Don't tell me to "breath"

I have always been a terrible speller, just ask my second grade teacher, or my parents, or probably anyone reading this blog. It is better with typing than hand-writing, and I am better at editing others than myself, but it is always a struggle. I have to stay on top of it, especially because I know people are paying me to pay attention to detail, although they are also paying me to speed read, which cuts in the opposite direction. Which is to say that this isn't a rant about people who don't know the difference between "breath" and "breathe" or "draw" and "drawer" or "won't" and "wont" or any number of other words we get wrong because we were typing fast, or lazy or didn't understand the rule.
This is a rant about a very specific type of email I get much too often, in which a sender (usually older and male, although not always) responds to my concerns by telling me to "breath." Usually these emails come from someone I am on a board with or a pro se (self represented) opposing litigant; I have never gotten one from another attorney, although that does not mean it won't happen in the future.

Here is what  happens:

1) The event, some action is taken or occurs which concerns me. It usually has to be something that really sits with me for a while, something big, a client or colleague behaving badly, an important decision being made too causally, something that is going to impact more than me alone.

2) My irritation keeps distracting me and I write a letter. This letter will end up being multi-bullet pointed, written, condensed, fleshed out, made as clear as possible while still conveying my grave concerns. It generally is a couple days between the event an when I send the letter to the interested party.
Usually (ideally) this letter will then serve to start a conversation on the concerns, or I will be told that it is too late to address it but my concerns are noted, or it is ignored. All of these are valid responses, some of them are more irritating than others but I don't impugn them as options. However, that is not always the response a recipient will give.

3) I receive a patronizing reply, very often where the author tells me more than once to "breath." Then I become so angry I have to step away from my email and will generally ignore the person until we absolutely must interact again. It isn't the most mature approach, but it is better than the reply I would deliver if I let my baser instincts react.

Here is why the visceral and violent response:

It implies that I am hysterical, in a fit of emotion that is rendering me unable to breathe. Throughout history women with strong opinions were considered crazy, dangerous, bad mothers, unfit wives. The victims of the Salem Witch Trials we mostly single or widowed women who were able to survive alone, they stayed alive as long as their work didn't upset the male political and religious leaders in their communities. First generation feminists trying to get suffrage were locked away in mental institutions, force fed and had their children taken away from them because they were "crazy" and hysterical. In the 1950, 60, 70's women who were dissatisfied with their lot as wives and mothers without intellectual stimulation were medicated into placidity. There is a long history of women with opinions being told that they are crazy. While the battles I occasionally take on are not those of the women before me the reaction I get when I am told to calm down and shut up is part of that legacy.

If you call someone crazy, or hysterical or (my favorite buzz word) "emotional" it means that they are not thinking logically, analytically, (like a man) and you don't have to pay attention to what they are saying. So my angry response comes from the fact that whoever wrote that email clearly didn't take the time read what I wrote to them.

And to make it all worse they couldn't even do me the courtesy of responding with the correct word.