December 15, 2014 • 38 mins
Are women likelier to join cults? Cristen and Caroline investigate how destructive cults like the Manson Family work and why women join them and then debunk stereotypes about women in cults.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. And Kristen
and I'm caroling, And today we are talking about women
and cults, and to kick things off, we thought we
would start at the very worst end of the spectrum
(00:24):
in terms of women's involvements and cults, because I think
when a lot of us hear the word cult, we
think of Charles Manson and the family and the number
of women who he attracted to his cult. Yeah. I
think when people talk about cults or think about women's involvement,
(00:45):
they do tend to think of what we call destructive cults.
Not necessarily the groups of people who come together and
actually provide a safety net for one another, provide a
sense of community and love and all of that wonderful stuff.
We today are focusing were on the destructive end of
the spectrum, and certainly the Manson family plays into that.
(01:05):
What's so interesting about Manson is that when he ended
up in San Francisco back in nineteen sixty seven, he
hung out with a bunch of hippies and ended up
developing kind of a huge following, mostly of young women
who were disillusioned with the state of affairs in America
at the time, and he actually had a lot of
(01:26):
women and if you're familiar with Manson, you know all this,
But he had a lot of women essentially doing his bidding. Yeah,
when it came down to the trials dealing with the
La Bianca murders, which were the most infamous of the
Manson family crimes, which involved the murdering of Sharon Tate,
who was eight months pregnant at the time, and others.
There were three women who were sentenced to death UM
(01:50):
which those sentences were then commuted to life sentences after
California did away with the death penalty UM. But it
was Leslie Van Houghton, Susan Atkins, and then Patricia Krenwinkle.
And Krenwinkel has talked in recent years about her experience
in the family because initially, one of the most disturbing
things for people, you know, in the early seventies watching
(02:13):
these trials happening, was just the lack of remorse of
all of these very young women who were brutally murdering
these other people. And so Kranwinkle, for instance, um, I
think she played a part in seven murders. She stabbed
one person in the La Bianca murders so brutally that
(02:36):
the police thought that her nightgown had just been bought read.
She played a role in seven of the Manson family
murders because um, it is thought that Manson didn't actually
murder anyone, He just had all of his followers do
his murderous bidding. And in the La Bianca murders, for instance,
(02:56):
Krenwinkle stabbed one of the women so many times I
think it was like sixty plus times that the police
thought that the white nightgown she had been wearing what
was actually originally read UM. She ended up being though
the longest serving and still is the longest serving female
inmate in the California penal system. UM. But now looking
(03:20):
back on it, she has said, quote, I wanted to
feel like someone would care for me, And I know,
going into this podcast Caroline to learn about women and cults,
that was the idea that that I had of why
a lot of women would join the so called destructive cults.
That they are looking for something that they are perhaps
(03:41):
these lost lambs looking for a shepherd, if you will,
to put it in a like horrifyingly inappropriate terms in
reference to Charles Manson as a shepherd, right, Well, I mean,
I think I don't think you're wrong in putting it
that way. I think a lot of cult leaders definitely
seek to fill that sort of role in terms of
(04:02):
shepherding people in one direction or another, whether that's a
positive direction or not. Um. But yeah, it's interesting to
look at the stereotypes of people who joined cults, because, yeah,
we we just tend to assume that everyone who joins
a cult is brainwashed and weak willed. And while it's
(04:25):
true that a lot of people men and women who
joined these groups do tend to be looking for something,
there's sort of a common baseline of of maybe being
in a transitional period and seeking something, which is also
the reason a lot of people do find religion as well,
not just a cult. There's just a whole lot more
(04:47):
to it. And it's interesting to see that there really
is a full range, a full spectrum of people who
joined cults, and a full spectrum of reasons for doing so.
So let's take a look at how a cult and
a destructive cult in particular differs from other types of
religious or group organizations. And this is coming from Adrian
(05:10):
Furnham who's a psychology professor at University College of London
and so Freedom says that whether the cult is based
on religious or political or self help foundational reasons, they
have a bunch of recognizable characteristics. Typically, they have a
powerful dedication or devotion to an explicit person or creed.
(05:34):
One huge one is the use of thought reform programs
to get people to believe everything that is said within
the confines of the cult, and they all tend to
share recruitment, selection and socialization processes too, And going off
of the whole thought reform thing, there's also efforts to
maintain psychological and physical dependency among cult members. They work
(05:58):
hard to reprogram the way people will see the world. Um,
there's a consistent exploitation of group members specifically to advance
the goals of that leader, the cult leader. And another
big one is the fact that a lot of cults
will pull people out of their common and familiar surroundings
(06:18):
and bring them into different and unfamiliar settings that have
totally different rules and behavior patterns to cut off members
from family and friends outside. So the question then is
why do people join cults to begin with? Because obviously
this point cult to have a negative connotation in our society,
(06:38):
largely due to say, the actions of the Manson family
or even uh the Jonestown cult which drank the poison
kool aid and nine people died as a result of that. Um.
So there's a lot of stereotyping, as Firnum talks about,
that goes into our ideas of why people would want
(07:00):
to join up with these rather infamous groups, and Furnum rights.
All too often we explain strange unexpected behavior like joining
a cult in terms of the dispositions of others, that
they're poor, gullible, naive, indoctrinated members who have quite defective personalities,
But we explain more common behaviors in terms of the
(07:22):
appeal of an accepted group's philosophy, leader, or benefits. Thus,
he says, the idea is that sad in adequates join cults,
but altruistic, caring people join the church. And so he says,
if you look a little bit deeper at the way
we sort of condemn people who join cults versus a
lot of other people who join, say, churches, then there's
(07:47):
a lot of moralizing that goes on in the stereotyping,
when in truth, members of cults show surprisingly large diversities
in terms of age, career backgrounds, education, ideology, and talents.
There isn't just one stock cult member in the same
way that there isn't just one stock member of a
(08:07):
major religion, right exactly. And where religions, organized religions and
cults intersect is what they offer members, and a lot
of times that's friendship, identity, respect, security, community and cults
also offer a worldview, and Firnum writes about how um
(08:29):
a cult leader or the leadership of a cult will
provide members with sort of a black and white, right
and wrong, good and bad version of existence of reality
of the world of society, and that's really really comforting
for people who maybe are in that transitional period and
who are seeking something. And the International Journal of Cultic
(08:50):
Studies in February kind of expanded on this idea of
wanting to belong to a community, and they talk about
how the propensity for individuals to be drawn to non
kin groups is hard wired. You have narcissistic cult leaders
who are adept at creating these cohesive groups that become
attractive to people who are most drawn to these non
(09:12):
kin groups, people like altruists, idealists and transcendence seekers. Now
there are some hallmarks psychological traits of cult members broadly UM.
And this is coming from Michael Langne, who's the psychologist
who specializes in cults, who I have a feeling is
also quite entertaining at dinner parties, I would imagine UM,
(09:35):
and he talks about how there's a lot of disillusionment
with the status quo going on. So think of, for instance,
those girls in the nineteen sixties blocking to hate Ashbury
who had left their homes and met this guy named
Charles Manson. They were like, hey, you play guitar, let's
hang out. And then on top of that the naive idealism,
(09:57):
a blind belief that everyone is good, including for Arabs,
narcissistic or even sociopathic cult leaders. And then a desire
for spiritual meaning that need to believe that life has
a higher purpose. And these three hallmarks again jive with
probably a lot of what drives people to seek fulfillment
(10:20):
through those non kin groups, whether it is in a
church or a synagogue or a mosque or you know,
the living room of a cult group. But when it
comes to cults, the fact that you also have the isolation,
especially if it's a destructive cult. The isolation factors, the brainwashing,
(10:43):
these very specific manipulative recruitment techniques that also plays on
psychological traits that sort of foster dependency and gullibility and unassertiveness,
of fostering a reluctance to question what you're being told. Yeah,
and that's exactly how these cults recruit, retain, and control
(11:06):
their people. Destructive cults demand total compliance and conformity. There's
no individuality that exists within a destructive cult. They use
heavy persuasive techniques, and by heavy, I mean this could
involve forcing members to take drugs or keeping them sleep deprived,
things like that. And a big one too is creating
(11:28):
dissonance and using emotional manipulation, and that plays into a
lot of what psychotherapist Shelley Rosen, who was writing in
the Cultic Studies Journal in nine, talked about when she
looked at why women in particular joint cults. So she
takes an overall look first at women in society. Broad
brush strokes here, folks, she talks about how like thanks
(11:50):
to advances in society second wave feminism, women are able
to hold more powerful roles outside of the home in society,
but they're all service eating conflicting messages telling them to
maintain their feminine identities. Add to that that people in
general yearn from mentors and direction, but maybe women aren't
receiving and a mentorship or direction in their personal lives
(12:13):
or their careers, and then there's a little bit of
room for seeking that out. And so Rosen writes about
how cults really appear to be quote communities that include
values of cooperation and nurturance while expressing power and success,
and they appear to offer the answers about how to
cope in today's world. But the irony of all of
(12:34):
this is based on her work with past female cult members.
Rosen says that a lot of times women are initially
drawn to cults as a way to gain power and
influence while merging that with sort of a caregiving role,
because a lot of these small cults are very much
(12:55):
into tight knit communities, and sometimes I mean we're talking
like very very tight, uh, to the point of you
can't get out. And unlike the stereotype of the fawning
female cult member who is simply being who doesn't have
much between our eyears and is simply being led astray
um by some like male sociopath. Rosen writes that quote
(13:18):
women who joined cults are intelligent, active, and seeking to
make an impact. And yet uh, they might end up
in these groups because at first they go to their
first meeting or course or group, outing whatever it might be,
and it seems comforting. But the more in mesh they
(13:40):
become into this group, the more obviously they tend to
lose their power, right, and I mean she in terms
of power. She She talks about how women who are
seeking a certain type of power that is non competitive
and non threatening, they they really will grab take two
groups like this because oh, here's a strong leader. So
(14:03):
I'm not the boss. I don't have to worry about
like leading the charge and changing society. But I can
buy into this person's vision of X, y Z, of society,
of whatever, and help work towards a common goal. But
in reality, cults, destructive cults definitely don't provide the type
of support that this image of a woman that Rosen
(14:26):
is painting is looking for. So what are they doing joining?
And this is where we get into the idea of
semiotic incompetence, and that goes back to earlier when I
mentioned cults creating dissonance and emotional manipulation, Semiotic incompetence is
basically what happens when you go into a situation expecting
something and then something else starts to happen, and you
(14:49):
start to feel awkward and uncomfortable because things aren't quite
matching up. Expectations are not matching reality, and maybe you
don't know why, maybe you can't put your finger on
what it is, but it definitely creates a feeling of
insecurity and um, really discomfort basically. And she talks about
the reason that this plays into more of a quote
(15:10):
unquote female thing, according to Rosen, is that in our culture,
we tend to typically be raised to think that people
are good and they mean what they say, and we
should trust them and we shouldn't question them, um. And
so once women are involved in destructive cultic groups, they
can become anxious, depressed, confused, and dissociated. They can't figure
(15:31):
out why things don't feel right. Well. In addition to
playing into those gender dynamics, perhaps a lot of these
destructive cults will often enforced specific kinds of female targeted
tactics to keep them sort of at the mercy of
the cult. So Marcia Redden, who's the director of the
(15:53):
International Cult Education Program, was talking about how pregnant women
in cults, in particular, for instance, going, I know I
keep parping on the Manson family, but for instance, Um,
one of her name is flipping my mind right now,
but she actually had Charles Manson's child, Um Pooh Bear
while she was a member of the family. She has
(16:15):
since of course left and is now living anonymously in
the Midwest, but she was pregnant for a time in
this cult. And so Rodden talks about how pregnant women
and cults might receive little, if any prenatal care, delivering
in unsanitary conditions, being forced to leave children behind if
they leave the cult. Um. Because this is also playing
(16:36):
into the fact that when it comes to the one
hallmark of a destructive cult, as opposed to say sort
of a small cultish group that's totally fine and not
destroying lives, is that isolation factor. So on top of
the if you're pregnant not receiving prenatal care, education is
often highly restricted. If you have a child in a cult,
(16:59):
one of destructive cults, they will probably receive little of
any formal education. Um Hari Krishna, for instance, I thought
that women aren't smart enough for school because their sole
job really is to be a homemaker, right exactly. And
of course, in destructive cults, the issue of sexual abuse
is a huge one, and this is coming from John J.
(17:20):
Laylk in Cultic Studies Journal. In she was writing about
how sexual control is seen as the final step and
objectification of the cult member by the authoritarian leader who's
able to satisfy his needs through psychological manipulation leading to
sexual exploitation. And so here's where we get into the
very uncomfortable parallels between cults, cult members and the charismatic,
(17:46):
narcissistic leaders and how they use all of these sexual
and manipulative tactics and abusive relationships, manipulative relationships, and the
fact that women who get out of either one of
them a cult, a destructive cult, or an abuse to
relationship tend to suffer things like PTSD because their whole
worldview has been so warped for so long. But I'm
(18:08):
getting out of myself. So in terms of the sexual
abuse that a lot of women in destructive cults face,
one aspect is the fact that their entire sexuality or
sex lives, in addition to rules about marriage and procreation,
are controlled, manipulated and exploited just like any other part
of their lives as part of a cult. And the
(18:30):
sexual abuse definitely isn't random. In fact, it may actually
be sold as an integral, accepted part of the cults
whole system. Yeah, you hear stories about destructive cults in
which um group sex might be forced, or you know,
women passed around to male members of the cults to
do their sexual bidding. Obviously the cult leader, who is
(18:53):
usually male um having full sexual access to female members
of the All kinds of things like that happening. And
a lot of times though, if there is this kind
of abuse happening, your willingness to go through with it
is often framed as a matter of duty, honor, and
(19:15):
loyalty to the cult. And at that we're going to
take a quick break and when we come back we
will talk more about women and cults and whether they're
actually more likely than men to join. So stick with us.
So one big question that we haven't addressed yet is
our women likely or to join cults. I think up
(19:38):
to this point in the podcast, we've sort of been
operating on the assumption that a lot of cults are
framed as men sort of attracting groups of other men,
but also a lot of women being willing to do this. Um.
And one of the reasons why we wanted to do
this podcast in the first place was because of an
article in the Guardian newspaper that came out in Januar
(20:00):
which said that women make up seventy percent of global
cult members. So we immediately said, oh, well, you must
do a podcast on cults. However, statistics, actual confirmed data
on cults, it's rather hard to come by. Yeah. This
is an article written by Jemima thack Ray, who is
(20:20):
a minister and you know Christian. As much time as
I've spent researching for this episode, I could not find
a anything to back up the stat But b I
just couldn't find really numbers in general. I mean, I
think a lot of people speculate that women are more
(20:43):
likely to join cults because of various reasons like, oh,
they're just used to being oppressed, and that that's kind
of thack Ray's argument in this Guardian article. UM. She
says that women are much more susceptible to being seduced
by it just cults than men are. And she says
(21:03):
that part of the problem is that in many cultures,
women are less well educated than men, are less empowered,
and therefore are more attracted to the illusion of security
that occuld offers. And she was writing about this in
the context of a Brazilian man who at the time
was claiming to be Jesus reincarnated and their photos of
(21:23):
him surrounded by a host of young women and so,
and I think that that is the prevailing idea that
we have in terms of what occult looks like. It's
a guy surrounded by a host of young women. UM,
which I think is part of what disturbs us so
(21:45):
much about cults to begin with, is specifically destructive cults,
because there is that question of how how is that happening?
But I think Caroline that your analogy to abusive relationships
is spot on because as when you think about the
hallmarks of a lot of these narcissistic, possibly sociopathic, um
(22:06):
destructive cult leaders, they often have the psychological profiles of
what's called the dark triad, which is what shows up
in literature about um and academic literature about the quote
unquote bad boys in our society and why some straight
women are particularly attracted to that, and it has a
(22:26):
lot to do with that psychological profile. And I think
there is probably a lot of overlap with those two
psychological profiles of the bad boy with the dark triad
and perhaps the archetypal male cult leader. Yeah, and one
cult leader who I wanted to talk about is Winnifred
Right and his family quote unquote is often compared to
(22:47):
the Manson family, but Winnifred Right was active in the
nineteen eighties and nineties in California, UM, and I think
as as horrifying. I won't get into too many gory
details of this, but Winnifred Wright's family is almost a
textbook example of the destructive cult that we're talking about
(23:08):
in terms of a man praying on educated, independent, do
good or women who basically just sort of fell victim
to uh what he was selling, although it was definitely false.
So basically the rundown is that Winnifred Right is a
(23:29):
black man who wrote his family a lot of letters
back in the seventies and eighties about the materialistic white
establishment and wanting to overthrow the system, and he encountered
a bunch of white women who he then convinced to
become his wives. And the thing that these women all
shared was that they were educated, ambitious, They had privileged backgrounds.
(23:52):
One was even the daughter of the Xerox millionaire. And
another thing that they shared was a sympathy with rights
you points about race. They were all white women who
agreed with him that, you know, the white uh dominant
society was oppressing black society, and they there was this
(24:12):
element almost of white guilt and wanting to help, and
he actually encountered a lot of them in reggae clubs.
He was a Rastafarian for a time, but he ended
up using his first wife as a recruitment tool to
bring other women into the family and to bring random
women home for him to have sex with. And she
would approach other women from the perspective of do you
(24:34):
want to be a model for a women's art project,
so very much using the idea of women's power, second
way feminism. You're going to be part of this wonderful
women's community if you come with me to this house.
But then they tended to not leave after that, and
right basically sold the situation as a quote African style matriarchy,
(24:59):
but according to this article that I was reading about it,
Right ruled his household with an iron fist, controlling every
element of the women's lives, including their wardrobes, reading materials, diets.
They were all vegetarian, and even the emotions they were
allowed to express. Right could have sex with whoever he wanted.
He could get angry. He shot guns off in the
(25:20):
house to keep them in a constant state of panic.
But they were supposed to cover their heads with scarves,
make sure that they wore loose fitting clothes and looked
as modest as possible. He actually told them that he
didn't want them to look like sluts. And so this
is a scary, horrifying, but perfect example of the manipulative violent,
(25:40):
both sexually, physically, emotionally and mentally, These violent tactics that
these cult leaders will use to keep women absolutely at
their mercy. Well. And it follows that pattern of starting
out as a welcome invitation to something more spiritual and
progressive um, which for non destructive cults, that usually is
(26:03):
what people are seeking out, and they are sharing ideas
and perhaps of finding a higher spirituality for them, whatever
that might mean. UM. But when it comes to the
destructive cults. Obviously that erodes away into the cult leader
in the structure of the cult, just chipping away at
members self confidence, moral perceptions. There's the isolation factor, breeding
(26:28):
mistrust among cult members to the outside world so that
they wouldn't even want to seek help outside um, keeping
them exhausted, and also just essentially just breaking down who
they are as individuals, so they just become literally a
part of this ideology. Yeah, and it's it's so interesting
(26:51):
as far and we'll get we'll get into leaving cults
in just a second, but that whole aspect of mind control,
thought reform warm telling these women. You know a lot
of people look at cult members or even women in destructive, scary,
abusive relationships, and they say, why won't she just leave?
Why won't you just walk away? And when you have
someone constantly telling you that you're no good, that no
(27:13):
one will want you. For instance, Winnifred Wright told his
wives that, oh, you have mixed race children, no one
will want you after this, You're not worth anything. You
have to stay here. It's this whole idea that the
cult leader is making leaving seem like the scariest, worst,
most impossible thing to do. In the world. But I mean,
(27:33):
we've talked a lot so far about male narcissistic, sociopathic
cult leaders, but there have been some women in our
history who have stepped into this role as well. Yeah.
Joni Johnston highlighted this over Its Psychology today talking about
in nineteen twelve, there was a woman named Clementine Barnabette
(27:53):
who was a high Priesis of the Church of Sacrifice
in Louisiana, who ultimately confessed to kill seventeen people as
part of her devotion to that cult, and the group
itself killed forty people overall because they believed that human
sacrifice could bring them wealth and immortality. And I mean
they were they were incredibly brutal. They would essentially mutilate
(28:17):
the bodies beyond recognition. Um. Fast forward two thousand twelve
and you have Sylvia Mraz Moreno and her son Ramon
Mraz who allegedly let a cult that worshiped the female
saint of death, Lisantam Morte, and finally a alleged serial
killer members of the Miras family were arrested for murdering
(28:39):
two children and an adult. So women certainly play a
role in this as well. It just seems like from
the limited research that there is on these cultic practices,
a lot of times it is the male leader, but
while there might be, you know, his devoted female followers,
they're also sort of the second command women, the lead wives.
(29:01):
And for a pop cultural reference, that makes me think
of The Master, which was one of Philip symour Hoffman's
last films, where he plays this cult leader of sorts,
And what's most fascinating to me in the film is
how the relationship between his wife played by Amy Adams
and him really is the central force of this cult,
(29:23):
even though he is the leading personality, and you know,
the cult of personality is is all focused around him,
but she plays an integral role much in the way
when it comes to the Jonestown and People's Temple, are
the ones who drank the kool aid. How Leader Jim
Jones's wife, Marceline was often a stand in for him
(29:44):
if he was delivering a speech somewhere else, and she
would also actively chastise people who questioned him. Yeah, and
she was so devoted to her husband and the cult
at large that she she didn't even it looked the
other way. When Jim Jones took on another partner this
this other woman, I think her name was Caroline or Catherine,
(30:08):
but um, Marshalling just sort of accepted that this was
how it was, and that this is the best thing
for her husband, and whatever was the best thing for
her husband, then it was the best thing for the
cult and she would just have to accept it. But
she went on in her leadership role of being the
cult leaders second in command. Yeah. Now, in the case
(30:28):
of that Jones Town cult which relocated to Guiana so
that they were completely isolated from people back home, and
nine members ended up dying in the infamous mass murder
slash suicide where they drank the kool aid, But before
that some members had left the cult. Obviously, it is
possible to escape these destructive groups, but there are usually
(30:54):
phases of leaving that are necessary, be because of the
manipulation and brainwashing that's often involved. Yeah, there's a lot
of different theories out there about what is the best
way to leave a cult, to help someone leave a cult,
to kidnap someone and forcibly remove them from a cult. Um,
(31:16):
there's a there were a lot of programs like this
back in the eighties, I believe to sort of reintegrate
people into society. But generally psychiatrists and psychologists agree that
there are necessary steps that need to happen if someone
is going to essentially kind of wake up and realize
I need to get out of here. And a lot
(31:37):
of this is coming from psychotherapist Shelley Rosen, who we
mentioned earlier, but she points out the importance of asking
questions about why you, as a member of this group,
are upset or confused. You know, we talked about that dissonance,
the emotional manipulation, the semiotic incompetence. Basically, something is not
adding up. She points out that women are socialized to
(32:00):
be trusting and caretaking, and so asking questions, especially in
the sort of manipulative, scary situation, can be seen as
critical or making waves, and so we tend to get
the message that to be successful we have to hide
what we know and still speak deferentially to men and
other people in positions of power. And so cult members
in general are discouraged from asking questions. You're you're criticized
(32:25):
for your lack of faith, et cetera. But asking questions
is the critical first step to pinpointing what is wrong
with the situation, because once you start asking the questions.
Then you get to step too, of gaining the competence
to pay attention to the clues that you are being
deceived um and this involves even paying attention to the
(32:48):
different linguistic styles that might be UM integrated into the
cult lifestyle of and how that differs from dominant views.
And um rose and talks about how again, as women,
we might be socialized to listen more keenly to what
men say than to our own, as she calls it,
feminine voices, right, just trusting the dominant or the masculine
(33:11):
in this case, over your own voice, or the feminine
in this case. And then she also talks about having
to believe that leaving the group is even an option
that will have a successful outcome. You know, we talked
earlier about how part of leaders manipulation in general is
to make its members believe that the outside world is
(33:33):
a scary, dangerous place. No one will want you, You
will lose all of the support we have given you
if you walk out, and so it's made to seem
absolutely impossible and the worst option ever. And so once
you do make that step of being able to say, hey,
I can leave, I can make a life for myself,
as many of the people who left before the Jonestown
(33:56):
massacre did. That's sort of the the last step in
being able to get free of the cult. Now, when
it comes to cults, statistics, as I mentioned earlier, are
rather vague. Estimates. For instance, of how many people in
the US are in cults are in the low hundreds
of thousands, um. And and we didn't find any hard
(34:16):
numbers on the gender breakdown, So we want to leave
it to listeners of the question of do you think
that women are more prone to joining cults? And is
it perhaps harder for us to leave cults because obviously
there there are plenty of men and cults as well.
I mean speaking of the master actor Yaquin Phoenix, who
(34:38):
start in that ironically grew up in the cult the
Children of God. Now that was not the destructive cult
spinoff of the Children of God. He has said that
his parents were essentially looking for people to share like
minded ideas and um, you know, find find a deeper spirituality,
which is all find well and good, but really curious
(34:58):
to hear for listeners who might have any cultish insights.
Send us your thoughts. Mom Stubb at house Stuffworks dot
com is our email address. You can also tweet us
at mom stub Podcasts or messages on Facebook, and we've
got a couple of messages to share with you when
we come right back from a quick break and now
(35:19):
back to the show. So I've had a Facebook message
here from Adrian about our Lady Lawyer episode, and she writes,
as an aspiring lawyer myself, I really appreciated your episode
on dress codes in court. In Canada where I live.
In criminal court, lawyers on both sides wear robes. However,
(35:43):
in other matters they're free to wear what they like.
Another dimension to this issue is a controversy around dress
codes for parliamentarians. Many run into the exact same problems
as what you highlighted in your episode. A pant suit
like Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel is too strong but
to feminine, and people don't take you seriously. A couple
of years ago, controversy erupted here when it was revealed
(36:05):
that the official photos of some female members of Parliament
were photo shopped to be more modest. These women were
professionally inappropriately dressed in my opinion, but we're apparently showing
too much skin for the parliamentary website to handle it.
I love dressing professionally. I feel proud and strong and feminine.
It's so sad that for many women this empowered feeling
(36:28):
is mitigated by constant sexist scrutiny. So thanks Adrian, and
also I had no idea about that parliamentary photo shopping.
That is ridiculous. Our lady lawyer dressed god up. So
definitely got a lot of great feedback. You guys keep
the letters coming, but we're not just getting letters from
lady lawyers about double standards in terms of address. I
(36:52):
have a letter here from Pam who says I just
wanted to let you know that that is not the
only work field that has ruled and double standards. I
am a wildlife field tech, and there tends to be
a double standard here as well. When I worked for
nonprofit organizations, men and women were treated indifferently. The only
thing in common about our dress was good work boots.
(37:13):
Our bosses never really cared too much about what we
wore as long as we were careful out in the field.
Anything went shorts, tank top, swimsuits, jeans, whatever. Now that
I work in the private sector is a field tech,
I have to be careful about what I wear. I've
been instructed that I can't wear anything low cut or
without sleeves, and my pants can't have worn holes in them.
As a field tech comfort is key if I'm going
(37:35):
to be hiking in one hundred degree plus temperatures or
wearing a pair of well broken in pants versus a
pair of brand new stiff pants. Anyway, keep up the
great work and keep the podcast coming. I tend to
listen to y'all while hiking at work, and it helps
keep me entertained while working in one hundred plus or
negative twenty degree conditions, So thank you, Pam. I guess
we can't get a dress code break anywhere, although I
(37:58):
will say that the podcast your dress code pretty relaxed.
Pretty relaxed. Yeah, we're both wearing bathrooms right now. It's right.
So if you have thoughts to send to us again,
Mom stuff at how Stuffworks dot com is our email
address and for links to all of our social media,
including all of our blogs, videos, and podcast with this
one with our sources so you can follow along with us,
(38:21):
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
isn't how stuff works. Dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. And Kristen
and I'm caroling, And today we are talking about women
and cults, and to kick things off, we thought we
would start at the very worst end of the spectrum
(00:24):
in terms of women's involvements and cults, because I think
when a lot of us hear the word cult, we
think of Charles Manson and the family and the number
of women who he attracted to his cult. Yeah. I
think when people talk about cults or think about women's involvement,
(00:45):
they do tend to think of what we call destructive cults.
Not necessarily the groups of people who come together and
actually provide a safety net for one another, provide a
sense of community and love and all of that wonderful stuff.
We today are focusing were on the destructive end of
the spectrum, and certainly the Manson family plays into that.
(01:05):
What's so interesting about Manson is that when he ended
up in San Francisco back in nineteen sixty seven, he
hung out with a bunch of hippies and ended up
developing kind of a huge following, mostly of young women
who were disillusioned with the state of affairs in America
at the time, and he actually had a lot of
(01:26):
women and if you're familiar with Manson, you know all this,
But he had a lot of women essentially doing his bidding. Yeah,
when it came down to the trials dealing with the
La Bianca murders, which were the most infamous of the
Manson family crimes, which involved the murdering of Sharon Tate,
who was eight months pregnant at the time, and others.
There were three women who were sentenced to death UM
(01:50):
which those sentences were then commuted to life sentences after
California did away with the death penalty UM. But it
was Leslie Van Houghton, Susan Atkins, and then Patricia Krenwinkle.
And Krenwinkel has talked in recent years about her experience
in the family because initially, one of the most disturbing
things for people, you know, in the early seventies watching
(02:13):
these trials happening, was just the lack of remorse of
all of these very young women who were brutally murdering
these other people. And so Kranwinkle, for instance, um, I
think she played a part in seven murders. She stabbed
one person in the La Bianca murders so brutally that
(02:36):
the police thought that her nightgown had just been bought read.
She played a role in seven of the Manson family
murders because um, it is thought that Manson didn't actually
murder anyone, He just had all of his followers do
his murderous bidding. And in the La Bianca murders, for instance,
(02:56):
Krenwinkle stabbed one of the women so many times I
think it was like sixty plus times that the police
thought that the white nightgown she had been wearing what
was actually originally read UM. She ended up being though
the longest serving and still is the longest serving female
inmate in the California penal system. UM. But now looking
(03:20):
back on it, she has said, quote, I wanted to
feel like someone would care for me, And I know,
going into this podcast Caroline to learn about women and cults,
that was the idea that that I had of why
a lot of women would join the so called destructive cults.
That they are looking for something that they are perhaps
(03:41):
these lost lambs looking for a shepherd, if you will,
to put it in a like horrifyingly inappropriate terms in
reference to Charles Manson as a shepherd, right, Well, I mean,
I think I don't think you're wrong in putting it
that way. I think a lot of cult leaders definitely
seek to fill that sort of role in terms of
(04:02):
shepherding people in one direction or another, whether that's a
positive direction or not. Um. But yeah, it's interesting to
look at the stereotypes of people who joined cults, because, yeah,
we we just tend to assume that everyone who joins
a cult is brainwashed and weak willed. And while it's
(04:25):
true that a lot of people men and women who
joined these groups do tend to be looking for something,
there's sort of a common baseline of of maybe being
in a transitional period and seeking something, which is also
the reason a lot of people do find religion as well,
not just a cult. There's just a whole lot more
(04:47):
to it. And it's interesting to see that there really
is a full range, a full spectrum of people who
joined cults, and a full spectrum of reasons for doing so.
So let's take a look at how a cult and
a destructive cult in particular differs from other types of
religious or group organizations. And this is coming from Adrian
(05:10):
Furnham who's a psychology professor at University College of London
and so Freedom says that whether the cult is based
on religious or political or self help foundational reasons, they
have a bunch of recognizable characteristics. Typically, they have a
powerful dedication or devotion to an explicit person or creed.
(05:34):
One huge one is the use of thought reform programs
to get people to believe everything that is said within
the confines of the cult, and they all tend to
share recruitment, selection and socialization processes too, And going off
of the whole thought reform thing, there's also efforts to
maintain psychological and physical dependency among cult members. They work
(05:58):
hard to reprogram the way people will see the world. Um,
there's a consistent exploitation of group members specifically to advance
the goals of that leader, the cult leader. And another
big one is the fact that a lot of cults
will pull people out of their common and familiar surroundings
(06:18):
and bring them into different and unfamiliar settings that have
totally different rules and behavior patterns to cut off members
from family and friends outside. So the question then is
why do people join cults to begin with? Because obviously
this point cult to have a negative connotation in our society,
(06:38):
largely due to say, the actions of the Manson family
or even uh the Jonestown cult which drank the poison
kool aid and nine people died as a result of that. Um.
So there's a lot of stereotyping, as Firnum talks about,
that goes into our ideas of why people would want
(07:00):
to join up with these rather infamous groups, and Furnum rights.
All too often we explain strange unexpected behavior like joining
a cult in terms of the dispositions of others, that
they're poor, gullible, naive, indoctrinated members who have quite defective personalities,
But we explain more common behaviors in terms of the
(07:22):
appeal of an accepted group's philosophy, leader, or benefits. Thus,
he says, the idea is that sad in adequates join cults,
but altruistic, caring people join the church. And so he says,
if you look a little bit deeper at the way
we sort of condemn people who join cults versus a
lot of other people who join, say, churches, then there's
(07:47):
a lot of moralizing that goes on in the stereotyping,
when in truth, members of cults show surprisingly large diversities
in terms of age, career backgrounds, education, ideology, and talents.
There isn't just one stock cult member in the same
way that there isn't just one stock member of a
(08:07):
major religion, right exactly. And where religions, organized religions and
cults intersect is what they offer members, and a lot
of times that's friendship, identity, respect, security, community and cults
also offer a worldview, and Firnum writes about how um
(08:29):
a cult leader or the leadership of a cult will
provide members with sort of a black and white, right
and wrong, good and bad version of existence of reality
of the world of society, and that's really really comforting
for people who maybe are in that transitional period and
who are seeking something. And the International Journal of Cultic
(08:50):
Studies in February kind of expanded on this idea of
wanting to belong to a community, and they talk about
how the propensity for individuals to be drawn to non
kin groups is hard wired. You have narcissistic cult leaders
who are adept at creating these cohesive groups that become
attractive to people who are most drawn to these non
(09:12):
kin groups, people like altruists, idealists and transcendence seekers. Now
there are some hallmarks psychological traits of cult members broadly UM.
And this is coming from Michael Langne, who's the psychologist
who specializes in cults, who I have a feeling is
also quite entertaining at dinner parties, I would imagine UM,
(09:35):
and he talks about how there's a lot of disillusionment
with the status quo going on. So think of, for instance,
those girls in the nineteen sixties blocking to hate Ashbury
who had left their homes and met this guy named
Charles Manson. They were like, hey, you play guitar, let's
hang out. And then on top of that the naive idealism,
(09:57):
a blind belief that everyone is good, including for Arabs,
narcissistic or even sociopathic cult leaders. And then a desire
for spiritual meaning that need to believe that life has
a higher purpose. And these three hallmarks again jive with
probably a lot of what drives people to seek fulfillment
(10:20):
through those non kin groups, whether it is in a
church or a synagogue or a mosque or you know,
the living room of a cult group. But when it
comes to cults, the fact that you also have the isolation,
especially if it's a destructive cult. The isolation factors, the brainwashing,
(10:43):
these very specific manipulative recruitment techniques that also plays on
psychological traits that sort of foster dependency and gullibility and unassertiveness,
of fostering a reluctance to question what you're being told. Yeah,
and that's exactly how these cults recruit, retain, and control
(11:06):
their people. Destructive cults demand total compliance and conformity. There's
no individuality that exists within a destructive cult. They use
heavy persuasive techniques, and by heavy, I mean this could
involve forcing members to take drugs or keeping them sleep deprived,
things like that. And a big one too is creating
(11:28):
dissonance and using emotional manipulation, and that plays into a
lot of what psychotherapist Shelley Rosen, who was writing in
the Cultic Studies Journal in nine, talked about when she
looked at why women in particular joint cults. So she
takes an overall look first at women in society. Broad
brush strokes here, folks, she talks about how like thanks
(11:50):
to advances in society second wave feminism, women are able
to hold more powerful roles outside of the home in society,
but they're all service eating conflicting messages telling them to
maintain their feminine identities. Add to that that people in
general yearn from mentors and direction, but maybe women aren't
receiving and a mentorship or direction in their personal lives
(12:13):
or their careers, and then there's a little bit of
room for seeking that out. And so Rosen writes about
how cults really appear to be quote communities that include
values of cooperation and nurturance while expressing power and success,
and they appear to offer the answers about how to
cope in today's world. But the irony of all of
(12:34):
this is based on her work with past female cult members.
Rosen says that a lot of times women are initially
drawn to cults as a way to gain power and
influence while merging that with sort of a caregiving role,
because a lot of these small cults are very much
(12:55):
into tight knit communities, and sometimes I mean we're talking
like very very tight, uh, to the point of you
can't get out. And unlike the stereotype of the fawning
female cult member who is simply being who doesn't have
much between our eyears and is simply being led astray
um by some like male sociopath. Rosen writes that quote
(13:18):
women who joined cults are intelligent, active, and seeking to
make an impact. And yet uh, they might end up
in these groups because at first they go to their
first meeting or course or group, outing whatever it might be,
and it seems comforting. But the more in mesh they
(13:40):
become into this group, the more obviously they tend to
lose their power, right, and I mean she in terms
of power. She She talks about how women who are
seeking a certain type of power that is non competitive
and non threatening, they they really will grab take two
groups like this because oh, here's a strong leader. So
(14:03):
I'm not the boss. I don't have to worry about
like leading the charge and changing society. But I can
buy into this person's vision of X, y Z, of society,
of whatever, and help work towards a common goal. But
in reality, cults, destructive cults definitely don't provide the type
of support that this image of a woman that Rosen
(14:26):
is painting is looking for. So what are they doing joining?
And this is where we get into the idea of
semiotic incompetence, and that goes back to earlier when I
mentioned cults creating dissonance and emotional manipulation, Semiotic incompetence is
basically what happens when you go into a situation expecting
something and then something else starts to happen, and you
(14:49):
start to feel awkward and uncomfortable because things aren't quite
matching up. Expectations are not matching reality, and maybe you
don't know why, maybe you can't put your finger on
what it is, but it definitely creates a feeling of
insecurity and um, really discomfort basically. And she talks about
the reason that this plays into more of a quote
(15:10):
unquote female thing, according to Rosen, is that in our culture,
we tend to typically be raised to think that people
are good and they mean what they say, and we
should trust them and we shouldn't question them, um. And
so once women are involved in destructive cultic groups, they
can become anxious, depressed, confused, and dissociated. They can't figure
(15:31):
out why things don't feel right. Well. In addition to
playing into those gender dynamics, perhaps a lot of these
destructive cults will often enforced specific kinds of female targeted
tactics to keep them sort of at the mercy of
the cult. So Marcia Redden, who's the director of the
(15:53):
International Cult Education Program, was talking about how pregnant women
in cults, in particular, for instance, going, I know I
keep parping on the Manson family, but for instance, Um,
one of her name is flipping my mind right now,
but she actually had Charles Manson's child, Um Pooh Bear
while she was a member of the family. She has
(16:15):
since of course left and is now living anonymously in
the Midwest, but she was pregnant for a time in
this cult. And so Rodden talks about how pregnant women
and cults might receive little, if any prenatal care, delivering
in unsanitary conditions, being forced to leave children behind if
they leave the cult. Um. Because this is also playing
(16:36):
into the fact that when it comes to the one
hallmark of a destructive cult, as opposed to say sort
of a small cultish group that's totally fine and not
destroying lives, is that isolation factor. So on top of
the if you're pregnant not receiving prenatal care, education is
often highly restricted. If you have a child in a cult,
(16:59):
one of destructive cults, they will probably receive little of
any formal education. Um Hari Krishna, for instance, I thought
that women aren't smart enough for school because their sole
job really is to be a homemaker, right exactly. And
of course, in destructive cults, the issue of sexual abuse
is a huge one, and this is coming from John J.
(17:20):
Laylk in Cultic Studies Journal. In she was writing about
how sexual control is seen as the final step and
objectification of the cult member by the authoritarian leader who's
able to satisfy his needs through psychological manipulation leading to
sexual exploitation. And so here's where we get into the
very uncomfortable parallels between cults, cult members and the charismatic,
(17:46):
narcissistic leaders and how they use all of these sexual
and manipulative tactics and abusive relationships, manipulative relationships, and the
fact that women who get out of either one of
them a cult, a destructive cult, or an abuse to
relationship tend to suffer things like PTSD because their whole
worldview has been so warped for so long. But I'm
(18:08):
getting out of myself. So in terms of the sexual
abuse that a lot of women in destructive cults face,
one aspect is the fact that their entire sexuality or
sex lives, in addition to rules about marriage and procreation,
are controlled, manipulated and exploited just like any other part
of their lives as part of a cult. And the
(18:30):
sexual abuse definitely isn't random. In fact, it may actually
be sold as an integral, accepted part of the cults
whole system. Yeah, you hear stories about destructive cults in
which um group sex might be forced, or you know,
women passed around to male members of the cults to
do their sexual bidding. Obviously the cult leader, who is
(18:53):
usually male um having full sexual access to female members
of the All kinds of things like that happening. And
a lot of times though, if there is this kind
of abuse happening, your willingness to go through with it
is often framed as a matter of duty, honor, and
(19:15):
loyalty to the cult. And at that we're going to
take a quick break and when we come back we
will talk more about women and cults and whether they're
actually more likely than men to join. So stick with us.
So one big question that we haven't addressed yet is
our women likely or to join cults. I think up
(19:38):
to this point in the podcast, we've sort of been
operating on the assumption that a lot of cults are
framed as men sort of attracting groups of other men,
but also a lot of women being willing to do this. Um.
And one of the reasons why we wanted to do
this podcast in the first place was because of an
article in the Guardian newspaper that came out in Januar
(20:00):
which said that women make up seventy percent of global
cult members. So we immediately said, oh, well, you must
do a podcast on cults. However, statistics, actual confirmed data
on cults, it's rather hard to come by. Yeah. This
is an article written by Jemima thack Ray, who is
(20:20):
a minister and you know Christian. As much time as
I've spent researching for this episode, I could not find
a anything to back up the stat But b I
just couldn't find really numbers in general. I mean, I
think a lot of people speculate that women are more
(20:43):
likely to join cults because of various reasons like, oh,
they're just used to being oppressed, and that that's kind
of thack Ray's argument in this Guardian article. UM. She
says that women are much more susceptible to being seduced
by it just cults than men are. And she says
(21:03):
that part of the problem is that in many cultures,
women are less well educated than men, are less empowered,
and therefore are more attracted to the illusion of security
that occuld offers. And she was writing about this in
the context of a Brazilian man who at the time
was claiming to be Jesus reincarnated and their photos of
(21:23):
him surrounded by a host of young women and so,
and I think that that is the prevailing idea that
we have in terms of what occult looks like. It's
a guy surrounded by a host of young women. UM,
which I think is part of what disturbs us so
(21:45):
much about cults to begin with, is specifically destructive cults,
because there is that question of how how is that happening?
But I think Caroline that your analogy to abusive relationships
is spot on because as when you think about the
hallmarks of a lot of these narcissistic, possibly sociopathic, um
(22:06):
destructive cult leaders, they often have the psychological profiles of
what's called the dark triad, which is what shows up
in literature about um and academic literature about the quote
unquote bad boys in our society and why some straight
women are particularly attracted to that, and it has a
(22:26):
lot to do with that psychological profile. And I think
there is probably a lot of overlap with those two
psychological profiles of the bad boy with the dark triad
and perhaps the archetypal male cult leader. Yeah, and one
cult leader who I wanted to talk about is Winnifred
Right and his family quote unquote is often compared to
(22:47):
the Manson family, but Winnifred Right was active in the
nineteen eighties and nineties in California, UM, and I think
as as horrifying. I won't get into too many gory
details of this, but Winnifred Wright's family is almost a
textbook example of the destructive cult that we're talking about
(23:08):
in terms of a man praying on educated, independent, do
good or women who basically just sort of fell victim
to uh what he was selling, although it was definitely false.
So basically the rundown is that Winnifred Right is a
(23:29):
black man who wrote his family a lot of letters
back in the seventies and eighties about the materialistic white
establishment and wanting to overthrow the system, and he encountered
a bunch of white women who he then convinced to
become his wives. And the thing that these women all
shared was that they were educated, ambitious, They had privileged backgrounds.
(23:52):
One was even the daughter of the Xerox millionaire. And
another thing that they shared was a sympathy with rights
you points about race. They were all white women who
agreed with him that, you know, the white uh dominant
society was oppressing black society, and they there was this
(24:12):
element almost of white guilt and wanting to help, and
he actually encountered a lot of them in reggae clubs.
He was a Rastafarian for a time, but he ended
up using his first wife as a recruitment tool to
bring other women into the family and to bring random
women home for him to have sex with. And she
would approach other women from the perspective of do you
(24:34):
want to be a model for a women's art project,
so very much using the idea of women's power, second
way feminism. You're going to be part of this wonderful
women's community if you come with me to this house.
But then they tended to not leave after that, and
right basically sold the situation as a quote African style matriarchy,
(24:59):
but according to this article that I was reading about it,
Right ruled his household with an iron fist, controlling every
element of the women's lives, including their wardrobes, reading materials, diets.
They were all vegetarian, and even the emotions they were
allowed to express. Right could have sex with whoever he wanted.
He could get angry. He shot guns off in the
(25:20):
house to keep them in a constant state of panic.
But they were supposed to cover their heads with scarves,
make sure that they wore loose fitting clothes and looked
as modest as possible. He actually told them that he
didn't want them to look like sluts. And so this
is a scary, horrifying, but perfect example of the manipulative violent,
(25:40):
both sexually, physically, emotionally and mentally, These violent tactics that
these cult leaders will use to keep women absolutely at
their mercy. Well. And it follows that pattern of starting
out as a welcome invitation to something more spiritual and
progressive um, which for non destructive cults, that usually is
(26:03):
what people are seeking out, and they are sharing ideas
and perhaps of finding a higher spirituality for them, whatever
that might mean. UM. But when it comes to the
destructive cults. Obviously that erodes away into the cult leader
in the structure of the cult, just chipping away at
members self confidence, moral perceptions. There's the isolation factor, breeding
(26:28):
mistrust among cult members to the outside world so that
they wouldn't even want to seek help outside um, keeping
them exhausted, and also just essentially just breaking down who
they are as individuals, so they just become literally a
part of this ideology. Yeah, and it's it's so interesting
(26:51):
as far and we'll get we'll get into leaving cults
in just a second, but that whole aspect of mind control,
thought reform warm telling these women. You know a lot
of people look at cult members or even women in destructive, scary,
abusive relationships, and they say, why won't she just leave?
Why won't you just walk away? And when you have
someone constantly telling you that you're no good, that no
(27:13):
one will want you. For instance, Winnifred Wright told his
wives that, oh, you have mixed race children, no one
will want you after this, You're not worth anything. You
have to stay here. It's this whole idea that the
cult leader is making leaving seem like the scariest, worst,
most impossible thing to do. In the world. But I mean,
(27:33):
we've talked a lot so far about male narcissistic, sociopathic
cult leaders, but there have been some women in our
history who have stepped into this role as well. Yeah.
Joni Johnston highlighted this over Its Psychology today talking about
in nineteen twelve, there was a woman named Clementine Barnabette
(27:53):
who was a high Priesis of the Church of Sacrifice
in Louisiana, who ultimately confessed to kill seventeen people as
part of her devotion to that cult, and the group
itself killed forty people overall because they believed that human
sacrifice could bring them wealth and immortality. And I mean
they were they were incredibly brutal. They would essentially mutilate
(28:17):
the bodies beyond recognition. Um. Fast forward two thousand twelve
and you have Sylvia Mraz Moreno and her son Ramon
Mraz who allegedly let a cult that worshiped the female
saint of death, Lisantam Morte, and finally a alleged serial
killer members of the Miras family were arrested for murdering
(28:39):
two children and an adult. So women certainly play a
role in this as well. It just seems like from
the limited research that there is on these cultic practices,
a lot of times it is the male leader, but
while there might be, you know, his devoted female followers,
they're also sort of the second command women, the lead wives.
(29:01):
And for a pop cultural reference, that makes me think
of The Master, which was one of Philip symour Hoffman's
last films, where he plays this cult leader of sorts,
And what's most fascinating to me in the film is
how the relationship between his wife played by Amy Adams
and him really is the central force of this cult,
(29:23):
even though he is the leading personality, and you know,
the cult of personality is is all focused around him,
but she plays an integral role much in the way
when it comes to the Jonestown and People's Temple, are
the ones who drank the kool aid. How Leader Jim
Jones's wife, Marceline was often a stand in for him
(29:44):
if he was delivering a speech somewhere else, and she
would also actively chastise people who questioned him. Yeah, and
she was so devoted to her husband and the cult
at large that she she didn't even it looked the
other way. When Jim Jones took on another partner this
this other woman, I think her name was Caroline or Catherine,
(30:08):
but um, Marshalling just sort of accepted that this was
how it was, and that this is the best thing
for her husband, and whatever was the best thing for
her husband, then it was the best thing for the
cult and she would just have to accept it. But
she went on in her leadership role of being the
cult leaders second in command. Yeah. Now, in the case
(30:28):
of that Jones Town cult which relocated to Guiana so
that they were completely isolated from people back home, and
nine members ended up dying in the infamous mass murder
slash suicide where they drank the kool aid, But before
that some members had left the cult. Obviously, it is
possible to escape these destructive groups, but there are usually
(30:54):
phases of leaving that are necessary, be because of the
manipulation and brainwashing that's often involved. Yeah, there's a lot
of different theories out there about what is the best
way to leave a cult, to help someone leave a cult,
to kidnap someone and forcibly remove them from a cult. Um,
(31:16):
there's a there were a lot of programs like this
back in the eighties, I believe to sort of reintegrate
people into society. But generally psychiatrists and psychologists agree that
there are necessary steps that need to happen if someone
is going to essentially kind of wake up and realize
I need to get out of here. And a lot
(31:37):
of this is coming from psychotherapist Shelley Rosen, who we
mentioned earlier, but she points out the importance of asking
questions about why you, as a member of this group,
are upset or confused. You know, we talked about that dissonance,
the emotional manipulation, the semiotic incompetence. Basically, something is not
adding up. She points out that women are socialized to
(32:00):
be trusting and caretaking, and so asking questions, especially in
the sort of manipulative, scary situation, can be seen as
critical or making waves, and so we tend to get
the message that to be successful we have to hide
what we know and still speak deferentially to men and
other people in positions of power. And so cult members
in general are discouraged from asking questions. You're you're criticized
(32:25):
for your lack of faith, et cetera. But asking questions
is the critical first step to pinpointing what is wrong
with the situation, because once you start asking the questions.
Then you get to step too, of gaining the competence
to pay attention to the clues that you are being
deceived um and this involves even paying attention to the
(32:48):
different linguistic styles that might be UM integrated into the
cult lifestyle of and how that differs from dominant views.
And um rose and talks about how again, as women,
we might be socialized to listen more keenly to what
men say than to our own, as she calls it,
feminine voices, right, just trusting the dominant or the masculine
(33:11):
in this case, over your own voice, or the feminine
in this case. And then she also talks about having
to believe that leaving the group is even an option
that will have a successful outcome. You know, we talked
earlier about how part of leaders manipulation in general is
to make its members believe that the outside world is
(33:33):
a scary, dangerous place. No one will want you, You
will lose all of the support we have given you
if you walk out, and so it's made to seem
absolutely impossible and the worst option ever. And so once
you do make that step of being able to say, hey,
I can leave, I can make a life for myself,
as many of the people who left before the Jonestown
(33:56):
massacre did. That's sort of the the last step in
being able to get free of the cult. Now, when
it comes to cults, statistics, as I mentioned earlier, are
rather vague. Estimates. For instance, of how many people in
the US are in cults are in the low hundreds
of thousands, um. And and we didn't find any hard
(34:16):
numbers on the gender breakdown, So we want to leave
it to listeners of the question of do you think
that women are more prone to joining cults? And is
it perhaps harder for us to leave cults because obviously
there there are plenty of men and cults as well.
I mean speaking of the master actor Yaquin Phoenix, who
(34:38):
start in that ironically grew up in the cult the
Children of God. Now that was not the destructive cult
spinoff of the Children of God. He has said that
his parents were essentially looking for people to share like
minded ideas and um, you know, find find a deeper spirituality,
which is all find well and good, but really curious
(34:58):
to hear for listeners who might have any cultish insights.
Send us your thoughts. Mom Stubb at house Stuffworks dot
com is our email address. You can also tweet us
at mom stub Podcasts or messages on Facebook, and we've
got a couple of messages to share with you when
we come right back from a quick break and now
(35:19):
back to the show. So I've had a Facebook message
here from Adrian about our Lady Lawyer episode, and she writes,
as an aspiring lawyer myself, I really appreciated your episode
on dress codes in court. In Canada where I live.
In criminal court, lawyers on both sides wear robes. However,
(35:43):
in other matters they're free to wear what they like.
Another dimension to this issue is a controversy around dress
codes for parliamentarians. Many run into the exact same problems
as what you highlighted in your episode. A pant suit
like Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel is too strong but
to feminine, and people don't take you seriously. A couple
of years ago, controversy erupted here when it was revealed
(36:05):
that the official photos of some female members of Parliament
were photo shopped to be more modest. These women were
professionally inappropriately dressed in my opinion, but we're apparently showing
too much skin for the parliamentary website to handle it.
I love dressing professionally. I feel proud and strong and feminine.
It's so sad that for many women this empowered feeling
(36:28):
is mitigated by constant sexist scrutiny. So thanks Adrian, and
also I had no idea about that parliamentary photo shopping.
That is ridiculous. Our lady lawyer dressed god up. So
definitely got a lot of great feedback. You guys keep
the letters coming, but we're not just getting letters from
lady lawyers about double standards in terms of address. I
(36:52):
have a letter here from Pam who says I just
wanted to let you know that that is not the
only work field that has ruled and double standards. I
am a wildlife field tech, and there tends to be
a double standard here as well. When I worked for
nonprofit organizations, men and women were treated indifferently. The only
thing in common about our dress was good work boots.
(37:13):
Our bosses never really cared too much about what we
wore as long as we were careful out in the field.
Anything went shorts, tank top, swimsuits, jeans, whatever. Now that
I work in the private sector is a field tech,
I have to be careful about what I wear. I've
been instructed that I can't wear anything low cut or
without sleeves, and my pants can't have worn holes in them.
As a field tech comfort is key if I'm going
(37:35):
to be hiking in one hundred degree plus temperatures or
wearing a pair of well broken in pants versus a
pair of brand new stiff pants. Anyway, keep up the
great work and keep the podcast coming. I tend to
listen to y'all while hiking at work, and it helps
keep me entertained while working in one hundred plus or
negative twenty degree conditions, So thank you, Pam. I guess
we can't get a dress code break anywhere, although I
(37:58):
will say that the podcast your dress code pretty relaxed.
Pretty relaxed. Yeah, we're both wearing bathrooms right now. It's right.
So if you have thoughts to send to us again,
Mom stuff at how Stuffworks dot com is our email
address and for links to all of our social media,
including all of our blogs, videos, and podcast with this
one with our sources so you can follow along with us,
(38:21):
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
isn't how stuff works. Dot com
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!