Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 57 | Who's Speaking Matters
Release Date: 11/14/2025
Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 58 | Puritan Whiteness
Hey White Women
This episode is a wide-ranging conversation between Daniella and Rebecca about the everyday and systemic ways whiteness shapes culture, identity, and behavior. They discuss how beauty standards, camera technology, tanning culture, and even small tech features like autocapitalization reflect racial bias. A major theme is how white women often derail or center themselves in conversations about race, sometimes unintentionally, through whitesplaining or over-explaining. They explore beauty labor, the politics of hair and appearance, and how the same practices (such as time-consuming beauty...
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Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 57 | Who's Speaking Matters
Hey White Women
This episode features a deep, nuanced conversation between Daniella Mestyanek Young and Rebecca about whiteness, power, community, cultural disconnection, and the complicated dynamics of speaking about social issues publicly. They explore how race, gender, and perceived authority shape who is “allowed” to say what, and how society reacts differently depending on the identity of the speaker. Their discussion spans topics such as the weaponization of “niceness,” internal policing within white communities, the loss of joy in white American culture, the effects of cult-like systems,...
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Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 56 | Enablism
Hey White Women
In this wide-ranging and incisive conversation, Daniella Mestyanek Young and Rebecca (White Woman Whisperer) examine how white womanhood functions within patriarchal and white supremacist systems. They discuss cultural habits like performative complaining, body-shaming as small talk, and the defense of harmful relationships as coping mechanisms inherited from historical gender norms. The two connect these behaviors to broader enablism within oppressive systems, drawing parallels between interpersonal and systemic patterns of abuse. They explore the emotional labor of deconstruction—how...
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Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 55 | Weaponizing Whiteness
Hey White Women
In this episode, Daniella Mestyanek Young (Knitting Cult Lady) and Rebecca (White Woman Whisperer) unpack the process of recording the audiobook version of Daniella’s upcoming book and explore how their collaboration reflects deeper dynamics of race, privilege, and creative responsibility. They discuss rejecting the “easy” or most cost-effective route in favor of ethical decisions that honor Black voices and resist capitalist shortcuts. The conversation then broadens into weaponizing whiteness for good—how white women can leverage social privilege to confront injustice—and the...
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Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 54 | White Rapture Day
Hey White Women
Rebecca (White Woman Whisperer) and Daniella (“Knitting Cult Lady”) explore how white American culture is shaped by control, conformity, and suppression of individuality—from the witch trials to modern social norms. They connect white supremacy’s emphasis on stoicism and sameness to military culture, patriarchal family structures, beauty standards, and cult dynamics. Their conversation also unpacks the social coding of “whiteness” as denial of self, contrasting it with cultures where expression, emotion, and difference are normalized. The episode concludes with reflections on...
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Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 53 | It Can Be That Easy
Hey White Women
In this episode, Daniella (“Knitting Cult Lady”) and Rebecca (“White Woman Whisperer”) have a deep, layered conversation about deconstructing whiteness, celebrity culture, and over-identification through the lens of Taylor Swift. Daniella shares her personal process of deconstructing her identity as a lifelong Swiftie and connecting it to her broader work dismantling white womanhood and American cultic structures. Rebecca brings in a critical Black feminist lens, exploring the difference between individualism and community, white women’s relationship to innocence and denial, and how...
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Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | ep52 | Consumer Privilege
Hey White Women
In this episode, Rebecca and Daniella explore the intersections of race, consumer privilege, tone policing, and digital labor—particularly how these dynamics play out for women of color online. Rebecca revisits her viral “caption gate” controversy, unpacking how white women often use moralized accessibility language (“just add captions”) as a covert way to assert dominance and demand labor. The two also dissect the cultural discomfort around Black women expressing anger, the dehumanizing expectations placed on female creators, and the myth that public educators or creators owe...
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Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady and White Woman Whisperer | ep51 | White Woman Tears
Hey White Women
This episode features Daniella (“Knitting Cult Lady”) and Rebecca (the “White Woman Whisperer”) unpacking themes of violence, privilege, whiteness, cult dynamics, and the demands placed on public figures to perform morality online. They reflect on recent events, including reactions to political violence and how white Americans process (or avoid processing) martyrdom, policing, and systemic violence. The conversation critiques the idea that “violence is never the answer” as a privileged stance, explores how audiences police creators’ responses to current events, and discusses the...
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White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | ep50 | Paradox of Proving Yourself
Hey White Women
In this conversation, Daniella Mestyanek Young (“Knitting Cult Lady”) and Rebecca (aka “White Woman Whisperer”) explore how cult dynamics show up in the U.S. military, publishing, and everyday systems of power. Daniella shares insights from her forthcoming book Culting of America, reflecting on the accessibility of ideas across mediums (books, documentaries, TikTok), and the challenges of being taken seriously while calling the military a cult. The discussion ranges from personal deconstruction journeys, the paradox of proving oneself, and the caste-like structures of whiteness, to...
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Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady and White Woman Whisperer | ep49 | Un-Gaslighting Whiteness
Hey White Women
This episode brings Daniella Mestyanek Young and Rebecca into a candid conversation about cult dynamics, purity culture, whiteness, and the process of building communities rooted in truth rather than secrecy or shame. They unpack how cult logic—like the weaponization of secrets, unquestioned authority, and worship of the written word—maps onto broader systems like white supremacy and American culture. Daniella reflects on her work writing Uncultured and her upcoming projects, highlighting how her extreme experiences serve as an entry point for others to recognize parallels in their own...
info_outlineThis episode features a deep, nuanced conversation between Daniella Mestyanek Young and Rebecca about whiteness, power, community, cultural disconnection, and the complicated dynamics of speaking about social issues publicly. They explore how race, gender, and perceived authority shape who is “allowed” to say what, and how society reacts differently depending on the identity of the speaker. Their discussion spans topics such as the weaponization of “niceness,” internal policing within white communities, the loss of joy in white American culture, the effects of cult-like systems, excommunication and belonging, cultural appropriation versus cultural inheritance, family structures, consumerism, and community care.
They also delve into how white people often center themselves even in conversations about harm, the dangers of nostalgia in healing from narcissistic systems, and the structural reasons why many white Americans lack the skills of communal living and mutual aid. Rebecca and Daniella reflect on their own identities, histories, and complexities — including Daniella’s upbringing in Brazil and a cult, and Rebecca’s experiences navigating whiteness as a Black Jewish woman — while interrogating the pressure to “fit” into expected cultural norms.
Connect with Rebecca at:
Connect with Daniella at:
Preorder for Culting of America: The Culting of America PRE-SALE (SHIPS BY JANUARY 20, 2026) – Knitting Cult Lady
Uncultured by Daniella Mestyanek Young
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UnAMERICAN Videobook
Key Takeaways
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Identity shapes how messages are received, especially around race; white men can say things without risk that women or people of color cannot.
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White women often police one another to maintain perceived safety, conformity, and social order within whiteness.
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Passing, conformity, and “basic white girl” scripts are forms of survival that create long-term opportunity costs for white women seeking cultural self-understanding.
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Joy was systematically removed from white culture, often in direct opposition to Black joy, and reclaiming joy requires conscious work without appropriating Black resistance frameworks.
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Cultural practices like dancing, extended family structures, and community care have been stripped or flattened in white American culture but are thriving elsewhere.
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White discomfort at being excluded from conversations often masks entitlement to oversight and control rather than genuine curiosity.
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Community care is underdeveloped in many white American spaces, leaving people unprepared when systems fail them.
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Exiting harmful systems has “exit costs,” including the loss of community — even when that community was not healthy.
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Nostalgia can obscure the realities of harmful dynamics, especially when leaving cults, whiteness, or tightly policed identity groups.
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Book clubs and structured discussion spaces can offer safer environments for people doing personal or collective deconstruction work.
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Appropriation vs. inheritance: reclaiming cultural elements (dance, language, music) from one’s heritage differs from adopting something not your own.
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White insistence on conceptual thinking (vs. presence and relational curiosity) limits connection and reinforces distancing.
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“What are you?” asked by white people is classification; asked within communities of color, it’s relational.
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Joy is resistance is a Black concept; white people can learn from it without co-opting it.
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Consumerism as identity (e.g., commercial Christmas) distracts from communal practices and meaning.
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Whiteness confuses individualism with safety, leading to scarcity thinking and overreliance on systems rather than people.
Chapters
00:00 The Power of Identity in Conversations
02:54 Navigating Conversations on Race and Gender
05:38 The Impact of White Voices in Social Discourse
08:30 Cultural Differences in Community Care
11:14 The Fear of White America
13:58 Understanding Familial Language and Boundaries
23:20 Understanding Family Structures
25:59 Challenging Consumerism and Community Building
29:43 The Complexity of Joy and Resistance
33:24 Cultural Appropriation and Identity
41:28 Navigating Community and Belonging
45:58 Navigating Exit Costs and Opportunity Costs
48:29 Exploring Cultural Identity and Nostalgia
51:22 The Complexity of Cultural Conversations
54:47 Building Inclusive Spaces in Book Clubs
58:37 Anticipating Attention and Navigating Identity
01:08:07 The Impact of Evangelical Backgrounds
01:11:52 Cultural Identity and Deconstruction
01:13:29 The Emotional Toll of Leaving Cultures
01:17:59 Systemic Issues and Personal Reflection
01:22:40 Navigating Relationships and Awareness
01:28:03 Community and Ongoing Learning
Produced by Haley Phillips