At the age of nine I was sent to school; it was the first social institution that I’d ever been placed into. For me it was a similar experience to that of the immigrants in Robert Parks’ model of straight line assimilation, wherein I was completely unfamiliar with where I was being sent, up to that point I hadn’t even known that type of “normalcy existed,” and yet I quickly settled into the accepted routines, and my teachers and peers soon considered me to be a successfully socially integrated member of the greater party.
During my rebellious teen years, I observed many atrocities, ranging from random street crime to rape. I became aware of the symbolic interactionism that is interwoven in the shared assumptions that many poverty stricken youths use to validate the motivations of their numerous immoral acts of violence and dissension against anything that represents a form of traditional authority. At least one very important lesson was learned about gangs; they exist because they offer children of comparable background/situation, a subculture, to relate their similarities in turn forming a sense of belonging. At the same time bonds are being made, women and young girls are being specifically targeted and coerced into committing acts of crime, and often share an alarming characteristic of seeming willingness to participate in acts of sexual violence. Unlike Talcott Parson’s sex role theory that idealizes the classic nuclear family, street families often follow a code of ritualized sexism that revolves around degradation of a women’s sexuality and is confounded by lethal doses of sexual harassment. Women and girls are definitely considered an out group, seen as having little input in the overall workings of the in-group. I think women align themselves in these kinship networks due to a general lack of awareness of self. However, the larger issue of mistreatment occurs because many women do not view themselves as the “weaker sex,” which should be well cared for and respected. Instead, a form of isomorphism exists; where they see themselves as equally eligible to endure the torments of violence from both men and women, facing brutal beatings and sometimes rape with steadfast optimism that they have no other choice in lifestyle. After years of neglect, perhaps the labeling theory begins to apply, whereas they view themselves with the negative perception that others do not respect them, so they in turn do not respect themselves.
