@Impossible_PhD Hopefully future studies try to gauge the distance (i.e. miles) and typical migration patterns of these moves. I'm thinking of how a lot of studies of climate change related internal movement often show that people typically move to the nearest perceived safe location, and the Great Migration itself had a lot of "typical" migration routes (e.g., I seem to recall that the Black migrants to Chicago and New York typically came from different parts of the South).

I think I am also locking in on this because I am about to write some essays on things that I know are very tender areas for some people (women changing their names, not having children) and I am prematurely exhausted by this current cultural norm that when you talk about this kind of thing you're supposed to issue a million disclaimers so people's feelings aren't hurt. I find this kind of thing terribly anti-intellectual, as if any one person's writing is the judge and jury of your own life.

Recent examples include a friend going "my man my man" anytime I talk about how seriously traumatizing my divorce has been or friends who grew up in the midwest and now live elsewhere who seem to be triggered by me discussing the reality that there is a lot of significant anti-midwest/anti-southern bias baked into a lot of mainstream journalism, cultural, and public policy work centered in coastal areas (like I get accused of calling people coastal elites even when I don't use that language!)

Are there any great essays for how to handle your haters? I would especially love stuff from Midwesterners/women/people who tend to be very outspoken. A frequent experience I have is simply narrating the facts of my life/things I've experienced and how that's shifted my life outlook, and it seems to set some people off in very weird ways. Sometimes I'm like, well I'm the common denominator so maybe it's me, but other times I think me doing my thing can make people project their own insecurities.