Nothing bloody changes...

[sportsfanatic]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16975835

*Det Allen Davis, of the Metropolitan Police, who was leading a session at the school, said girls are at the bottom of the hierarchy in a gang environment.

He said: "Girls need to know they are used and abused within gangs, that they are passed around and are second-class citizens.

"Ultimately girls are disposable, it's the boys that gain status and respect by putting in work and that means committing crime and hurting people.

"Girls get status in this [gang] world by who they have sex with and it makes them very vulnerable. The boys have the power to use and abuse them."*

It's difficult to say this without coming across as being unsympathetic or lacking empathy (I'm not)...but even given the deprived background many gang members are coming from and the culture of finding identity and protection within gangs, I find it difficult in 2012 to really get a handle on why so many girls still see themselves as appendages to trail around after boys. There is nothing in it for them. I could maybe understand it if girls armed themselves and got tough - within the gang culture that could make sense - but this? They are in a lose-lose situation but seem unable to see they are disposable rubbish. You could argue it's background, lack of self-esteem, education...all sorts. But the boys are brought up in the same environment.

Is it just that lack of self-esteem manifests itself in opposite ways in boys and girls - boys get 'tough', girls get abuse. If so, are feminists wasting our time because it is all down to genetics and biology after all?

Oh Gawd: I don't seem to be able to make myself clear here. I don't know what makes more despairing - the boys who do this or the girls who put up with this.

I think there is a lot of cultural influence. Look at BertieBotts' thread where she links to the film Tough Guise. It might explain a bit.

Boys and girls with low self-esteem want to hang around with gangs in order to be accepted. Their shared motive is 'approval seeking' and the benefits they believe they are getting are protection and success by association. If the gang leaders happen to be violent, criminal, heterosexual males there will only be a few ways of getting their approval and protection. Yes it's depressing but, elsewhere in our culture, we make celebrities out of women that have attached themselves to rich, successful, morally questionable men .... It's OK, say the magazines, to do nothing with your life once you've hooked yourself up with a footballer/actor/politician/tycoon. That's enough to make you a star. Let us photograph you in your lovely home and your lovely clothes and we won't mention that he spends the weekends taking drugs, beating you up or using prostitutes.

Dependency on men only ever results in women being treated as disposable rubbish.

Dependency on men only ever results in women being treated as disposable rubbish.

So true - and that's why it is beyond comprehension. Who the hell wants to be a disposable appendage?

I'm glad I'm not young any more and in the midst of this trash culture.

A lot of women want to be a disposable appendage and dependent. They get their man, throw in their career, have a few children, live off his money.... and then wonder why the man starts to take them for granted and treat them with contempt. It's no different fundamentally to the gangster's moll or the WAG.... But I'll get slated for making the comparison :)

'Boys and girls with low self-esteem want to hang around with gangs in order to be accepted.'

   And this is the Mumsnet Feminist gang! You want some do yeh?

Well, it ain't genetics or biological determinism, that's for sure. Boys and girls are conditioned from birth to follow increasingly rigid gender roles. For boys, it's be hard, tough, competitive, hypermasculine and controlling. For girls, it's be soft, servile, passive, attractive and approved of by boys and men. Oh, and boys must never be anything a girl is (and to a degree other way round.)

There's nothing terribly new about girls and women being conditioned to seek the favour of men and boys, to do things for them and give them things so they will be approved of and have a sort of status. There's nothing new in the idea that women gain value not on their on merits or through their own achievements, but through their "worth" to men (e.g. as wives, mistresses, secretaries, servants, shags, etc.)

Can I use the term someone here came out with the other week (and forgive me, I can't remember who it was!) Choice fallacy!

Women of my mother's generation pretty well knew their destiny was to become wives, mothers, carers, supporters and servants. Even if they worked a paid job, it came second to their husband's "careers."

Now young women are given the "illusion" of choice. You can be this or that or the other, and if you don't succeed, there's something not good enough in YOU (rather than due to institutional sexism all around that we're not supposed to notice is there.) Choice girls, you have choice. You can choose to do whatever you want to do. But, a bit like the shell game, everything points to there really only being a limited number of "available" choices. However, once you've made your "choice" (Hobsons though it is,) you've got no right to whine if you're not happy/get abused/are exploited/etc. because it was you choice.

And the Choice Fallacy is also trotted out when anyone suggests that there could be harm as the result of pornification of society, or legalisation of prostitution or similar. The line goes that because some women choose to do these things, they must be okay and wrong to suggest they could be harmful or hurtful to anyone else.

Gah!

I love the term 'Choice fallacy'. Please own up if you created it. Good post KRITTIQ and thanks sportsfanatic for bringing this to our attention.

Guardian article about this.

"But the boys are brought up in the same environment."

But not with the same expectations, treatment and assumptions, surely?