Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 104

Notably, J. W. Moore’s (1991, p. 57) extensive, decades-long gang research reported that despite a strong gendered double standard, there is a significant range in how men and boy gang members treat girl and women gang members. J. Miller and Brunson’s (2000) interviews with gang members in St. Louis found that most members described their gangs as including both (traditionally defined) genders, although like the other co-offending research findings, this is more common among women: 81% of young women reported their gangs had both members and 29% of young men reported their gangs were single-gender. Some of this discrepancy, however, may be due to some of the young men not considering some of the young women who consider themselves “members” as members. Regardless, the all-male gangs tended to view gangs as a masculine endeavor whereas men in the mixed-gender gangs emphasized the masculine while also mentioning the gang’s social endeavors. Moreover, gender segregation in the mixed-gender gangs was most pronounced when it was time to “‘get down to business’: girls did their own thing, and boys did theirs” (p. 434). In J. Miller and Brunson’s study, sexism within the mixed-gender gangs included the girls seeing the boys as equal members, but the boys viewing the girls as lesser members. Possibly, this is because although the young women worried about being jumped and beaten, the young men faced more lethal violence than did the young women (p. 442).

Girl gang members are aware of the male gang members’ sexualizing and conventional notions of them, and the girl gang members monitor other girls both in and out of their gang in terms of appearances and conduct that can be sexualized (L. A. Hughes et al., 2019; Laidler & Hunt, 2001; J. Miller & Brunson, 2000). A. Campbell’s (1999b) analysis of Puerto Rican female gang members in New York City described their frustration with the public perception of them as “whores,” or “ho’s.” Thus, the gang girls “exerted a good deal of social control over one another’s sexual behavior,” where “serial monogamy was the norm and sexual promiscuity was frowned upon” (p. 113). At the same time, they were quite aware of and frustrated with the double standard where males’ infidelity in intimate relationships was accepted and even expected. One study reported that because gang girls are often angered by their own mothers’ use of drugs and violence and inability to realize their mothering roles, and in order to gain their own sense of respectability, they both adopt and reject some of the conventional gender roles.