.

(01:13:22):
I'm a little tempted to do that myself.
Because why do we get this message?
Like, you're trying to get people to look at you.
Yeah.
I look good.
Why do we use that as a shutdown?
Yeah, well, that modest versus humble is something white women could learn over with me onPatreon.

(01:13:46):
I'm going to get into the HUD of humility because modesty is put on and decided by someoneelse, right?
Like you shouldn't want attention from other people is what they're saying.
And in some ways I could actually get with that, you know, when people are just so wrongthere, But it's like, yeah, but it's focus your life on yourself, right?

(01:14:06):
But
You shouldn't center yourself in other people's narratives.
It's the center yourself so you don't center yourself.
Yeah, and again, I think it's also like all opinions are not the same, right?
So like you saying to me, wait while you're talking or like white women need to decenterthemselves versus like a straight white man saying that to me, very different, right?

(01:14:29):
Like you're coming from different places and I'm gonna take that very differently.
And like the messages that the patriarchy gives us about making ourselves smaller andshoving ourselves down, I think are.
absolute bullshit.
At the same time, you know, I always say like white men, like nobody wants to hear theiropinion right now, sit down.

(01:14:50):
And then people will be like, well, isn't that true for white women?
And I'm like, I think for the most part, yes.
Unless you're actively talking about whiteness or you have some very nice perspective thatother people are not bringing to the table yet, then yeah, you probably should just be
sitting down and listening.
if that you're doing that, I'm going to tell you, you're running into whiteness if you'renot, unless, yeah, unless you're just like only talking about your area of study.

(01:15:15):
But if it's on TikTok, it's a very, it's a way different experience.
It's an immersive experience.
If you're talking about yourself, talk about yourself, but that includes your whiteness,but you don't, you don't know.
idea that we can separate ourselves is like such a white idea, you know, and is such alike...
Like inclusion for you is a choice.

(01:15:36):
even this idea that you can't be smart and sexy at the same time.
Like, that's a white idea, you know?
That's like, I just like...
it's your attention from me and I only have, I can't give multiple attention.
So if you're hot, be hot.
same whether I'm in a bustier or a blazer, you know?

(01:15:59):
Like that's a white supremacy patriarchal messaging.
But black women being like, hey, white ladies, maybe like, what is it that you say?
Take a beat and a seat?
Like, that's important.
And both of those can exist at the same time.
And I think like, there's a place.
For me as a white woman to stand up to the patriarch and be like, no, no, no, shh, and sitdown and then still be able to come into a space where you're teaching me and I can be

(01:16:27):
like, shh, now I sit down.
Yeah.
The shush and shush.
Like the shush and shush your neighbor.
You know, turn to your neighbor and say shush, which is a black church type of vibe.
It's communal.
It's, that's part of your community.
But when white women are talking, they're not talking to their community.
They're talking either at just maybe themselves in a different audience.

(01:16:49):
Cause they just see everyone as everyone, you know, no color, no, but when someone tellsyou to be quiet, it matters why.
If I'm saying so, so that
I can focus on getting us out of here, then you know, Harriet Tubman, not everyone made itwith her because if you were about to ruin this for everybody else, you have to go.
Okay.

(01:17:09):
It's that serious.
We need to know who's with us and who's against us because this is life and death type ofthing.
Right.
If we're out in the world together.
Now this is the internet.
White women need to calm down so that they can see what's going on.
one of the things I have been thinking recently, it's just like we needed, like I think weneeded Donald Trump to be the president again.

(01:17:30):
Like we needed all of this ugliness to just be out in the open.
And the fact that like, we can say he's as horrible as we want, but 67 % of white womenwho voted, voted for him.
So like there is still so much of that.
Yeah, and we need to have that.
out in the open and we need to, you know, like I really, I'm like, it was gonna just goaway.

(01:17:58):
I think everyone was really just hoping that we were gonna elect Kamala and Mago was justgonna shrivel up and go away and we were gonna like ride off into.
the unsexist, unracial world and like.
like in what universe does that all these people who have been screaming these things,capital insurrection.

(01:18:19):
we're, I don't know, but, we're going to elect a black woman and those people disappear.
Did you disappear when he, like, what, what you guys don't think.
So you know what I mean?
I was like, what happens after that?
We need a what.
What happens after that?

(01:18:41):
It was just like, then we give up, right?
Then we get to give up again.
Yeah, when they hit, they really hit.
army.
uh
Right?
And that's funny because it's like one of my cultic cues is acronyms.
It's like that's a cue that you're in a thing.
And it's I've said this one, do they communicate or confuscate?
And I was like, that a word?
It is.

(01:19:01):
acronyms are self-explanatory, you know?
It's like...
it's like an abbreviation that's longer than the word.
That doesn't make any sense guys, you know, but whiteness will be like, we got to talklike this cause it's faster.
Why use more word when less word do trick type thing in the office.
But it's no, cause now we got to explain what all that that's a cult.

(01:19:25):
My acronyms and when they're good, they're good.
They stick.
Um, wait, what?
it one time, you know, like when I say, when I invented the scarf again, my husband waslike, no, that's silly.
But I'm like, all I do is one time say I take this scarf and I turn it into a cardiganwith crocheted or knitted sleeves.

(01:19:45):
And people are like, brilliant.
And then it's sticky, you know, it's a sticky name.
what I learned in business school.
took, I went to business school and I don't like when people say like waste of time andstart all over because you went there, you were in that cult, what did you, cause you were
there the whole time.
And I think we look at things binary like that.
Like if you were in a relationship and it didn't work out, you failed.

(01:20:07):
That's why people stuff.
You only, that's MLM quote.
If you, you only fail if you quit.
Okay.
Do both.
so Margaret Singer, I always say, you know, not Margaret Singer of white feminism, but I'mstill assuming Margaret Singer writing in 1995 was white feminism.
But anyway, I love everything she wrote.

(01:20:27):
And then she stepped out and did this 19 reasons the Marine Corps isn't a cult and likewildly disagree with every single one and think it's funny that she chose the cultiest one
to defend.
But one of the things she says,
is yeah, you need to make a list and you needed 19 reasons.

(01:20:49):
But one of things she says is because the Marine Corps gives you training and skills thatare useful in the outside world and cults don't do that.
Literally says, and I'm just like, no, stop, stop, stop.
They're different worlds?
Literally one of her points is like you get useful skills from them.

(01:21:11):
Also one of her points is the Marine Corps makes you exercise and cults don't.
And like, first of all, we were made to exercise one hour a day and the children of God atthat time that she was writing, but we also now know that exercise cults are a thing,
right?
So like stuff progresses, but like the idea that cults don't teach you anything, like.

(01:21:35):
I don't actually know her background.
I don't think she was ever in a cult.
She was just a psychologist that ended up studying it a lot.
But like, I speak three languages.
Like I can sell anything to anyone.
um You can't hurt me with your words, cause I've been here in cult.
You know, like there are so many skills and people will say this to me when I criticizethe army, right?

(01:21:56):
And they'll be like, well, do you appreciate anything that you got from the army?
And they do it as a shutdown.
And I'm just like,
yeah, but I can tell you a million things I learned from a cult that I appreciate.
And just because I got good skills out of it doesn't make it not a cult, right?

(01:22:17):
Everything I've survived.
And in fact, I've been heavily telling my audience right now that one of the things weneed to understand is that, first of all,
like white America that was allowed to read Harry Potter, they have no idea.
They have no idea the lives we lived and that those are our people in the White Houseright now.

(01:22:37):
And they just like can't understand that.
But we need to understand that we're all triggered as fuck, but that if you survived, ifyou made it through authoritarian control and you survived, you have skills for
resistance.
There's a reason
that black women are at brunch and taking care of themselves right now.

(01:22:59):
And it's not because they're not scared and they don't know how to fight, right?
It's just like you have skills to get through this.
Dissociation, while it's something we all work on not doing automatically in therapy, isactually a skill for surviving hard things.
Or they're like, what is it with like...

(01:23:21):
being terrible, um you don't have to interact with it presently.
humming, like humming while you're going through active trauma and grief as a thing thatlike helps your body survive it and just, mean, mind blown.
energy, because we still are spending energy, right?

(01:23:41):
There's resting, but we're always working.
Just like when I stopped working is when my actual, this work began.
So it depends on what your reference point is.
We're not doing what you're doing.
We're protesting you, unfortunately.
We're protesting white people niceness.
We're by not going to your thing, but we're doing our own thing.
black people to come save us.

(01:24:04):
please don't.
you can't say it's our fault.
But we're doing stuff.
We're having, we're all watching Love Island together.
And you know, now that black people will be on it sometimes, like there's lots of stuffgoing on.
Um, it's just not fighting.
End of sentence.
Fighting.
fighting the battles that have always been white people's battles.

(01:24:28):
We made our, like, you know what?
Okay, we're great rocking y'all.
That's what's happening.
Y'all are in the narcissist system.
And in order to get back, we gotta, are you with them?
Are you with those?
Are they about to salute something?
Come on.
All right.
And you should be okay with like, this is your people.

(01:24:48):
And it's how do you discern between who is safe and who isn't?
I don't know, do they follow me and listen?
I wish it wasn't me.
Well, eventually I think that happens, right?
That thing grows.
But like, if a white woman is spouting off things you need to do, think about and change,because you're not even doing that, right?
That's also a sign.
Why does she think she knows?

(01:25:11):
And even if she has expertise, she should still be like, this is Western, because any ofyour expertise is white man paperwork.
That's why I don't give credibility.
don't teach.
care about your credentials for many reasons.
You know, if you still believe that that's the only way to know if someone knows whatthey're talking about is if they tell you, they could lie, come on.
They tell you some things.

(01:25:31):
You have to stop weighting the words so heavily, you know?
And instead just be like, does this make sense?
Why would they be saying this to me?
What could they have done in their life that makes them this confident?
Do they follow white women with Mary?
That's not even enough, obviously.
But is there any interaction or like, now that I know, like you said, like when you wakeup, there has to be a before and after.

(01:25:56):
I said this years ago, it's like, I don't trust any white woman who doesn't say, I used tothink colorblind, blah, blah, blah.
I used to, cause that's how I do it.
So if you don't think that before was different from now, oh, you about to say somethingabout, I'm just, please don't yell at me, but I hate, I hate those.

(01:26:18):
Please be kind, please, this is genuine question.
just, I just, is this not dividing us more?
Yeah, it is.
starting to do that.
This is a genuine question, please don't yell at me thing.
And I'm like, look, I yell at people for two reasons.
When you show up and tell me that I'm wrong in my area of expertise and you have noestablished expertise in that area.

(01:26:42):
And when you as a civilian try to explain the military to me.
Those are the two reasons I yell at people.
It just happens to me that often.
But like, if you're not planning on doing that, you don't have to be afraid, even if Idon't.
understand your question, I'll be like, I need this to be asked in a different way.
I need more context.
I'm confused.
Like
look like not also, you could just not, you what, you're that afraid of being yelled at.

(01:27:06):
Just don't say anything and nothing will happen to you.
Why are you saying this?
Why are you saying this out loud?
It's so annoying.
I hate it.
And just like, Hey, are you saying the rhetorical questions?
Are you saying this, this and that because, and then they say more things as if that'swhat I'm saying.
Like you're not asking me.
I hate that because I value questions so much.

(01:27:26):
I I'm looking at your question as a real question.
And then.
Ew, because you don't mean that.
And you're just throwing questions out there?
Wow, what kind of life do you live where you are allowed to just talk?
thing I've been having a lot recently is like someone will show up, right?
It's a name I don't recognize.
So it's like you haven't interacted with me enough to kind of like be taking this criticaltone with me.

(01:27:51):
And if that's your first question, like, I'm also going to believe you when you told mewho you were.
And this person today, they try to come back with another question that was like a littleless competency.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, you're being quiet now.
Like you
If you want to know my credibility, I've established it.
Go do your homework.

(01:28:11):
like, it...
Alright?
Get it?
My hood.
Anyway, I'm working on one of those too.
Like, I think I said that in one of them.
was like, your victimhood.
Oh my God, that would be a good, uh like, graphic novel.
oh
or something.
So you really see that because you only get that.
We don't get that, you know, and it's blinding you to where you are actually a victimizeras well.

(01:28:36):
someone starts them hoods and it was white women and they had their own version.
Even when didn't allow them in, they were like our own.
And that was an MLM.
So, I mean, it failed just like everyone does.
America's an MLM.
Like we are a corporation nation.
Wait, it's just an idea in our heads.
I think that's why uh Mormonism is the quintessential American religion and it's also themost MLMA religion of all time.

(01:29:03):
Yes, recruit with your life, like with influence.
It's the nice, the nice-icism to the narcissism, the military and Mormonism.
It's like, that's what holds everything up, the polite and the police.
And that's what I've realized going with the secret lives and morbid lives and just likestudying these people, because they have center the right.
I mean, choose the right, sorry.

(01:29:23):
That's like their thing, they say.
Choose the right, choose the right, choose the right.
I'm like, my God.
And then even like, I compare it to Scientology more, because I think Scientology andmilitary.
You know, similar, like Scientology is an easy one.
And I would say this about Scientology.
Is the problem David Miscavige or is it Scientology?
It's Scientology, right?
There would be no David Miscavige without Scientology.

(01:29:45):
But y'all talking about Trump is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
David Miscavige is abusive and yeah.
Scientology is bro.
The belief in it, the belief that if L.
and Hubbard just came back, which is what a lot of people are waiting for.
They're like, yeah, no, he is bad.
David Miscavige is bad.
But Elrond Hubbard's coming back.
So they have a place made up for him.

(01:30:08):
They set up, they spend money and time and energy building up his place and putting outclothes for him.
And that keeps them.
who wrote the biggest Scientology book was like, put under L.
Ron Hubbard, it was more real.
And I'm like, oh, honey, come on, come on.
Like, I still think L.
Ron Hubbard was the real thing, you know, and then David Miscavige just ruined it.
And you're like, stop, stop.

(01:30:30):
believed in it and blah, blah.
Who the fuck, is that the point?
But yeah, they're still holding onto it.
They're like the white women of, you they're people.
The ones who are out, but.
trying to justify the worship of George Washington when he owned slaves.
mean, it's just...
Washington, say the ladder is as real as George Washington's teeth.

(01:30:53):
It's made of bodies, right?
It's not wooden.
It's made of enslaved bodies.
It's made up of body parts.
It ain't real.
You climbing the ladder, you climbing people.
Yeah.
made of body parts?
Yeah.
Cause once I, I like, yeah.
And it always is right in any MLM, any, any pyramid structure, the first one was America.

(01:31:16):
It's built on people being underneath you.
You're stepping on people to get where you have to be.
That's why there are no ethical billionaires, whether you're the one stepping on them orsomeone steps in front of you and lays their body out first so that you're not technically
stepping on anybody.
You're doing it through a person.
And this is one of the things that I've realized about patriarchy is that like hierarchyis patriarchal the idea of owning and like I don't even feel like as women I don't even

(01:31:48):
feel like as women we tend to believe that we own our children and like we grew those inour bodies and like here are men thinking they can just say and like own this and like
You know, I've been reading Howard Zinn's A People's History and it's like the matriarchalsocieties, the ones where men went into the women's family that the natives had here, like

(01:32:13):
they weren't perfect, but they were avoiding a lot of the problems that patriarchalsociety had.
bottom up, right?
It's centering the most vulnerable and the vulnerabilities, not centering avoiding threatsto the vulnerabilities.
it's also like just centering versus using this thing to climb high, right?

(01:32:40):
achieve it like this upper hand.
I have like a whole list of just these words that were just like higher ups.
Also ivory tower.
That's y'all be saying that.
you, is there, what is weird.
have a t-shirt that literally says it's not a cult.
It's an ivory tower because someone actually said that to me and I was like what whatreally what m

(01:33:03):
I don't even know what that is, you know, but it's like the things that we just take to begood.
Good money means more a lot.
It doesn't mean good, you know, and that's where the breakthroughs can start to happen.
It's not at a protest with a sign about brunch.
you'll appreciate this one that's like an artist thing that they say is like there's nostraight lines in nature, right?

(01:33:27):
So like if you're trying to draw a tree, you don't want your tree to be straight, right?
But there's lots of circles in nature.
So that I think is something interesting, you know?
And even just like, this is gonna sound so weird to say, right?
But even just like,
Okay, it sucks to have a whole bunch of bodies, but instead of taking those bodies andmaking a ladder, you could take those bodies and make a protective circle all around you.

(01:33:54):
Those bodies could be dead or alive and they could still be the protective circle aroundyou instead of just using it to like climb up high to uh a wobbly structure.
because they were like, I hear it's great up there.
you
We don't even have you been up there?
No, I just, heard it.
So, and meanwhile, they're all down here where all the fruits and stuff are growing ordown here with everything else.

(01:34:20):
That's where the community happens.
That's where all the, and they just go up there and then they're like, we don't even haveany garbage cans up here.
Throw it.
And then now they're throwing their garbage down to us, expecting us.
It's the whole thing.
Right.
But up, stop trying to go up higher up, level up, be the top dog rise to the top.
But that's all MLM stuff.
The 1 % gets ahead.

(01:34:42):
Where are you going?
Y'all are all sunburnt.
You got nothing going on.
You smell terrible because the showers are down here.
But so it's realizing that.
And if you come down from there, you will take a beat in a seat.
You'll have to, cause like you're running on the hamstring, chasing your tail.

(01:35:04):
And then it sounds like, I feel like what happens is like white women.
hear black women say you still need to do something and they're like, I'm doing something.
I'm holding onto so much.
It's like, well, stop.
I don't know, like get off.
Yeah, and I mean, this is probably a good place just to wrap this up today because likepeople ask me, they're like, okay, so now like, are we gonna survive this?

(01:35:26):
And I'm like, stop.
And they're like, okay, so how do we survive a cult we can't leave, right?
And I'm like, well, surviving long-term trauma, right?
You have to have joy, you have to have rest, and more and more I'm beginning to believeyou absolutely have to have community.
Mm-hmm.
And if you're not able to find those things, even in the craziest of times, right?

(01:35:51):
Like you're not gonna survive.
You're not gonna make it.
You're going to go mad.
Yeah.
And it's like, exactly.
And I always considered this a trauma thing and I've never thought about it as a whitenessthing.
But I, until very recently,
I was aware, as I was working on therapy, that I was like, I'm living my life for the nextthing, for the next achievement, for the next thing I'm working on.

(01:36:19):
And one of the reasons I started therapy was because I had to turn in my book a year inadvance of it coming out.
And I was like, I'm gonna go mad for a whole year.
I'm just waiting.
And of course that was the point, right?
It's like, no, you have to learn to live in your life and understand that like, this isthe hard thing on first soldiers on a deployment.

(01:36:42):
This is like a really hard mind fuck that it's just like, you just live here for a yearnow.
And it's like, just imagine someone just planted you in the slums of Brazil, but also withweapons and bad cafeteria food.
And they're like, you just live here for a year now.
And it's like, you just have to come to terms with that.
You live in a shipping container, you live in a shipping container for a year and most ofyour fun has been removed and you have to find, right?

(01:37:08):
Like one of the things that really bothers civilians about the war experience is all ofthe fuckery that soldiers participate in in between.
But like that's how you survive a year of trauma.
And that's why women are coming home with much higher PTSD rates than men because wedidn't get

(01:37:29):
a point where we could say the danger's not here and like put our stuff down and justrelax.
Also true for black women, I realize, as I'm, you know.
you know, it's it's a human experience.
And I think that's what I really want to get across.
And then we'll wrap up.
like, you know, when they said like, have to be like the every woman, I also was thinkingabout that.

(01:37:50):
But like, why?
I remember where I was going, because I was saying about listening to our old podcast, butI had been talking about how I was listening to stories from sorority girls trying to
recruit, but also from stripper story times.
also nurse, all these different
types of women because I relate to every single one in some way that as a human who wants,who wanted to understand where I fit in and all of that.

(01:38:18):
And I'm just hearing how the systems play out.
How is it like white women were trained to believe that if you don't exactly have theexperience that person is going through, you are different.
how boring is that?
Like, I have a weird, I wouldn't even say obsession, just a favorite kind of literature,both memoirs and stories, which is uh Women from the African Diaspora in London.

(01:38:47):
And like, just like I like certain whatever things, right?
And it's just like, I, first of all, from the top of that, can't relate at all.
Second of all, human experiences are human experiences and I find it to be exceptionallymoving and such great insight.
And also, and also fun because I haven't experienced that and it's something new that I'mlearning about.

(01:39:13):
you think these people don't know?
Oh, that's what it is.
You think they don't know how to write in a way you will be able to read.
Cause maybe you don't understand AAVE all the time or something because there's this thingwhere, so I had made a video about the sign.
my God.
keep saying we're going to go, but I had made a video about the sign and someone said,white women do this a lot.

(01:39:33):
I think what the sign was trying to say is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
A couple of actually a bunch of women.
telling me the intent behind the sign.
And I said, do you think you have special sign reading skills?
I don't have.
Do you think you read it in a white voice that understands what she's saying more than myblack ass could read a white woman sign and go, I just don't understand what her point is.

(01:39:58):
I just did a white people voice for my black hair.
Whatever you don't agree.
subconsciously think that because that's something I've learned on this show to not do andalso to recognize when other people are doing it.
And it's just like, no, stop, she speaks English, she didn't need a translator.
I it, I had the feeling I had, and you're saying she didn't mean any harm by it.

(01:40:18):
What?
What are you?
Who are you?
Who was that for?
No one means harm by anything except for the people who actually mean harm, and I'm nottalking to anybody in that vicinity.
They're not listening to me.
You know, I didn't even know who the lady was.
people tell me this all the time.
They're like, you're not breaking it down enough for the cult members.
And I'm always like, honey, I'm not doing this for the cult members.

(01:40:39):
I'm doing this for you to learn and then go get your cult members.
Like.
activated by the thing I said, this is about you.
Well, not me.
Cause you know, just for what it's worth, I just think this thing, Oh, this was, I wasteaching you something.
You weren't telling me something.
I said, why are you saying this?
It was like, well, I just intention, blah, blah.
What about my intentions?
Well, I would never assume negative intentions of you.

(01:41:02):
What are we even talking about?
Negative.
You think I think this person had negative intentions and that's what needs to becorrected right now.
Everything I said about the brunch sign.
But what needs to be addressed is the fact that I didn't, maybe I just didn't get it, youknow?
I just didn't understand that you meant hopeful.
trying to correct the power dynamic there, right?

(01:41:24):
Like with any creator, you can just assume that if you hang out long enough, they're gonnagive you their credentials.
You're gonna find out why they're here, but like, are they doing, right?
Like, why are they just like showing up and being like, you have to prove yourself to me?
Like, is it that they don't like that you're in power here, right?
Like where you said, like, I'm the teacher, like I'm the teacher.

(01:41:46):
I'm here to teach you something and I'm not, like I have this very firm line that I don'twatch people's response videos and I'm like, no, I didn't, I did not sign up for a three
minute conversation with you.
Like I'm not, we're not both here equally to learn.
Like I'm creating content for you to learn and I'm willing to engage up to thisperspective.

(01:42:07):
That doesn't mean I don't, yeah.
That doesn't mean I don't learn stuff.
I've been saying to a lot of people that are like, I just don't get it.
I'm like, okay, bye.
I teach graduate studies.
Like, you know, like you're not ready.
You're not ready yet, okay?
Come back, yeah.
like, just don't, okay, that's a narrator moment.
You're narrating Nancy right now.

(01:42:28):
I'm just telling you things about me.
I don't know you.
And even in that, like I think this is true for cults, for revolutions, right?
It's like the people that are halfway in the cult getting people out of there, like, youknow, like they're in a different place.
Like they still have to be sort of half cult and we need people that can do that.

(01:42:52):
I can't do that.
Like I'm over here teaching the graduate studies.
Like you have to already understand that cults are bad.
before you're gonna come.
If you find Rebecca's work, you already have to understand that white privilege exists andyou have it.
Otherwise, it's not for you yet.
And that's fine.
Maybe you do need some Robin DiAngelo.

(01:43:12):
There was a time in my life that Robin DiAngelo was the one that got through to me.
And now I can realize that I need better insight, if that makes sense.
um And I also think that there needs to be people at all those spots.
like doing that work but it really
you know, shape the path, as the changemakers people say, you know, like, keep people, youknow, this way, you know, you don't have to touch them.

(01:43:40):
You're just kind of like, yep, keep going, keep going.
understanding like what your role is, you know, like there was a time that I was leadingtroops and now like I'll be training people for the revolution, you know, like I'm in a
different stage.
Yeah, I'm in a different stage of my life.
And like this is what we're focused on.

(01:44:02):
But I also think again, like everything we're talking about, like there's a balancebetween intellectual humility, but also
Not everyone's opinions are valid or like not everyone's critiques hold the same weight.
Right, and your stuff isn't for everyone and white people are used to things being forthem, so they're gonna come in and be like, this doesn't make sense to me, and that's

(01:44:24):
okay.
It doesn't have to be for everyone, literally, you know?
That's okay.
the every woman and the concept that that even exists, right?
I don't know if you've ever seen the Ted Talk by Chimamanda.
I don't remember her last name, but it's called uh The Danger of a Single Story.

(01:44:49):
And she talks about like, she literally talks about being a white girl.
growing up in Africa, trying to write stories about apples and like never having tasted anapple, which I like super relate to because I grew up in Brazil, you know?
And, but because those were the stories she was reading, you know?
And that's why she thought that's what like fine writing was supposed to be about.

(01:45:11):
And then just like.
Yeah, realizing that like the concept of, and this is so like, this kind of is whatUnAmerican is about, right?
Like in college, I am reading Jane Austen, I wrote an honors thesis on Jane Austen and theevery woman perspective, right?
And like how she was so brilliant because by not putting physical features to it, shequote unquote made it the every woman.

(01:45:37):
And then I think like my journey believing like,
I could be that.
And that somehow you need to be that.
You need to be all things to all people in order to be good or in order to be valuable.
And just going through that journey and understanding that there is no such thing asun-American perspective.

(01:46:03):
There are just a variety of American perspectives.
The message that we're given is that this white American perspective is the Americanexperience.
And their reality is all the other perspectives have been there the whole time.

(01:46:23):
And it's just, how are we interacting with them?
Just, ooh, be every other one.
I like that, yeah.
um
it's such a toxic thing to say.
And just like, what's wrong with other girls?
They're cool.
I do?

(01:46:44):
Jeez, know, anti-identity, the walu.
Be every other.
Oh, Fran's snoring, so.
I love it, no.
um Yeah, the amount of recovering my brain has to do after conversations with you, Ithink, is, these are my workouts.

(01:47:05):
Like this is my workout for today.
I sweated a lot.
We did some good work here.
Yeah, the emotional workouts matter, right?
Cause I get them too.
I get worked up and then I'm just like, okay, at least it went somewhere.
This does something people will identify with all sides of this.
like, okay, that I could feel good about if I had just gone out like.

(01:47:29):
Ha ha ha ha!
And then you just sit down and do you have to tell everyone you went in order for it togo.
m
or it didn't happen.
Yeah, picture perfect.
Work on that phrase.
What is that?
Did I tell you?
So my husband and I, we fell in love in Afghanistan, right?
So I didn't have that many ways of testing that he wasn't just a normal straight whiteman.

(01:47:51):
So wasn't until we got home and go travel abroad.
And we literally spent $250 to swim with dolphins, $250 to buy the photos, $250 to gorappel down into a...
cenote and then $250 to buy the photos.
And we made the decision right there and then we're like, we don't buy photos anymore.

(01:48:12):
Like we go do the experience.
If it's an experience where you can't take photos, we just have that memory.
And like every once in a while we'll be at some aquarium and be like, that's a really goodphoto.
And then we're just like, nope, we don't buy photos.
And it has just been like such a good rule in our life.
And just like.

(01:48:32):
because you don't actually realize the amount of stuff you're not gonna do because youcan't afford to do it and buy the photos, right?
Like you have to be able to afford twice as much for like the memory of the thing.
And like, I mean, I once paid hundreds of dollars for a video of myself falling out of anairplane.
And like, do you know how much I watched that?
Like, no, no.

(01:48:53):
like another proof of purpose.
That's another one I've been trying to use.
But not a lot of people know the phrase proof of purchase, but like there's a lot of needfor proof of purpose, like announcing everything whiteness.
Like that's why Mormonism MLMs, because everything is documented.
Like they need you to document your life in order for other people to want your life.

(01:49:15):
I mean, I think that's really good.
And I also, like, there's a lot for you to go into that because I have been thinking, solike, I'm a white woman.
I don't care if I get a receipt.
If I do, I usually throw it away before I'm out of the store.
And I think about that a lot.
Like, I think about the amount of privilege that I have yesterday when I was scanningstuff at a thrift store and I put half the stuff in my bag without tagging it because I

(01:49:42):
didn't realize the thing wasn't doing it.
then when the machine realized and it stopped me and the lady of color came over and verynicely counted everything in the bag, at no point was there any like suspicion directed
toward me, at no point was there any like you're doing this on purpose, even though I'msure that miss scanning stuff is a huge form of shoplifting.

(01:50:03):
And it's just like, never, I am never afraid.
Not only am I not afraid that I'm...
gonna be accused of stealing something, but I'm not afraid that I'll have a problemreturning it without a receipt or like people being suspicious that I stole it.
So, proof of perch, yeah, yeah.
But I like that.

(01:50:24):
I like that connection to proof of purpose as well.
Cause like you have to have, yeah.
And just on demand, right?
Like there's this.
this was something that someone brought up today in my comments that one of the thingsthat Nazi Germany had going for them was people already had to carry documents around all

(01:50:44):
the time to prove who they were.
That's a freedom we are supposed to have in America, right?
If you get pulled over and you get a ticket for driving without a license and you have alicense,
in theory, all you have to do is show up and prove that you had a license at that time,because it's not illegal to be existing in public as an American without an ID on you.

(01:51:12):
so because of that, just adding the one ID the Nazis wanted you to carry wasn't a bigdeal.
And so like this, like being accustomed to proof of purchase, like that kind of stuff,like it is, it is authority creep and like,
We don't believe you if you don't have a receipt, if you're a certain type of person.

(01:51:35):
And like, I do returns, I do returns all the time and I just generally don't have to havea receipt.
my God, I couldn't even imagine.
I feel like, and even still like, but yeah.
I gotta go, I wrote so many things down.
This is really good.
this is the kind of stuff I feel like this is the journey, right?

(01:51:56):
Like never would have occurred to me before.
Now I literally think about it all the time as I'm crumbling up my receipt and throwing itaway.
And then the next phase is like, now how am gonna evolve to actually sort of attack thisor try to help?
Right?
It's like, for me, that's how it's been.
It's like, you realize the privilege and then...

(01:52:16):
Honestly, it's just turning and telling your neighbor.
being like it doesn't exist, right?
Like what are we gonna do with that?
How are we gonna address that?
And that's what we need white women to just bring the Karen energy to.
Like bring your Karen energy to talking to the manager for stopping the black personinstead of you.

(01:52:37):
energy wisely.
Don't yell at the black women on the internet, even if she's wrong.
Just don't because that energy could be used not there.
Even on your own joy, but just like correcting, correcting a black person.
You are not a correctional officer.
And if you are, get away from us, you know, go away.
But they love, I'm correcting your feelings with that.

(01:53:00):
You know?
Be it's white or wrong, just you're white and wrong.
So just like go away.
Yeah.
Or stick around and listen to what people have to say, but like being yelled at, you'll beall right.
Yep, that's very true.
Oh, great conversation.

(01:53:20):
Thanks everyone for listening to us today.
Please follow Rebecca at her White Women Whisperer Patreon.
That is where you get all of her best stuff.
Behind the paywall, stopping cheap.
And ah you can also find me on Patreon.
You can find the videos of this on YouTube at Knitting Cult Lady.

(01:53:43):
And you can also find a chapter from Rebecca soon in my book, uh The Culting of America,which comes out January 20th.
We're gonna be in New York City on June 25th, next Wednesday.
And uh there will be details in the links.
Come see us.

(01:54:04):
Bye everybody.

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Episode 40 | Is Whinnie the Pooh A WS Cult?

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 40 | Is Whinnie the Pooh A WS Cult?