We decided to call this special International Women’s Day/Women’s History Month episode of Outlook “Us and Them”, a slight altering from the term us vs them, relating to a chapter in the memoir we’re featuring with this interview Kerry did for a gender studies course she recently took.

“Uncultured” is a book by Daniella Mestyanek Young, a writer and scholar who’s studied organizational psychology and group dynamics, specializing in extreme groups. We wanted to put out this show to show that Outlook is about disability, but that it’s bigger than this one single intersectionality we share about and how systems are held together to serve the majority, leaving out the needs and rights of the minority.

The book is about the cult Daniella was born into, the most notorious religious sex cult in the world called The Children of God, but in this discussion she speaks mostly about how she then fled that and joined the US military and the extreme sexism she found waiting for her in the army.

Mestyanek Young explains the things she expected when joining the military and the things which surprised her. She talks to Kerry about a particular vest that was designed to stop bullets but of which was not designed to save the lives of all its wearers equally, and about her meeting with President Obama and the biases he himself held upon their meeting.

Identity. Toxicity. Trauma. This “agent of change” did her part to improve the experience of women in the army, in regulation and in culture, in a place where structure is key and rigid systems harm those who don’t fit the mold. And now her book is making a difference in how we stand up against harmful institutions where change is badly needed. Humans have always needed each other, safety in numbers with a group being protection, but Daniella wasn’t only under threat in war on the battle field. She was under threat every day from the harmful sexism rampant in the male dominated military world she was in, hearing from the very beginning that she should expect to get raped at some point by a fellow soldier because that’s just how it was in the army.

This scholar of extreme group behaviours tells us why there’s no us without a them and vice versa. Kerry read Uncultured and highly recommends it. You don’t have to have been in the military or in a religious cult for that matter to see yourself in its pages. Buy the memoir at this link:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/uncultured-a-memoir-daniella-mestyanek-young/17856062

And for more on Daniella and the book:

https://www.uncultureyourself.com