October 28, 2014 • 46 mins
Why is gang membership among girls on the rise? Cristen and Caroline explore the history of girl gangs and what gang life means for young women past and present.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about girls in
gangs as well as all girl gangs. And this idea
first popped into my head when we were searching for
(00:25):
our episode on Daddy's Girls, and particularly looking at the
nineteen forties and fifties when juvenile delinquency and teen female
sexuality was really freaking a lot of adults out in
America and gang participation was part of that. That was
(00:46):
kind of the first time that girl involvement in gangs
really started to come to the forefront of our national attention.
And as we'll talk about in more detail, lots of
movie these about those teams that adults were afraid of.
What better way to exercise your societal fears than through
(01:06):
pop culture exactly and terrible B movies, that's right, maybe
even some C or D movies. But we have to
start by looking at some numbers from today, and this
is coming from the National Gang Center, who reported that
from female gang participation stayed pretty even at just under
(01:29):
ten percent female, but there was a huge jump reported
in by the U s Department of Justice, which said
in a report that girls were making up twenty to
forty six percent of youth gang membership, which is a
pretty well, it's not only a pretty big jump, but
it's also a pretty significant like window. Yeah, and that
(01:52):
wide window, and also the question of whether that is
a jump brings up an issue that comes up a
lot when you start research reaching girls involvements in gangs,
because historically there has been really really poor and sometimes
just non existent data collection going on, because a lot
of law enforcement agencies have completely overlooked female involvement in
(02:17):
gangs because there has been this long standing idea that
if a girl is in any way associated with a gang,
she's just an accessory. She might just be a girl friend,
she might just be really just a sex object for
the gang. She's not really doing any of the actual
gang activity. So it's only been in really recent years
(02:38):
that more law enforcement agencies and obviously the Department of
Justice are starting to pay closer attention. So that jump
could be a reflection of them actually just starting to
pay attention. Yeah, Because I mean this definitely isn't a
new development. I mean, for hundreds of years, people have
just looked at women or girls and thought, there's no
way that you have chosen a life of crime, of
(03:00):
serious crime. You're probably just some sort of hanger on
who does like the carrying of weapons or the delivery
of items that are stolen or drugs or whatever. You're
just a drug mule. You're a girl. Come on. But
there is one pattern that when it comes to all
girl gangs that seems to be pretty consistent and jumped
(03:21):
out to me, which is that you see them more
often girl gangs and just girl involvement in gangs in
smaller cities and towns. Um. This is going back to
that data from the National Gang Center. They found that
nearly half of gangs outside larger cities are reported to
have female gang members, compared with around one and four
(03:44):
in larger cities. Again, the question is what's going on
with data collection here, But I noticed that in a
number of the sources that we read talking about how
it's usually in smaller cities and towns where girls tend
to join up with gangs or start their own gangs
more often. Yeah, and I do wonder if that has
to do with just available resources, available activities for kids
(04:07):
who are in school who are school age. Um, if
that's just part of that whole trend, yeah, I would
definitely think so. But yeah, as far as trends go,
and I did mention, you know, gangs hundreds of years ago.
Let's let's travel back into girl gang history. So one
good thing to keep in mind as we go through
this history of gangs, in particularly girls and gangs, is
(04:29):
that the factors fueling gang formation and gang involvement have
remained largely constant for the past century plus, specifically factors
of poverty and economic marginality and domestic instability. Right, And
so I mean this makes sense, This makes total sense
(04:50):
that this is a trend or these are trends that
you would see over the past several hundred years that
have remained constant because young people who don't have re
sources at their disposal, maybe don't have a stable, safe
home environment, are more likely to go out in search
of that stability or just in search of plain things
(05:11):
to do. Yeah, And so this brings us to the
eighteen seventies in Britain where we have the emergence of
the all female forty Elephants sometimes called the forty Thieves gang,
which was first mentioned in newspapers in eighteen seventy three.
And these ladies, these elephants. So it was a slick operation,
(05:33):
this was not. This was in contrast too to these
all male gangs running around the same time doing lots
of smash and grab jobs. These women kept a pretty
low profile. Yeah, and they really took advantage of the
fashion of the day in order to swipe all of
their jewelry and whatnot. Uh. They wore specially tailored coats,
(05:55):
commer buns, muff skirts, bloomers, and hats, all with hidden
pockets where they could stuff things in. And so while
it might have been unfortunate as a woman of the
day to have to like wear your petticoes, where are
your big bustle where all this stuff, it was great
for hiding diamond rings well. And it also makes sense
that that's happening at this time as we start to
(06:15):
see the emergence of this consumer culture where you're going
out more often to go and buy goods, going to bazaars,
going and gazing at the things in the store windows.
And the woman who really took advantage of this, the
leader of this gang for a time was one any
Diamond described in the Guardian newspaper as the cleverest of thieves.
(06:38):
And in addition to being a clever thief, it was
also just easier for young women to go through the
stores and snatch up all sorts of things and hide
them in there, especially tailored muffs and bloomers, because shopkeepers
weren't assuming that, okay, we should watch out for these girls, because,
like you said, Caroline, people tend to not associate intentional
(07:03):
criminality with women. This goes back to our episode on kleptomania, right,
But of course shopkeepers did eventually wise up to the
fact that all of these women were just spiriting away
all sorts of fancy, shiny objects into those hidden pockets
in their clothes. Um. And so we were reading one
source that was talking about shopkeepers who would see these
(07:24):
women coming and would just immediately like shutter the shop
or keep them out. But the police, who were starting
to wise up too and realizing, oh, these women might
be up to something, they would show up at certain
houses of certain thieves, but the women would have totally
cooked the books and basically presented the equivalent of receipts
for everything, like oh, no, I I got all this
(07:45):
furniture or these weapons or these you know, diamond rings,
totally legit. Yeah, and as we get into the nineteen twenties,
because the forty Elephants lasted through the nineteen fifties in Britain.
But once you get into you been nineteen twenties, it
starts to take on an air of the blingering, which
(08:06):
if you're not familiar with it, it was this small
group of teenagers in l A who are actually from
wealthy backgrounds, who broke into celebrities houses, including Paris Hulton
and Lindsay Lohan, to steal all their things so that
they could feel closer to the celebrities. And The Guardian
reported that quote, their lifestyles were in pursuit of those
(08:27):
glamorous movie stars, combined with a decadent living of nineteen
twenties aristocratic flapper society. And apparently they threw fabulous parties,
which now makes it sound like I'm really glorifying this
female gang culture. But yeah, but this is another I mean,
speaking of trends that have been around forever in terms
of gang culture and women in gangs and young girls
(08:49):
and gangs, I mean, this is just another thing. The
desire to emulate the rich and wealthy, and you know
the life of leisure that you see around you wanting
to emulate that, and I mean that's something you see
today too. I mean, there are so many reasons for
people and young girls in particular to join gangs, but
one of the constants is just wanting stuff, wanting cool stuff. Well,
(09:12):
and that relates back to that issue of economic marginality.
Um So if we go to the US, though, in Frederick,
Milton Thrasher publishes the seminal book on early gang participation
called the Gang, a Study of one thousand, three thirteen
Gangs in Chicago. And what's fascinating about this book, and
(09:39):
it is huge, is that girls in gangs or associated
with gangs get only a passing mention. Right. Basically, he
explains girl gangs being quote unquote exceedingly rare by saying
that girls lack the gang instinct while boys have it.
And he attributes this to social patterns of behavior. Girl
(10:00):
just don't do that. In addition to well, girls are
just better supervised. They're kept closer to the home. But
there was one passage where he at least acknowledged that
girls do participate with gangs sometimes, although quote gangs composed
entirely of girls are very rare, and he cites one
(10:20):
quote unquote bandit queen nicknamed Honey, who apparently had become
known in newspapers, and he writes it is alleged that
her gang has engaged in numerous robberies and that she
was accustomed to threaten them with a gun if they
got yellam so, I mean you go, Honey. I don't know.
I don't want to pistol whip by Honey. Staying away
(10:42):
from that bandit queen just yeah, keep on her good side.
But um so, when we move into the nineteen forties
and fifties, during the war and the post war period
in the United States, there was a reported rise of
all girl gangs in New York City and in Detroit,
but they tended to us the female extensions of all
male gangs, not necessarily going out and doing their own thing,
(11:04):
but working alongside all male gangs, and they would do
things like conceal weapons for them, run errands, even spy
on some rival gangs. And that's a similar role that
girls and gangs are still associated with, just being accessories
to the male gang activities. But there was one example
(11:25):
of one of these all girl gangs that was a
version of an all guy gang in Detroit at the
time called the Shakerrets, and they were an offshoot of
the Shakers. And in the book Girls, Gangs, Women and Drugs,
there was a quote from a former Shaker at and
she said girls were the sister gang without the boys.
(11:45):
There wasn't anything. Does that name? Those strike you as
just like a doo wop group from the fifties or sixties.
I think of the Shakers, the religious Shakers that I
thought of that make all those neat crafts I know
when I really want, Okay, So yeah, when I first
read this bullet I was like, wait, a girl version
of the Shaker I guess there's sort of like a
(12:05):
religious gang, you could say, you could say, one could say,
but we do have to briefly mention over in Britain
in the nineteen fifties, probably at Caroline. I don't want
to speak for you, but but it was this This
was my favorite girl gang in quotes, because they really
weren't so much about criminality. But we have to mention
them because they were kind of great. Yeah, the teddy girls.
(12:28):
I thought they were super awesome. I mean, maybe people
at the time. Well, definitely people at the time did
not think they were so awesome. But I mean this
is this is back to that whole emergence of teen
culture and essentially teenagers. These teenagers in particular, um fulfilling
every grown ups worst fear about what young people were doing. Basically,
(12:50):
they weren't necessarily all engaged in horrible criminal activity. Certainly
there was an element of criminal activity, but it was
mostly associated with the boys, while whereas the girls were
just wearing these fabulous clothes and sort of accompanying them
on the on their jaunts through the streets. Yeah, they
were the lady friends, the lady compatriots of the teddy boys.
(13:11):
And a lot of these kids were from and around London,
in working class neighborhoods. And it's notable that this is
happening after World War Two, meaning that these kids grew
up in an era of rationing. They did not have
much and it's fascinating that a lot of their identity
was in the fashion that they wore, which that's still
(13:33):
something that we see today in gangs obviously, but the
Teddy boys would wear these dandy suits almost and I
mean that literally, like like dandy's um wearing these Edwardian
fashions that briefly came into vogue on Savo Row. But
then as soon as the teddy boys started wearing them,
they're like, oh no. And the teddy girls were similarly
(13:56):
like high style outfits with these hats and their hair
would be done up and they'd be wearing high necked blouses.
I mean, they looked like very serious young women. Yeah,
but I love they had their what we would call
boyfriend jeans. Now they had their boyfriend jeans on that
were rolled up with their cigarette and their failures. They
smoked cigarettes for sure. And like you said, the teddy
(14:18):
girls were more about fashion than rough housing because even
at that time, the girls roles were still focused around
the home. They probably weren't allowed so much to go
out and run around the streets. But I love it.
And some of the things we were reading about teddy
girls and teddy boys. There was a picture of a
sign that said no one with Edwardian dress will be admitted,
(14:41):
And I just that that made me laugh, because yes,
there were While there were some members of this group
of people who were committing crimes of some sort, for
the most part they were just kind of scary teenagers,
which is really no different than when we see in
the sixties and seventies people posting signs like hippies use
the back door, no hippies allowed out. Well, wasn't this
described as the first teen subculture in British history? So
(15:07):
of course parents were freaked out. Um and as a
reflection of just how freaked out adults were. Let's talk
for a minute about pop culture, because it is in
the nineteen fifties, like we mentioned earlier, that you start
to have this girl gang film genre emerged that totally
reflected the cultural panic about girls and gang sexuality, juvenile delinquency, etcetera, etcetera.
(15:32):
And this is a quote from one of our sources
from the Daddy's Girl episode. It said from one to
nineteen sixty five, girls had better access to schools with
almost universal compulsory secondary education, new social freedoms, cultural prominence,
commercial influence, and a place in the nation's vision of
its future. In other words, girls were suddenly teenagers. But
(15:56):
not all those teenage girls wanted to just go to
a stock hop, hang out at the at the soda shop.
Some girls wanted to hang out with fast boys and
running fast, cause and we're matching jackets. That's right, like
the high School Hellcats in nine that was apparently based
on an actual all girls shoplifting gang in Florida, of
(16:18):
all places. And in the movie the high School Hellcats
or these jackets with tiger faces, was a tiger or cougar,
some kind of vicious cats. Me, it just looked like
a pink cat with some long things. Okay, so they
with the pink panther. I'm sure it was vicious at
the time, a vicious pink panther, possibly a main coon
(16:40):
based on the back. Who's to say that just said
man eaters. So, ladies, I would wear that jacket, ladies. Yeah,
if you're looking for a group Halloween costume, I'm just
saying high school Hellcats, give it a look. Well, and
we can't forget Paula, who was the protagonist in the
movie The Violent Years, who not only becomes pregnant but
is jailed from murder dies in childbirth. But before she dies,
(17:05):
she says, so what, oh, Paula. Well, and all this
happened right because Paula got swept up in a girl gang,
not to be confused with the nineteen fifties movie titled
girl gang. Right, But when we moved into the nineteen sixties,
girl gang movies become more about biker girl gangs. So
(17:25):
you have the mini skirt mob and she devils on wheels,
and also the hell cats. Lots of hell cats happening
at this time. Women associated with felines. Yeah, And and
the formula for all of these movies and still for
movies about girl gangs, whether their actual gangs or clicks today,
the gangs are always led by an alpha female, very sexual,
(17:46):
super sexual, and she's like, honey, the you know, the
bandit who will pistol whip you if you cross her.
Queen bandit. Well, and also something to note about the
sort of the shift as we get into the sixties
and seventies is that those biker girl gang movies in
the nineteen sixties were really sort of indulging in the
fantasy about bad girls and about all the danger they
found themselves in, as opposed to the movies in the fifties,
(18:08):
which were more moralistic trying to impart a lesson like, hey, parents,
don't let your kids do this. This is awful, it's
a life of crime. Don't get pregnant. Don't get pregnant.
Let your daughters wear lipstick. That's also a reference to
our Daddy's Girl episode. But it's interesting to see that
it goes from being a total societal panic moment into like, oh,
they're they're kind of cool. You know, it's cool hell cats,
(18:30):
hell cats on motorcycles. Um. But then things start to
get more violent, which is also reflective of what is
happening in the real world in terms of female gang participation.
In the nineteen seventies, girl gang movies switch to switch
well switch blade, and then it's more about switch blade gangs,
(18:52):
so you have movies titled switch Blade Sisters and the
Dagger Debs Watch Out for those women. Yeah, and the Warriors, which,
although it focused a lot on mail gangs, it did
feature a girl gang by the name of the Lizzies,
which I just picture a bunch of Lizzie McGuire's honestly,
well and with dag or devs. I'm just thinking about women, know,
(19:13):
these debutantes pulling switchblades out of their dresses. So I
was picturing little Debbie snack cakes with knives in them.
It's like a prison snack. Then once we get in
the nineteen eighties, the girl gangs and the movies about
them really just evolved into movies about high school and clicks.
So from the eighties into the two thousand's you have
movies like Heathers, Jawbreaker, and of course of course Mean Girls.
(19:40):
One thing I was wondering about that what do you
think that says? Because we've had all these movies, we've
seen the evolution of um basically societal fears and anxieties
reflected in these film trends. But all of a sudden
we go from featuring women who are riding motorcycles and
pulling switchblades on each other to just girls being super
me into each other in the halls of high school. Well,
(20:02):
if you think about I've actually never seen Jawbreaker, but
I've seen Heather's, which is fantastic, and Mean Girls, which
I mean, come on, it's great, and a lot of
those have to do. And I think Jawbreaker does this
as well, where it's like the it focuses on girls,
not just not just girls being mean for meinstake, but
there's usually this socioeconomic hierarchy in it as well. It's
(20:25):
very consumery. The girls always have new clothes, new cars,
hot boyfriends. I don't know to me. And it makes
sense that it starts happening in the nineteen eighties where
you have a bit of an economic boom when people
are very, very interested in their stuff, the accumulation of stuff.
So I think it's more about just our changing values.
(20:47):
Maybe just like total and complete focus on on acquiring goods. Yeah,
Gordon getko, greed is good exactly. Yeah. Well, ins we
have another evolution because we get criminal girl gangs, not
just the heathers or the mean girls clicks. We get
young girls, maybe they're in high school, maybe not committing
these crimes. And that shows up in movies like Spring
(21:09):
Breakers and The Bling Ring, which Kristen cited earlier in
relation to basically like why did women want to steal
all this stuff to begin with? Yeah, and that's a
huge reflection now of the shift to wanting, like the
hyper celebrity culture, of wanting to emulate those lifestyles by
stealing their things if you're members of the Bling Ring.
(21:30):
And we should have scided earlier that this is from
a really great post over at bitch Flicks, which is
a great site about all about women and movies and film,
and this is just another way of saying movies, so
you should check it out. But when we come back
from a quick break, we're going to get out of
(21:51):
the movie theater and into the real world, Caroline. No
more jokes about the Lizzies and or the hell cap
or the little Debbie stick pigs with switch blades. We
got to talk about the rise of girls and gangs
in the real world because this is a serious problem
and a growing problem, or at least a growing issue
that law enforcement agencies are finally paying attention to. So
(22:14):
we'll talk about that when we come right back, Caroline,
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(23:40):
before the break, we were talking about basically uh girl
gangs being reflected in pop culture and societal anxieties showing
up in the movie theater. But we have to move
now to talk about real life girls in real life
gangs and what that means kind of for our society
at large. And it's interesting to note that in the
(24:01):
nineteen eighties, which is when we see those movies shift
from focusing on violent women too just kind of clicky
mean girls in high school. This is when law enforcement
really finally starts paying attention to the fact that, hey,
there are girls in gangs and they're participating, they are
not just hangers on, and that participation might have to
(24:23):
do with girls being elevated to more integral positions in
gangs no thanks to the influx of things like crack
cocaine in gang ridden neighborhoods. And so this is when
the police finally start realizing that, Okay, it's no longer
just about sex, because again, that's something that you'll see
(24:44):
in pretty much any paper that you read about girls
in gangs is a girls and gangs are just sex objects.
Sex objects are tomboys. Um. So, once you have the
massive influence of drugs and the drug trade come into gangs,
that gets a lot more money involved and a lot
more trafficking of goods and money and guns and all
(25:07):
this stuff. So these girls involvement really steps it up
a notch, right. And you know, we noted at the
top of the podcast that there are data collecting issues
and have been for a long time, because researchers typically
have either just talked to male members of gangs about
girls participation or it's just sort of taking law enforcement reports,
(25:33):
you know, maybe filed by mail, law enforcement interpreted by
mail researchers all about these young girls and gangs, and
then that can really kind of skew the numbers, the statistics,
and our perceptions of girls participation. Well, and if you're
speaking of the law enforcement reports, if you're looking at
arrest reports, traditionally, when it comes to gang membership, the
(25:54):
cops are going to focus on guys. They're not going
to look for the girls. They're gonna look for who
they believe to be the most dangerous, you know, member
of the gang or the you know, threat to society.
And it's fascinating to see and fascinating slash depressing too
to see how the anecdotal reports on girls membership and
role in gang life changes when you talk to a
(26:16):
guy in a gang versus a girl in a gang,
Because when you talk to male gang members, it's usually oh,
she's just here for sex. She either we either have
sex with her, we rape her, or she goes out
and brings women in for us to then rape. Whereas
when you talk to female gang members, they will also
acknowledge that, yes, they will sometimes bring girls to the
(26:37):
male gang members to rape, and will sometimes acknowledge too
that yeah, okay, they have to have sex with gang
members and perform different sexual acts in order for them
to you know, stay in good standing. But there are
usually more forthcoming in terms of the actual the additional
duties that they are performing as well, so that their
(26:58):
role becomes more complex when you actually start talking to
the girls who are involved, which isn't a huge surprise.
And then we see a report called Female gang Members,
A Profile and Aggression and Victimization, which notes that female
gang members are becoming quote hardcore and deadly and more
(27:19):
oriented to male crime, which is interesting. It's an interesting
language choice, I think, because nobody it's it's like, oh, wait,
this is males, you know, perform a certain kind of
crime and girls have a totally different kind of crime.
They're just grabbing his diamond rings and stuffing them into
their hats, exactly I would, And that's what I was
about to say that I would assume that when it
(27:39):
comes to gender and crime, the assumption would be that shoplifting,
petty theft, things like that, more misdemeanors would be girl crimes,
whereas guy crimes are going to be far more violent.
And speaking of violence, one major reason cited as for
why female gang members are become uming or have become
(28:01):
deadlier is access to guns. And when people talk to
girl game members about guns, some of them will completely acknowledge, like, Oh, yeah,
I mean I have the position I do because I
now carry a gun and it's not my boyfriend's gun,
it is my gun. And that was something that came
up in this article we read, particularly focusing on girls
in gangs in Los Angeles, and they were talking to
(28:24):
one former gang, female gang member nicknamed Bubbles, and when
they asked her about guns, she said that that was
one of the biggest misconceptions about girls and gangs, that
if they have firearms, they're just holding them for someone else.
And she said, no, no, no, no, if you're a
girl and a gang, like that's that's your gun because
(28:44):
that levels for those girls. I mean physically, they obviously
are not going to be able to take on and
beat up guys who would attack them, but a gun
levels of playing field, right, And they talk a lot
about the issue of respect. You hear, oh, even though
she's a girl, she has a lot of affect. And
then they talk about well, actually, in reality, it's not
so much that they've garnered all this respect from their
(29:06):
gang members or their friends or peers or whatever. It's
just the fear. And so having your own firearm goes
into that whole Well, I'm going to earn respect when
really you're just engendering fear and everyone around you because
they don't want to get shot exactly. Um. So it's
just notable to see how that quote that Caroline just
(29:27):
read a minute ago was from paper fast forward ten
years to two thousand and six and Corrections today publish
as an article Girls and Gangs on the Rise in America,
and it talks about how all female gangs, not just
girls and gangs, but all female gangs exist but quote,
they're not yet classified as true street gangs, but are
(29:47):
headed in that direction. And it's just incredible to me
to see that in two thousand and six when clearly,
I mean like, obviously there haven't been all female violent
gangs in the same way that we would think of
in terms of say the ups in the Bloods, but
apparently that's on the rise. And then in two thousand
nine you have the arrest of Shante Henderson, who was
(30:09):
a female gang member who made it on the FBI's
Most Wanted List, which is a rarity for female criminals,
and she was possibly involved in up to fifty shootings
and over five murders. And Newsweek talked to Christopher bud Kie,
who's the head of the FBI's Criminal Enterprise Squad in
Kansas City where she was arrested, and he said, quote,
it's very unusual for a female to rise to this
(30:32):
level in the gang world, right. And when she was arrested,
she actually requested that she could have time to fix
her hair. She was very excited about being on camera,
being on the news. When she was in court and handcuffs,
she held up her hands like and smiled, you know,
as if hey look at me, I'm a celebrity. Well
and then and speaking of that celebrity, that's something that
(30:53):
you see more in these reports from the past few
years about girls and gangs. I'm sure it happens to
with guys in gangs. Is how social media is now
coming into play as well. Because there was one girl
who was actually killed via gang involvement, and her Instagram
was so many photos of her holding up guns, holding
(31:16):
up money, really proud of her gang status. I mean
like what like, like you said, Caroline, of leveraging that fear,
right exactly. But it just is interesting too when you
take into consideration that two thousand and six report that
Kristen decided saying that, well, you know, all female gangs
aren't classified as true street gangs, yet we're getting there,
(31:38):
and then you have somebody like Shante Henderson arrested. I mean,
women are just as capable of horrific acts of violence
as men are, and certainly it would do the police
well to catch up to that well. And that was
something that a big item that came out of the
London riots in two thousand eleven, of the police realizing
(32:01):
that girl gang participation was actually far stronger than they
kind of thought that it was just looking at the
people who are doing the looting and the stealing and
setting things on fire, and how that was related to
gang activities. Not to say that all the people involved
in the London riots were in gangs, but gang activity
was a big conversation um that came out of those events, right,
(32:27):
And when you look at girls specific reasons for joining gangs,
a lot of the time it's it's not that it's
so different from the reasons that boys join gangs, but
there are some differences. Um gangs do offer if you
do have that domestic instability that Christen sided at the
top of the podcast, it can offer a sense of
family and a feeling of power. You've been powerless your
(32:50):
whole life. Maybe uh, these girls have been abused, maybe
they've been neglected, maybe some other sort of trauma has
happened in their lives and they have felt powerless. But
being part of this family that protects you quote unquote
might be more protection that you've ever received from an
actual biological family member, right, even though it might come
(33:12):
at the cost of being constantly paranoid that you're going
to be attacked by another gang member or raped by
members of your own gang. But I mean that kind
of we would think of where we're sitting right here,
that might seem like an just a wild choice for
a girl to make to willingly like walk into a
situation like that. But when you've grown up possibly being abused, molested,
(33:38):
raped by family members or by neighbors, whoever it might be,
if you're living in you know, situations where it's completely
chaotic all the time, then it might not seem like
such a wild idea, right. Well, also, especially like you know,
girl gang members are no different in terms of you know,
(34:00):
hormones raging than any other girl in school. And so
there is also the issue of you feel like you're
falling in love with this boy and he's in a
gang and you want to be with him and he
brings you in. It's like this whole sort of twisted
love story that you end up in a life of
crime because of a boy who's also a member of
a gang. Yeah, and if we step back just a
(34:20):
little bit, because it's important to note that for girls
in youth gangs, and they usually start getting involved around
ages twelve and thirteen, it starts very young. And the
hallmarks of girl gang members include things like low education.
They tend to drop out of high school by tenth
grade um, They have experienced and perpetrated violence in school.
(34:44):
They usually carry a knife and might even carry guns,
sometimes for their boyfriends, sometimes for themselves to schools. And
again they come from dysfunctional and abusive homes. The type
of dysfunctional and abusive homes where you know, a call
from a school counselors not going to do any good, right,
and uh, meta Chesney Lynde, who's a gang researcher at
(35:06):
the University of Hawaii, was talking about this, and she
was saying that it's not about girls becoming like guys,
although the themes are the same. She says that the
girls come from toxic, abusive families and are re victimized
in the gang setting. So it almost makes sense when
all you've known your entire life is violence or sexual violence,
even though it's a terrible thing to then join a
(35:27):
gang and experience that all over again. It's also a
pattern that a lot of these young girls are used
to um, and she says that girls choose the gang
for entirely understandable and even laudable goals given the constraints
that they experienced in a society that is increasingly likely
to police and pathologize girlhood. So how do these girls
then go about joining gangs? Because he would assume that
(35:51):
you can't just show up one day and be like, hey,
can I join? All right, cool, let's deal some drugs.
So there are a number of different ways that gang
initiation happened. Sometimes it is just via family connection. There
are a lot of girls who are in gangs because
a parent a father, a mother, whoever has been in
a gang, and so they sort of have a legacy
(36:12):
right or in the case of someone like Jacqueline Montanez,
she actually joined a gang because her stepfather was in one,
but she joined the opposing gang because he was a
member of the Latin Kings. He molested Montanez for years
as when she was a young girl. She joined the
opposing gang in Los Angeles. I believe ended up killing
(36:35):
two members of the Latin Kings. And she's been in
jail for this crime for years, and she admits, I
wasn't trying to kill them, I was trying to kill him.
And so while she didn't join the same gang as
her stepfather and following his footsteps, she still joined a
gang directly in response to her stepfather being in one. Well,
and even if you have a family connection that might
(36:57):
give you sort of an initial entrance into a gang.
In terms of actual initiation, the two primary ways that
happens is by being jumped in or sexed in. Now,
if you're jumped in, which is less common than being sexed,
and if you're a girl, that's essentially when the gang
members will be you up. They will just beat to
(37:18):
a pulp and you'll have to take it and then hey,
you're in it, which Caroline, this is the point in
the podcast to where it's reminiscent of our Fraternities episode
and the kind of I mean, this is hazing too,
an even more violent extent. But when you are sexed in,
which is probably the most common form of gang initiation
for girls, is exactly what it sounds like. You will
(37:41):
be raped, forced to have sex with multiple, if not all,
members of the gangs, possibly their friends. Um, and that
is the violence that you have to endure, right. And
I asked a social worker friend about this because some
of the sources that Kristen and I read, we're saying like, yes,
this is definitely a thing that happens all the time,
or oh, we talk to girls in gangs, and they said, no,
(38:02):
that's ridiculous. That's just the boys trying to sound tougher
than they actually are. And I was asking my social
worker friend about it, and she said, well, I mean,
it certainly does happen, but as with a lot of
these different types of violence and crimes committed, it really
varies from gang to gang, city to city, person to person,
But it does seem like rape, whether that's whether you're
(38:24):
sext in, jumped in whatever whatever way you get involved
with the gang. If you are a girl involved with
associated with the gang, rape is a common part right
of your life. Right. And one girl who was interviewed
and one of the articles we read was talking about
how it's absolutely a punishment. I mean, it's it's definitely
something that is used as a tool of authority to
(38:46):
keep girls in these gangs in line. Well, I mean,
that's the thing about rape in and of itself, is
that it's not about sex, about the power, right exactly.
So speaking of though rape and sex, the merry way
that a lot of girls drop out of gang life
or just sort of fade out. They might still be
(39:07):
associated with it, but aren't active in gang life anymore,
is due to pregnancy. That's why if you look at
girls involvement, it usually drops off at an earlier age
a lot of times because they get pregnant, which a
lot of times will simply propel the cycle of gang
involvement because then that child will have at least one
(39:27):
parent who is involved in a gang, and that might
then lead them getting involved in a gang, right exactly.
And there are a lot of gang prevention tactics out there.
I mean, people in in various communities are not just
sitting on their hands letting this happen. But a lot
of the gang prevention tactics focus on de escalating violent behavior.
(39:48):
And some sources we read we're talking about how well, yeah, okay,
obviously you want to educate people about de escalating violence
and not committing violent acts. But among girls, it might
be more effective to target really the root causes of
why they're joining gangs in the first place, tackling things
like poverty, molestation, abuse, neglect. Yeah, and this is one
(40:13):
big reason why girls and gangs today are being described
as an invisible population, just because so much historically and
even today, so much of the focus has been on
curbing boys participation in gangs, whereas girls are very involved,
just possibly in different kinds of ways. But as you
(40:34):
were telling me, Caroline, when you were talking to your
social worker friend, the solution is not okay, well we
want to stop this, cuffs, go arrest some girls. Arresting
is putting people behind bars, like sixteen year olds behind bars.
That's probably not going to solve this issue. No, I
mean the when I was speaking with her last night.
(40:57):
We were talking about the importance of mental health and
mental health care, and the importance of getting kids the
help they need. Um throwing state support behind social workers
who can actually intervene and be those people who can
take kids out of dangerous homes and dangerous situations. But also,
you know, more of a focus on education, and not
(41:19):
just education about gangs and or or you know, uh,
sexual education or things like that, but also just um
letting girls know that there are options out there. You know,
when you're so mired in your terrible life circumstances that
have led you to join this gang, you might not
ever see a way out. You know. We talked about
(41:39):
this in our Team Pregnancy episode, where studies have shown
that if you educate girls about hey, you can be this,
you can be that, you can grow up to be
all of these amazing things. And here's how you do it.
And then here's some amazing role models that you can
meet and base your hopes and dreams off of. That
actually helps so many young girls stay on a path
(41:59):
to both not becoming pregnant at a young age but
also not joining a gang. But sadly, it seems like
the opposite is happening, because what are we seeing in
the headlines. I mean, just it's've been It was really
interesting to see how early, like the studies that we
found from the nineteen eighties up until say two thousand
and twelve, we're kind of few and far between when
(42:20):
they're focused on girl gangs. But now there were so
many articles just published since two thousand twelve, all of
them saying, okay, more and more and more and more,
these girls are getting involved and in more violent ways
than they ever happened before. And clearly those kinds of
steps and those kinds of resources need to, if at
(42:41):
all possible, be implemented as quickly as possible, or else
we are going to continue to see as we have
more and more headlines about how girls are becoming more
and more involved in gang life. So if there are
social workers listening, or people who have had family member
where his friends get involved with gang life, anyone who
(43:03):
has thoughts to contribute to this really important issue, we'd
like to hear from you. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address. You can also
tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages on Facebook,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. Well, I've got a let her here
(43:24):
from Lisa about her episode on eyelashes, and she writes,
I was so excited that you decided to delve into
this whole eyelash issue. My boyfriend and I recently embarked
on a project watching all Walt Disney animated feature films
in chronological order. We noticed in the early films for
the forties and fifties, so the female characters preferred method
(43:45):
for attracting innocent, wandering males was to flutter their eyelashes incessantly,
often while applying some makeup, or if they were animals,
fluffing up some kind of feather or furry body bart
This happens with disturbed in frequency in these movies, especially
among the cartoon animals. Thumper, Seductress and Baby is a
(44:06):
particular example who sticks out in my memory, but she
was not the only one applying this technique for snaring
her man. Luckily, when I fluttered my eyelashes incessantly at
my current boyfriend, it just creeps them out. But I
used to have a boyfriend who was particularly entranced by
my fluttering eyelashes. I didn't even realize I was batting
my eyes at him, but apparently I was, and apparently
(44:26):
he found it appealing. Perhaps I had internalized some messages
from my early childhood viewing of Disney cartoons about what
I was supposed to do in order to attract a man,
and was putting those messages into practice without even realizing it.
Or perhaps I just bat my eyelashes more when in
the company of people I like. I'm going to start
paying attention now to see if I can observe any
(44:47):
eyelash movement patterns in myself and maybe others too. So
thanks Lisa, alrighty. I have a letter here from Kelly
in response to our same sex Weddings episode. She said,
I wanted to write belatedly and share with you an
interesting change my wife and I made to our wedding party.
I married my beautiful wife about a year ago on
October twenty five at City Hall in San Francisco. We
(45:10):
did have a wedding party with three on each side.
My best friend and her sister were our best women
of honor, and the women on my side were bride's women.
My wife had her brother's with her on her side,
and there were bride's men. It was awesome. I hated
the diminutive nature of made and there was no way
the word groom was going to make it into our day.
(45:30):
Thank you for making my Monday and Wednesday amazing. You're welcome, Kelly.
And Kristin she has a ps for you. What she says,
I have a total girl crush on you. Kristen, you
must be one of a kind, oh, Kelly. Thanks that
Kristin Congress, She is one of a kind. Kelly's but
thank you for writing in and thanks to everybody who's
written into us. Mom stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address and to find links to
(45:52):
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our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this one. There's one
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dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about girls in
gangs as well as all girl gangs. And this idea
first popped into my head when we were searching for
(00:25):
our episode on Daddy's Girls, and particularly looking at the
nineteen forties and fifties when juvenile delinquency and teen female
sexuality was really freaking a lot of adults out in
America and gang participation was part of that. That was
(00:46):
kind of the first time that girl involvement in gangs
really started to come to the forefront of our national attention.
And as we'll talk about in more detail, lots of
movie these about those teams that adults were afraid of.
What better way to exercise your societal fears than through
(01:06):
pop culture exactly and terrible B movies, that's right, maybe
even some C or D movies. But we have to
start by looking at some numbers from today, and this
is coming from the National Gang Center, who reported that
from female gang participation stayed pretty even at just under
(01:29):
ten percent female, but there was a huge jump reported
in by the U s Department of Justice, which said
in a report that girls were making up twenty to
forty six percent of youth gang membership, which is a
pretty well, it's not only a pretty big jump, but
it's also a pretty significant like window. Yeah, and that
(01:52):
wide window, and also the question of whether that is
a jump brings up an issue that comes up a
lot when you start research reaching girls involvements in gangs,
because historically there has been really really poor and sometimes
just non existent data collection going on, because a lot
of law enforcement agencies have completely overlooked female involvement in
(02:17):
gangs because there has been this long standing idea that
if a girl is in any way associated with a gang,
she's just an accessory. She might just be a girl friend,
she might just be really just a sex object for
the gang. She's not really doing any of the actual
gang activity. So it's only been in really recent years
(02:38):
that more law enforcement agencies and obviously the Department of
Justice are starting to pay closer attention. So that jump
could be a reflection of them actually just starting to
pay attention. Yeah, Because I mean this definitely isn't a
new development. I mean, for hundreds of years, people have
just looked at women or girls and thought, there's no
way that you have chosen a life of crime, of
(03:00):
serious crime. You're probably just some sort of hanger on
who does like the carrying of weapons or the delivery
of items that are stolen or drugs or whatever. You're
just a drug mule. You're a girl. Come on. But
there is one pattern that when it comes to all
girl gangs that seems to be pretty consistent and jumped
(03:21):
out to me, which is that you see them more
often girl gangs and just girl involvement in gangs in
smaller cities and towns. Um. This is going back to
that data from the National Gang Center. They found that
nearly half of gangs outside larger cities are reported to
have female gang members, compared with around one and four
(03:44):
in larger cities. Again, the question is what's going on
with data collection here, But I noticed that in a
number of the sources that we read talking about how
it's usually in smaller cities and towns where girls tend
to join up with gangs or start their own gangs
more often. Yeah, and I do wonder if that has
to do with just available resources, available activities for kids
(04:07):
who are in school who are school age. Um, if
that's just part of that whole trend, yeah, I would
definitely think so. But yeah, as far as trends go,
and I did mention, you know, gangs hundreds of years ago.
Let's let's travel back into girl gang history. So one
good thing to keep in mind as we go through
this history of gangs, in particularly girls and gangs, is
(04:29):
that the factors fueling gang formation and gang involvement have
remained largely constant for the past century plus, specifically factors
of poverty and economic marginality and domestic instability. Right, And
so I mean this makes sense, This makes total sense
(04:50):
that this is a trend or these are trends that
you would see over the past several hundred years that
have remained constant because young people who don't have re
sources at their disposal, maybe don't have a stable, safe
home environment, are more likely to go out in search
of that stability or just in search of plain things
(05:11):
to do. Yeah, And so this brings us to the
eighteen seventies in Britain where we have the emergence of
the all female forty Elephants sometimes called the forty Thieves gang,
which was first mentioned in newspapers in eighteen seventy three.
And these ladies, these elephants. So it was a slick operation,
(05:33):
this was not. This was in contrast too to these
all male gangs running around the same time doing lots
of smash and grab jobs. These women kept a pretty
low profile. Yeah, and they really took advantage of the
fashion of the day in order to swipe all of
their jewelry and whatnot. Uh. They wore specially tailored coats,
(05:55):
commer buns, muff skirts, bloomers, and hats, all with hidden
pockets where they could stuff things in. And so while
it might have been unfortunate as a woman of the
day to have to like wear your petticoes, where are
your big bustle where all this stuff, it was great
for hiding diamond rings well. And it also makes sense
that that's happening at this time as we start to
(06:15):
see the emergence of this consumer culture where you're going
out more often to go and buy goods, going to bazaars,
going and gazing at the things in the store windows.
And the woman who really took advantage of this, the
leader of this gang for a time was one any
Diamond described in the Guardian newspaper as the cleverest of thieves.
(06:38):
And in addition to being a clever thief, it was
also just easier for young women to go through the
stores and snatch up all sorts of things and hide
them in there, especially tailored muffs and bloomers, because shopkeepers
weren't assuming that, okay, we should watch out for these girls, because,
like you said, Caroline, people tend to not associate intentional
(07:03):
criminality with women. This goes back to our episode on kleptomania, right,
But of course shopkeepers did eventually wise up to the
fact that all of these women were just spiriting away
all sorts of fancy, shiny objects into those hidden pockets
in their clothes. Um. And so we were reading one
source that was talking about shopkeepers who would see these
(07:24):
women coming and would just immediately like shutter the shop
or keep them out. But the police, who were starting
to wise up too and realizing, oh, these women might
be up to something, they would show up at certain
houses of certain thieves, but the women would have totally
cooked the books and basically presented the equivalent of receipts
for everything, like oh, no, I I got all this
(07:45):
furniture or these weapons or these you know, diamond rings,
totally legit. Yeah, and as we get into the nineteen twenties,
because the forty Elephants lasted through the nineteen fifties in Britain.
But once you get into you been nineteen twenties, it
starts to take on an air of the blingering, which
(08:06):
if you're not familiar with it, it was this small
group of teenagers in l A who are actually from
wealthy backgrounds, who broke into celebrities houses, including Paris Hulton
and Lindsay Lohan, to steal all their things so that
they could feel closer to the celebrities. And The Guardian
reported that quote, their lifestyles were in pursuit of those
(08:27):
glamorous movie stars, combined with a decadent living of nineteen
twenties aristocratic flapper society. And apparently they threw fabulous parties,
which now makes it sound like I'm really glorifying this
female gang culture. But yeah, but this is another I mean,
speaking of trends that have been around forever in terms
of gang culture and women in gangs and young girls
(08:49):
and gangs, I mean, this is just another thing. The
desire to emulate the rich and wealthy, and you know
the life of leisure that you see around you wanting
to emulate that, and I mean that's something you see
today too. I mean, there are so many reasons for
people and young girls in particular to join gangs, but
one of the constants is just wanting stuff, wanting cool stuff. Well,
(09:12):
and that relates back to that issue of economic marginality.
Um So if we go to the US, though, in Frederick,
Milton Thrasher publishes the seminal book on early gang participation
called the Gang, a Study of one thousand, three thirteen
Gangs in Chicago. And what's fascinating about this book, and
(09:39):
it is huge, is that girls in gangs or associated
with gangs get only a passing mention. Right. Basically, he
explains girl gangs being quote unquote exceedingly rare by saying
that girls lack the gang instinct while boys have it.
And he attributes this to social patterns of behavior. Girl
(10:00):
just don't do that. In addition to well, girls are
just better supervised. They're kept closer to the home. But
there was one passage where he at least acknowledged that
girls do participate with gangs sometimes, although quote gangs composed
entirely of girls are very rare, and he cites one
(10:20):
quote unquote bandit queen nicknamed Honey, who apparently had become
known in newspapers, and he writes it is alleged that
her gang has engaged in numerous robberies and that she
was accustomed to threaten them with a gun if they
got yellam so, I mean you go, Honey. I don't know.
I don't want to pistol whip by Honey. Staying away
(10:42):
from that bandit queen just yeah, keep on her good side.
But um so, when we move into the nineteen forties
and fifties, during the war and the post war period
in the United States, there was a reported rise of
all girl gangs in New York City and in Detroit,
but they tended to us the female extensions of all
male gangs, not necessarily going out and doing their own thing,
(11:04):
but working alongside all male gangs, and they would do
things like conceal weapons for them, run errands, even spy
on some rival gangs. And that's a similar role that
girls and gangs are still associated with, just being accessories
to the male gang activities. But there was one example
(11:25):
of one of these all girl gangs that was a
version of an all guy gang in Detroit at the
time called the Shakerrets, and they were an offshoot of
the Shakers. And in the book Girls, Gangs, Women and Drugs,
there was a quote from a former Shaker at and
she said girls were the sister gang without the boys.
(11:45):
There wasn't anything. Does that name? Those strike you as
just like a doo wop group from the fifties or sixties.
I think of the Shakers, the religious Shakers that I
thought of that make all those neat crafts I know
when I really want, Okay, So yeah, when I first
read this bullet I was like, wait, a girl version
of the Shaker I guess there's sort of like a
(12:05):
religious gang, you could say, you could say, one could say,
but we do have to briefly mention over in Britain
in the nineteen fifties, probably at Caroline. I don't want
to speak for you, but but it was this This
was my favorite girl gang in quotes, because they really
weren't so much about criminality. But we have to mention
them because they were kind of great. Yeah, the teddy girls.
(12:28):
I thought they were super awesome. I mean, maybe people
at the time. Well, definitely people at the time did
not think they were so awesome. But I mean this
is this is back to that whole emergence of teen
culture and essentially teenagers. These teenagers in particular, um fulfilling
every grown ups worst fear about what young people were doing. Basically,
(12:50):
they weren't necessarily all engaged in horrible criminal activity. Certainly
there was an element of criminal activity, but it was
mostly associated with the boys, while whereas the girls were
just wearing these fabulous clothes and sort of accompanying them
on the on their jaunts through the streets. Yeah, they
were the lady friends, the lady compatriots of the teddy boys.
(13:11):
And a lot of these kids were from and around London,
in working class neighborhoods. And it's notable that this is
happening after World War Two, meaning that these kids grew
up in an era of rationing. They did not have
much and it's fascinating that a lot of their identity
was in the fashion that they wore, which that's still
(13:33):
something that we see today in gangs obviously, but the
Teddy boys would wear these dandy suits almost and I
mean that literally, like like dandy's um wearing these Edwardian
fashions that briefly came into vogue on Savo Row. But
then as soon as the teddy boys started wearing them,
they're like, oh no. And the teddy girls were similarly
(13:56):
like high style outfits with these hats and their hair
would be done up and they'd be wearing high necked blouses.
I mean, they looked like very serious young women. Yeah,
but I love they had their what we would call
boyfriend jeans. Now they had their boyfriend jeans on that
were rolled up with their cigarette and their failures. They
smoked cigarettes for sure. And like you said, the teddy
(14:18):
girls were more about fashion than rough housing because even
at that time, the girls roles were still focused around
the home. They probably weren't allowed so much to go
out and run around the streets. But I love it.
And some of the things we were reading about teddy
girls and teddy boys. There was a picture of a
sign that said no one with Edwardian dress will be admitted,
(14:41):
And I just that that made me laugh, because yes,
there were While there were some members of this group
of people who were committing crimes of some sort, for
the most part they were just kind of scary teenagers,
which is really no different than when we see in
the sixties and seventies people posting signs like hippies use
the back door, no hippies allowed out. Well, wasn't this
described as the first teen subculture in British history? So
(15:07):
of course parents were freaked out. Um and as a
reflection of just how freaked out adults were. Let's talk
for a minute about pop culture, because it is in
the nineteen fifties, like we mentioned earlier, that you start
to have this girl gang film genre emerged that totally
reflected the cultural panic about girls and gang sexuality, juvenile delinquency, etcetera, etcetera.
(15:32):
And this is a quote from one of our sources
from the Daddy's Girl episode. It said from one to
nineteen sixty five, girls had better access to schools with
almost universal compulsory secondary education, new social freedoms, cultural prominence,
commercial influence, and a place in the nation's vision of
its future. In other words, girls were suddenly teenagers. But
(15:56):
not all those teenage girls wanted to just go to
a stock hop, hang out at the at the soda shop.
Some girls wanted to hang out with fast boys and
running fast, cause and we're matching jackets. That's right, like
the high School Hellcats in nine that was apparently based
on an actual all girls shoplifting gang in Florida, of
(16:18):
all places. And in the movie the high School Hellcats
or these jackets with tiger faces, was a tiger or cougar,
some kind of vicious cats. Me, it just looked like
a pink cat with some long things. Okay, so they
with the pink panther. I'm sure it was vicious at
the time, a vicious pink panther, possibly a main coon
(16:40):
based on the back. Who's to say that just said
man eaters. So, ladies, I would wear that jacket, ladies. Yeah,
if you're looking for a group Halloween costume, I'm just
saying high school Hellcats, give it a look. Well, and
we can't forget Paula, who was the protagonist in the
movie The Violent Years, who not only becomes pregnant but
is jailed from murder dies in childbirth. But before she dies,
(17:05):
she says, so what, oh, Paula. Well, and all this
happened right because Paula got swept up in a girl gang,
not to be confused with the nineteen fifties movie titled
girl gang. Right, But when we moved into the nineteen sixties,
girl gang movies become more about biker girl gangs. So
(17:25):
you have the mini skirt mob and she devils on wheels,
and also the hell cats. Lots of hell cats happening
at this time. Women associated with felines. Yeah, And and
the formula for all of these movies and still for
movies about girl gangs, whether their actual gangs or clicks today,
the gangs are always led by an alpha female, very sexual,
(17:46):
super sexual, and she's like, honey, the you know, the
bandit who will pistol whip you if you cross her.
Queen bandit. Well, and also something to note about the
sort of the shift as we get into the sixties
and seventies is that those biker girl gang movies in
the nineteen sixties were really sort of indulging in the
fantasy about bad girls and about all the danger they
found themselves in, as opposed to the movies in the fifties,
(18:08):
which were more moralistic trying to impart a lesson like, hey, parents,
don't let your kids do this. This is awful, it's
a life of crime. Don't get pregnant. Don't get pregnant.
Let your daughters wear lipstick. That's also a reference to
our Daddy's Girl episode. But it's interesting to see that
it goes from being a total societal panic moment into like, oh,
they're they're kind of cool. You know, it's cool hell cats,
(18:30):
hell cats on motorcycles. Um. But then things start to
get more violent, which is also reflective of what is
happening in the real world in terms of female gang participation.
In the nineteen seventies, girl gang movies switch to switch
well switch blade, and then it's more about switch blade gangs,
(18:52):
so you have movies titled switch Blade Sisters and the
Dagger Debs Watch Out for those women. Yeah, and the Warriors, which,
although it focused a lot on mail gangs, it did
feature a girl gang by the name of the Lizzies,
which I just picture a bunch of Lizzie McGuire's honestly,
well and with dag or devs. I'm just thinking about women, know,
(19:13):
these debutantes pulling switchblades out of their dresses. So I
was picturing little Debbie snack cakes with knives in them.
It's like a prison snack. Then once we get in
the nineteen eighties, the girl gangs and the movies about
them really just evolved into movies about high school and clicks.
So from the eighties into the two thousand's you have
movies like Heathers, Jawbreaker, and of course of course Mean Girls.
(19:40):
One thing I was wondering about that what do you
think that says? Because we've had all these movies, we've
seen the evolution of um basically societal fears and anxieties
reflected in these film trends. But all of a sudden
we go from featuring women who are riding motorcycles and
pulling switchblades on each other to just girls being super
me into each other in the halls of high school. Well,
(20:02):
if you think about I've actually never seen Jawbreaker, but
I've seen Heather's, which is fantastic, and Mean Girls, which
I mean, come on, it's great, and a lot of
those have to do. And I think Jawbreaker does this
as well, where it's like the it focuses on girls,
not just not just girls being mean for meinstake, but
there's usually this socioeconomic hierarchy in it as well. It's
(20:25):
very consumery. The girls always have new clothes, new cars,
hot boyfriends. I don't know to me. And it makes
sense that it starts happening in the nineteen eighties where
you have a bit of an economic boom when people
are very, very interested in their stuff, the accumulation of stuff.
So I think it's more about just our changing values.
(20:47):
Maybe just like total and complete focus on on acquiring goods. Yeah,
Gordon getko, greed is good exactly. Yeah. Well, ins we
have another evolution because we get criminal girl gangs, not
just the heathers or the mean girls clicks. We get
young girls, maybe they're in high school, maybe not committing
these crimes. And that shows up in movies like Spring
(21:09):
Breakers and The Bling Ring, which Kristen cited earlier in
relation to basically like why did women want to steal
all this stuff to begin with? Yeah, and that's a
huge reflection now of the shift to wanting, like the
hyper celebrity culture, of wanting to emulate those lifestyles by
stealing their things if you're members of the Bling Ring.
(21:30):
And we should have scided earlier that this is from
a really great post over at bitch Flicks, which is
a great site about all about women and movies and film,
and this is just another way of saying movies, so
you should check it out. But when we come back
from a quick break, we're going to get out of
(21:51):
the movie theater and into the real world, Caroline. No
more jokes about the Lizzies and or the hell cap
or the little Debbie stick pigs with switch blades. We
got to talk about the rise of girls and gangs
in the real world because this is a serious problem
and a growing problem, or at least a growing issue
that law enforcement agencies are finally paying attention to. So
(22:14):
we'll talk about that when we come right back, Caroline,
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(23:40):
before the break, we were talking about basically uh girl
gangs being reflected in pop culture and societal anxieties showing
up in the movie theater. But we have to move
now to talk about real life girls in real life
gangs and what that means kind of for our society
at large. And it's interesting to note that in the
(24:01):
nineteen eighties, which is when we see those movies shift
from focusing on violent women too just kind of clicky
mean girls in high school. This is when law enforcement
really finally starts paying attention to the fact that, hey,
there are girls in gangs and they're participating, they are
not just hangers on, and that participation might have to
(24:23):
do with girls being elevated to more integral positions in
gangs no thanks to the influx of things like crack
cocaine in gang ridden neighborhoods. And so this is when
the police finally start realizing that, Okay, it's no longer
just about sex, because again, that's something that you'll see
(24:44):
in pretty much any paper that you read about girls
in gangs is a girls and gangs are just sex objects.
Sex objects are tomboys. Um. So, once you have the
massive influence of drugs and the drug trade come into gangs,
that gets a lot more money involved and a lot
more trafficking of goods and money and guns and all
(25:07):
this stuff. So these girls involvement really steps it up
a notch, right. And you know, we noted at the
top of the podcast that there are data collecting issues
and have been for a long time, because researchers typically
have either just talked to male members of gangs about
girls participation or it's just sort of taking law enforcement reports,
(25:33):
you know, maybe filed by mail, law enforcement interpreted by
mail researchers all about these young girls and gangs, and
then that can really kind of skew the numbers, the statistics,
and our perceptions of girls participation. Well, and if you're
speaking of the law enforcement reports, if you're looking at
arrest reports, traditionally, when it comes to gang membership, the
(25:54):
cops are going to focus on guys. They're not going
to look for the girls. They're gonna look for who
they believe to be the most dangerous, you know, member
of the gang or the you know, threat to society.
And it's fascinating to see and fascinating slash depressing too
to see how the anecdotal reports on girls membership and
role in gang life changes when you talk to a
(26:16):
guy in a gang versus a girl in a gang,
Because when you talk to male gang members, it's usually oh,
she's just here for sex. She either we either have
sex with her, we rape her, or she goes out
and brings women in for us to then rape. Whereas
when you talk to female gang members, they will also
acknowledge that, yes, they will sometimes bring girls to the
(26:37):
male gang members to rape, and will sometimes acknowledge too
that yeah, okay, they have to have sex with gang
members and perform different sexual acts in order for them
to you know, stay in good standing. But there are
usually more forthcoming in terms of the actual the additional
duties that they are performing as well, so that their
(26:58):
role becomes more complex when you actually start talking to
the girls who are involved, which isn't a huge surprise.
And then we see a report called Female gang Members,
A Profile and Aggression and Victimization, which notes that female
gang members are becoming quote hardcore and deadly and more
(27:19):
oriented to male crime, which is interesting. It's an interesting
language choice, I think, because nobody it's it's like, oh, wait,
this is males, you know, perform a certain kind of
crime and girls have a totally different kind of crime.
They're just grabbing his diamond rings and stuffing them into
their hats, exactly I would, And that's what I was
about to say that I would assume that when it
(27:39):
comes to gender and crime, the assumption would be that shoplifting,
petty theft, things like that, more misdemeanors would be girl crimes,
whereas guy crimes are going to be far more violent.
And speaking of violence, one major reason cited as for
why female gang members are become uming or have become
(28:01):
deadlier is access to guns. And when people talk to
girl game members about guns, some of them will completely acknowledge, like, Oh, yeah,
I mean I have the position I do because I
now carry a gun and it's not my boyfriend's gun,
it is my gun. And that was something that came
up in this article we read, particularly focusing on girls
in gangs in Los Angeles, and they were talking to
(28:24):
one former gang, female gang member nicknamed Bubbles, and when
they asked her about guns, she said that that was
one of the biggest misconceptions about girls and gangs, that
if they have firearms, they're just holding them for someone else.
And she said, no, no, no, no, if you're a
girl and a gang, like that's that's your gun because
(28:44):
that levels for those girls. I mean physically, they obviously
are not going to be able to take on and
beat up guys who would attack them, but a gun
levels of playing field, right, And they talk a lot
about the issue of respect. You hear, oh, even though
she's a girl, she has a lot of affect. And
then they talk about well, actually, in reality, it's not
so much that they've garnered all this respect from their
(29:06):
gang members or their friends or peers or whatever. It's
just the fear. And so having your own firearm goes
into that whole Well, I'm going to earn respect when
really you're just engendering fear and everyone around you because
they don't want to get shot exactly. Um. So it's
just notable to see how that quote that Caroline just
(29:27):
read a minute ago was from paper fast forward ten
years to two thousand and six and Corrections today publish
as an article Girls and Gangs on the Rise in America,
and it talks about how all female gangs, not just
girls and gangs, but all female gangs exist but quote,
they're not yet classified as true street gangs, but are
(29:47):
headed in that direction. And it's just incredible to me
to see that in two thousand and six when clearly,
I mean like, obviously there haven't been all female violent
gangs in the same way that we would think of
in terms of say the ups in the Bloods, but
apparently that's on the rise. And then in two thousand
nine you have the arrest of Shante Henderson, who was
(30:09):
a female gang member who made it on the FBI's
Most Wanted List, which is a rarity for female criminals,
and she was possibly involved in up to fifty shootings
and over five murders. And Newsweek talked to Christopher bud Kie,
who's the head of the FBI's Criminal Enterprise Squad in
Kansas City where she was arrested, and he said, quote,
it's very unusual for a female to rise to this
(30:32):
level in the gang world, right. And when she was arrested,
she actually requested that she could have time to fix
her hair. She was very excited about being on camera,
being on the news. When she was in court and handcuffs,
she held up her hands like and smiled, you know,
as if hey look at me, I'm a celebrity. Well
and then and speaking of that celebrity, that's something that
(30:53):
you see more in these reports from the past few
years about girls and gangs. I'm sure it happens to
with guys in gangs. Is how social media is now
coming into play as well. Because there was one girl
who was actually killed via gang involvement, and her Instagram
was so many photos of her holding up guns, holding
(31:16):
up money, really proud of her gang status. I mean
like what like, like you said, Caroline, of leveraging that fear,
right exactly. But it just is interesting too when you
take into consideration that two thousand and six report that
Kristen decided saying that, well, you know, all female gangs
aren't classified as true street gangs, yet we're getting there,
(31:38):
and then you have somebody like Shante Henderson arrested. I mean,
women are just as capable of horrific acts of violence
as men are, and certainly it would do the police
well to catch up to that well. And that was
something that a big item that came out of the
London riots in two thousand eleven, of the police realizing
(32:01):
that girl gang participation was actually far stronger than they
kind of thought that it was just looking at the
people who are doing the looting and the stealing and
setting things on fire, and how that was related to
gang activities. Not to say that all the people involved
in the London riots were in gangs, but gang activity
was a big conversation um that came out of those events, right,
(32:27):
And when you look at girls specific reasons for joining gangs,
a lot of the time it's it's not that it's
so different from the reasons that boys join gangs, but
there are some differences. Um gangs do offer if you
do have that domestic instability that Christen sided at the
top of the podcast, it can offer a sense of
family and a feeling of power. You've been powerless your
(32:50):
whole life. Maybe uh, these girls have been abused, maybe
they've been neglected, maybe some other sort of trauma has
happened in their lives and they have felt powerless. But
being part of this family that protects you quote unquote
might be more protection that you've ever received from an
actual biological family member, right, even though it might come
(33:12):
at the cost of being constantly paranoid that you're going
to be attacked by another gang member or raped by
members of your own gang. But I mean that kind
of we would think of where we're sitting right here,
that might seem like an just a wild choice for
a girl to make to willingly like walk into a
situation like that. But when you've grown up possibly being abused, molested,
(33:38):
raped by family members or by neighbors, whoever it might be,
if you're living in you know, situations where it's completely
chaotic all the time, then it might not seem like
such a wild idea, right. Well, also, especially like you know,
girl gang members are no different in terms of you know,
(34:00):
hormones raging than any other girl in school. And so
there is also the issue of you feel like you're
falling in love with this boy and he's in a
gang and you want to be with him and he
brings you in. It's like this whole sort of twisted
love story that you end up in a life of
crime because of a boy who's also a member of
a gang. Yeah, and if we step back just a
(34:20):
little bit, because it's important to note that for girls
in youth gangs, and they usually start getting involved around
ages twelve and thirteen, it starts very young. And the
hallmarks of girl gang members include things like low education.
They tend to drop out of high school by tenth
grade um, They have experienced and perpetrated violence in school.
(34:44):
They usually carry a knife and might even carry guns,
sometimes for their boyfriends, sometimes for themselves to schools. And
again they come from dysfunctional and abusive homes. The type
of dysfunctional and abusive homes where you know, a call
from a school counselors not going to do any good, right,
and uh, meta Chesney Lynde, who's a gang researcher at
(35:06):
the University of Hawaii, was talking about this, and she
was saying that it's not about girls becoming like guys,
although the themes are the same. She says that the
girls come from toxic, abusive families and are re victimized
in the gang setting. So it almost makes sense when
all you've known your entire life is violence or sexual violence,
even though it's a terrible thing to then join a
(35:27):
gang and experience that all over again. It's also a
pattern that a lot of these young girls are used
to um, and she says that girls choose the gang
for entirely understandable and even laudable goals given the constraints
that they experienced in a society that is increasingly likely
to police and pathologize girlhood. So how do these girls
then go about joining gangs? Because he would assume that
(35:51):
you can't just show up one day and be like, hey,
can I join? All right, cool, let's deal some drugs.
So there are a number of different ways that gang
initiation happened. Sometimes it is just via family connection. There
are a lot of girls who are in gangs because
a parent a father, a mother, whoever has been in
a gang, and so they sort of have a legacy
(36:12):
right or in the case of someone like Jacqueline Montanez,
she actually joined a gang because her stepfather was in one,
but she joined the opposing gang because he was a
member of the Latin Kings. He molested Montanez for years
as when she was a young girl. She joined the
opposing gang in Los Angeles. I believe ended up killing
(36:35):
two members of the Latin Kings. And she's been in
jail for this crime for years, and she admits, I
wasn't trying to kill them, I was trying to kill him.
And so while she didn't join the same gang as
her stepfather and following his footsteps, she still joined a
gang directly in response to her stepfather being in one. Well,
and even if you have a family connection that might
(36:57):
give you sort of an initial entrance into a gang.
In terms of actual initiation, the two primary ways that
happens is by being jumped in or sexed in. Now,
if you're jumped in, which is less common than being sexed,
and if you're a girl, that's essentially when the gang
members will be you up. They will just beat to
(37:18):
a pulp and you'll have to take it and then hey,
you're in it, which Caroline, this is the point in
the podcast to where it's reminiscent of our Fraternities episode
and the kind of I mean, this is hazing too,
an even more violent extent. But when you are sexed in,
which is probably the most common form of gang initiation
for girls, is exactly what it sounds like. You will
(37:41):
be raped, forced to have sex with multiple, if not all,
members of the gangs, possibly their friends. Um, and that
is the violence that you have to endure, right. And
I asked a social worker friend about this because some
of the sources that Kristen and I read, we're saying like, yes,
this is definitely a thing that happens all the time,
or oh, we talk to girls in gangs, and they said, no,
(38:02):
that's ridiculous. That's just the boys trying to sound tougher
than they actually are. And I was asking my social
worker friend about it, and she said, well, I mean,
it certainly does happen, but as with a lot of
these different types of violence and crimes committed, it really
varies from gang to gang, city to city, person to person,
But it does seem like rape, whether that's whether you're
(38:24):
sext in, jumped in whatever whatever way you get involved
with the gang. If you are a girl involved with
associated with the gang, rape is a common part right
of your life. Right. And one girl who was interviewed
and one of the articles we read was talking about
how it's absolutely a punishment. I mean, it's it's definitely
something that is used as a tool of authority to
(38:46):
keep girls in these gangs in line. Well, I mean,
that's the thing about rape in and of itself, is
that it's not about sex, about the power, right exactly.
So speaking of though rape and sex, the merry way
that a lot of girls drop out of gang life
or just sort of fade out. They might still be
(39:07):
associated with it, but aren't active in gang life anymore,
is due to pregnancy. That's why if you look at
girls involvement, it usually drops off at an earlier age
a lot of times because they get pregnant, which a
lot of times will simply propel the cycle of gang
involvement because then that child will have at least one
(39:27):
parent who is involved in a gang, and that might
then lead them getting involved in a gang, right exactly.
And there are a lot of gang prevention tactics out there.
I mean, people in in various communities are not just
sitting on their hands letting this happen. But a lot
of the gang prevention tactics focus on de escalating violent behavior.
(39:48):
And some sources we read we're talking about how well, yeah, okay,
obviously you want to educate people about de escalating violence
and not committing violent acts. But among girls, it might
be more effective to target really the root causes of
why they're joining gangs in the first place, tackling things
like poverty, molestation, abuse, neglect. Yeah, and this is one
(40:13):
big reason why girls and gangs today are being described
as an invisible population, just because so much historically and
even today, so much of the focus has been on
curbing boys participation in gangs, whereas girls are very involved,
just possibly in different kinds of ways. But as you
(40:34):
were telling me, Caroline, when you were talking to your
social worker friend, the solution is not okay, well we
want to stop this, cuffs, go arrest some girls. Arresting
is putting people behind bars, like sixteen year olds behind bars.
That's probably not going to solve this issue. No, I
mean the when I was speaking with her last night.
(40:57):
We were talking about the importance of mental health and
mental health care, and the importance of getting kids the
help they need. Um throwing state support behind social workers
who can actually intervene and be those people who can
take kids out of dangerous homes and dangerous situations. But also,
you know, more of a focus on education, and not
(41:19):
just education about gangs and or or you know, uh,
sexual education or things like that, but also just um
letting girls know that there are options out there. You know,
when you're so mired in your terrible life circumstances that
have led you to join this gang, you might not
ever see a way out. You know. We talked about
(41:39):
this in our Team Pregnancy episode, where studies have shown
that if you educate girls about hey, you can be this,
you can be that, you can grow up to be
all of these amazing things. And here's how you do it.
And then here's some amazing role models that you can
meet and base your hopes and dreams off of. That
actually helps so many young girls stay on a path
(41:59):
to both not becoming pregnant at a young age but
also not joining a gang. But sadly, it seems like
the opposite is happening, because what are we seeing in
the headlines. I mean, just it's've been It was really
interesting to see how early, like the studies that we
found from the nineteen eighties up until say two thousand
and twelve, we're kind of few and far between when
(42:20):
they're focused on girl gangs. But now there were so
many articles just published since two thousand twelve, all of
them saying, okay, more and more and more and more,
these girls are getting involved and in more violent ways
than they ever happened before. And clearly those kinds of
steps and those kinds of resources need to, if at
(42:41):
all possible, be implemented as quickly as possible, or else
we are going to continue to see as we have
more and more headlines about how girls are becoming more
and more involved in gang life. So if there are
social workers listening, or people who have had family member
where his friends get involved with gang life, anyone who
(43:03):
has thoughts to contribute to this really important issue, we'd
like to hear from you. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address. You can also
tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages on Facebook,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. Well, I've got a let her here
(43:24):
from Lisa about her episode on eyelashes, and she writes,
I was so excited that you decided to delve into
this whole eyelash issue. My boyfriend and I recently embarked
on a project watching all Walt Disney animated feature films
in chronological order. We noticed in the early films for
the forties and fifties, so the female characters preferred method
(43:45):
for attracting innocent, wandering males was to flutter their eyelashes incessantly,
often while applying some makeup, or if they were animals,
fluffing up some kind of feather or furry body bart
This happens with disturbed in frequency in these movies, especially
among the cartoon animals. Thumper, Seductress and Baby is a
(44:06):
particular example who sticks out in my memory, but she
was not the only one applying this technique for snaring
her man. Luckily, when I fluttered my eyelashes incessantly at
my current boyfriend, it just creeps them out. But I
used to have a boyfriend who was particularly entranced by
my fluttering eyelashes. I didn't even realize I was batting
my eyes at him, but apparently I was, and apparently
(44:26):
he found it appealing. Perhaps I had internalized some messages
from my early childhood viewing of Disney cartoons about what
I was supposed to do in order to attract a man,
and was putting those messages into practice without even realizing it.
Or perhaps I just bat my eyelashes more when in
the company of people I like. I'm going to start
paying attention now to see if I can observe any
(44:47):
eyelash movement patterns in myself and maybe others too. So
thanks Lisa, alrighty. I have a letter here from Kelly
in response to our same sex Weddings episode. She said,
I wanted to write belatedly and share with you an
interesting change my wife and I made to our wedding party.
I married my beautiful wife about a year ago on
October twenty five at City Hall in San Francisco. We
(45:10):
did have a wedding party with three on each side.
My best friend and her sister were our best women
of honor, and the women on my side were bride's women.
My wife had her brother's with her on her side,
and there were bride's men. It was awesome. I hated
the diminutive nature of made and there was no way
the word groom was going to make it into our day.
(45:30):
Thank you for making my Monday and Wednesday amazing. You're welcome, Kelly.
And Kristin she has a ps for you. What she says,
I have a total girl crush on you. Kristen, you
must be one of a kind, oh, Kelly. Thanks that
Kristin Congress, She is one of a kind. Kelly's but
thank you for writing in and thanks to everybody who's
written into us. Mom stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address and to find links to
(45:52):
all of our social media as well as all of
our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this one. There's one
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