[sgath92]

> you're raised speaking German first, so that you can "learn your heritage" (read: always feel the divide between yourself and the rest of the country).

This isn't a fair take IMO. The Amish are not the only groups of Pennsylvania Dutch that are native German speakers, and many of these groups are not counter culture isolationists like the Amish are. The Moravians for example were banned from the colony of New York because they went there to represent the Mohicans when the New York colony tried to illegally rob them of the lands they'd been promised in treaties. Like many of the non-anabaptist (that's Amish & Mennonite sects) groups of Pennsylvania Dutch they were fully on board with participating in broader US culture as long as they could do so while speaking German and engaged in all the same businesses, government/legal/military roles that the rest of society did.

People just think of the Amish by default in these conversations because in part they're more visible, and in part because the non-isolationist groups scaled back the German speaking in the wake of the two world wars.

> Patriarchy in all decisions

In the non-anabaptist communities this is not like that anymore than it is for broader culture. Traditional medicine practitioners in the Pennsylvania Dutch- for example the pow-wowers, were socially expected to only train an apprentice/protégé who is of the opposite sex, and further socially expected to provide their services for free. To stray from either of those was (and still is) a major taboo.