Show notes
Daniella Mestyanek Young's book: · From Bookshop.org Uncultured Autograph: Connect with Daniella on social media TikTok, Patreon, Instagram Youtube Connect with Scot Loyd's social media (TikTok) Daniella's other podcast: Hey White Women Episode Summary: Cults and the Culting of America - Episode on The Skinny White Woman in Cults **Episode Title:** The Skinny White Woman in Cults **Hosts:** - **Daniella Mestyanek Young** (Group Behavior Gal) - Scholar of cults, extreme groups, and extremely bad leadership. - **Scot Loyd** - Co-host and commentator. **Introduction:** In this episode, Daniella and Scot dive into the concept of the "skinny white woman" in cults and high-control groups, exploring her role in supporting and legitimizing cult leaders and their coercive control tactics. **Key Topics:** 1. **The Skinny White Woman in Cults:** - Daniella introduces the concept, highlighting examples like Allison Mack in NXIVM and Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein. - The pattern of skinny white women supporting cult leaders and their role in upholding white supremacy. 2. **Historical and Cultural Context:** - The history of white supremacy and its influence on the perception of purity and ideal womanhood in America. - The policing of women's bodies, especially through clothing, makeup, and hairstyles, within cults and broader society. 3. **Daniella's Personal Experience:** - Daniella shares her observations from the Children of God cult and the US Army, noting the emphasis on appearance and control. - Her realization of the role she played in upholding certain standards and her decision to rebel against these norms. 4. **The Role of Charismatic Authority:** - Discussion on how cult leaders often place skinny white women, military officers, or celebrities around them to gain legitimacy and distract from their actions. - The enforcement of patriarchal norms by these figures within the group. 5. **Scot's Perspective from the United Pentecostal Church:** - Scot reflects on his experiences with the church's emphasis on the ideal woman and the spiritual power attributed to women who fit this mold. - The impact of purity culture on both men and women in religious settings. 6. **Control and Manipulation Tactics:** - How cults use control of appearance and emotional manipulation to maintain power over members. - The concept of emotional evocation and its role in cult dynamics. 7. **Breaking Free from Cult Influences:** - Strategies for deconstructing cult programming, such as rejecting purity standards and embracing individuality. - Daniella's journey of using her platform to educate and advocate against these harmful norms. **Conclusion:** The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to educate themselves, support anti-racist and feminist causes, and use their voices to challenge oppressive systems. **Call to Action:** - Follow Daniella on social media and support her on Patreon for exclusive content. - Purchase Daniella's book "Uncultured" to learn more about her experiences and insights into cults and high-control groups. - Like, subscribe, and share the podcast to help spread awareness and gain a broader audience. **Closing Remarks:** Scot thanks Daniella for her insights and contributions to the discussion, encouraging listeners to continue questioning and deconstructing harmful societal norms. --- ### Cleaned-Up Transcript **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (00:02.754):** This is the Cults and the Culting of America podcast with scholar of cults, extreme groups, and extremely bad leadership, Daniella Mestyanek Young. I'm your host, Scot. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (00:26.062):** And the Culting of America podcast. My name is Scot Loyd along with my friend, Daniella Mestyanek Young. Daniella, how are you today? **Scot Loyd:** I'm doing great today. Ready to talk about the skinny white woman in cults. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Yeah, so the last time we were together, we were going down the list that you put together to identify cults and high-control groups. And of course, the charismatic leader was at the top of that list. **Scot Loyd:** Closely related to the charismatic leader is what you refer to as the skinny white woman at his side. So tell us more about how you arrived at this idea of the skinny white woman. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Yes, absolutely. And I think I'm going to read a little bit from the book that I'm writing. Very exciting, because we've just explained it here. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** All right. Time and again, when an American cult comes to public attention, often because they've crossed some very clear lines and have victims or bodies to show for it, we find very near the cult leader, a skinny white woman pulling some of the strings. When NXIVM was all over the news in 2017 and 2018, and it came to light that Allison Mack was one of Keith Raniere's lieutenants who helped him with his schemes to groom and sexually abuse women, I was heartbroken. Not sweet Chloe from Smallville, but also intrigued. Why her? **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** When the news could speak of nothing other than Jeffrey Epstein and his teenage sex trafficking ring, there she was again, the skinny white woman in the body of Ghislaine Maxwell. I saw her everywhere, in the matriarchs of the Duggar family, to the women at the center of OneTaste, Hollywood's infamous orgasm cult. And I started to notice the pattern in so many American cults and culty groups, going all the way back to the beginning of the country. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (02:35.788):** What was it about the skinny white woman that was so necessary to the success of the cult leader and their establishment of coercive control? And I'll just tell some of this story, right? So then I go to one of my social medias and I'm like, why? Like, why is it a skinny white woman? And so a woman of color from my cult who grew up in the cult that I grew up in, the Children of God, was like, you know, kind of jokingly like what? Cult leaders don't like voluptuous women or something. And we both kind of laugh because the Children of God was the sex cult, right? And it was international. And this man was not like racially discriminating necessarily. But that was when I figured it out. Cause I was like, okay, so it has something to do with white supremacy, right? The role that she is playing and what role do white women like myself play in upholding white supremacy? **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Is this idea that our very presence is purity, is civilizing, right, is goodness. And so this skinny white woman is exactly who you want when you are starting a cult. And so I talk about this on TikTok and it goes really viral and it's just, everyone's making all these connections of the women that Trump always had as his mouthpieces, right? And like speaking of that, first ladies in general, the women that you picture in HR in corporate America. And meanwhile, I realized that very significantly like, I probably played this role in the US Army being this woman who was basically a shield to be like, the army can't be toxic and horrible for women because look at how well Captain Mestyanek is doing. So I'm figuring all of this out around the time that I'm writing my book, "Uncultured," and I'm like, no, I'm done, right? I'm not being the skinny white woman. I'm not being used this way. I'm gonna tell the story. I'm gonna get ugly. And I'm gonna call out, you know, the uncles and the colonels. And, you know, one of the things that my co-writer and I say is that... **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (04:58.328):** You know, a good white woman in America is supposed to be quiet, skinny, and a light shade of beige. And all of those have to do with upholding and whitewashing, right? The sins of the cult leader. So what do you think about this concept, Scot? I know you've read the whole chapter. **Scot Loyd:** Yeah. And this is something that goes back a long time in the culture of the United States. The way that white supremacy and this idea of purity has shaped the collective imagination of people here in the United States and created this racial hierarchy. I know that you talk a whole lot and rightly so about how these particular groups police primarily the bodies of women. And it goes beyond, it certainly has to do with what they put on their body as far as clothing and makeup and hairstyles. **Scot Loyd:** But it also goes to the whiteness of what they are representing. And they associate this skinny white woman with their ideal of what purity looks like and what it should look like. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Right. And this is why, you know, it's fun for me on social media and people are like, well, why does she got to be white? And I'm like, actually, I've told me five pages of research on this, right? Or people will be like, well, you're a skinny white woman. And I'm like, yes, the best person to talk about the cult is the ex-cult members, right? I like to be very clear that I'm not saying there's anything wrong, of course, with being a woman, with being white, with being skinny, right? But there are all of these things that we have as like the stereotype, right, of the skinny white woman. So my skinny white woman in cults is just the cult version. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** So my skinny white woman in cults is just the cult version of the white woman who whitewashes and upholds patriarchy, as you pointed out. And what's really interesting is I think there's another two types of tropes that we also see used sometimes in place of the skinny white woman, which is military officers plus if they're also a skinny white woman, like in OneTaste, the orgasm cult. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (07:19.054):** And celebrities, right? We will let celebrities stand in place of like fame or stand. We will let fame and money and celebrities stand in place of like charisma. And so often we see cults with this skinny white woman, with this military officer, or with this celebrity, right? You're Tom Cruise of Scientology, or Jeremy Spencer, or Fleetwood Mac of Children of God. And it's like their job is to whitewash the sins, to distract. Because as we talked about in the last episode, the charismatic authority doesn't necessarily mean the leader is charming and good with people and often they're kind of bumbling fools in many ways. And it's these people that they place around them that confer validity and also distract everybody from what's going on. **Scot Loyd:** And I know growing up in the United Pentecostal Church for me, it was amazing to see this lived out and looking back upon this in retrospect, I can certainly see that most of the pastors who were esteemed as successful in our organization had a form of the skinny white woman standing next to them. To us, as it was communicated, it represented an idea of spirituality. So there was lots of influence from the idea of the umbrella and the man and then the woman and the children all under Jesus and that hierarchy. So the skinny white woman represented this ideal family unit where the woman was in submission to the man. And it went further than that because Pentecostalism is a group that emphasizes spiritual power with God. Usually the woman who was skinny represented a woman who fasted, who abstained from food, who was able to bring her body under this discipline, and that somehow gained her favor with God and this spiritual guru status that all of us should listen to because obviously she had a direct line to God based upon how she dressed, based upon her hairstyle, based upon her lack of makeup, but also based upon her body style. And what's interesting is that was never communicated as something that pertained to men because most of the men were overweight. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (09:38.976):** And so there was a double standard that existed, right? And sometimes people wonder where does this come from? And actually the United States has this long history of elevating what an ideal woman should look like. And again, it's all about control. It's all about manipulation. It's all about setting this idea for culture and moving it forward. **Scot Loyd:** Yes, very significantly, it was all about justifying slavery and dehumanizing black women, right? And so this is where we see the term female, by the way, come into the lexicon as like being used to describe humans because human females are called women. You know, we see this in the army today, same use of dehumanizing language, right? So it was all about control. It was always about power. And what you talked about is so significant, right? Like we always see attitude control and appearance control under coercive control. And the skinny very specifically, both in cults and in larger American culture gets put at this very top of this hierarchy because it is a visual symbol of sacrifice. And let me tell you in the chapter of the book where I talk about how cults use self-sacrifice to have you de-individualize yourself. I go straight from how cults use skinny into the military because there the men did not escape it either. You will be skinny even when operationally it's less effective. My husband who retired as a very high level, you know, special operations pilot. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (11:59.054):** Always says his ability to be skinny and run fast was more important to his career than his actual piloting skills. And that was the same for me, 100%. So you can be worse at the actual parts of soldiering or in denial of all this research that shows that there's many ways to be fit and have your body still look different. So first of all, the military is creating its own problem. But also, I really think the skinny in this case is a purity requirement, right? It is a visual symbol that you can self-sacrifice, you can control yourself, you can discipline your body within an inch of its life. And the military, when we talk about inches, we are talking about inches on your waist, right? And you can do all this if you're a good soldier. And when I tell you like in that formal military photo that you see in the uniform, it's very important to have this elbow gap. We talk about the thigh gap in the world. In the army, you gotta have your elbow gap so that they can see, they say that you fit in uniform, but it's that they can see that you're skinny. If they just wanted us to fit in uniform, they would give women a uniform built for women's bodies and art ratios. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** It's always just about the power and control. And Skinny, again, gets to the top of this hierarchy. And then the other thing that you said that was really impactful was you just explained her path to charismatic authority backward, right? Because of all these qualities that the Skinny White Woman has about her, we give her authority over us. And the Skinny White Woman usually becomes like the chief of police of policing everybody else for the cult leader. **Scot Loyd:** And something in my experience, and all of that is fascinating by the way, your insights to the military is really something that I've never heard before. that's great and very illustrative of what we're talking about today. But growing up, this idea of the skinny white woman was held up as the prototype, if you will, for everyone else in the organization. But of course, it was a primarily white organization. In fact, the United Pentecostal Church that was formed by a merger of two other Pentecostal groups in 1945. One of the motivating factors of them getting together was the exclusion of black people and the exclusion of other black organizations. But over time, as black people came into the church and into the group, this presented a problem that no one ever talked about. Because first and foremost, the hair is different for black women and white women. But black women were expected to emulate and to look like the skinny white woman that was held up as the ideal of what all women should look like. And so again, then you have the meta cult of white supremacy being presumed as this is the standard for everyone. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Yeah. And that influences us, right? I still to this day very much struggle with disordered eating, which is something that readers of my book informed me of. Because going from skinny worship cult into skinny worship army, right? Like I'm just all over the place. But you know, I still in my head, it's like, I feel that there's this hierarchy, right? Where like, if I get fat, the cult wins or the army wins, right? And I remember being inside those groups critiquing, right? And I had this real crack in the brainwashing when I showed a photo to someone of a couple who had gotten out of the army and put on their freshman 50. And I was like, oh, look at them. And he just looked and he said, they look really happy. And I was like, And this concept that there is no hierarchy of good, evil, thin, fat, right? That's not a thing. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (16:39.384):** But so many of us have been so, so programmed. And really, again, important to point out as you did, Scot, that like all of this comes from white supremacy and so many white American led cults come out of white supremacy, right? There's a lot of reasons that a lot of cults started in the sixties. School desegregation and the civil rights was a big one of them. Christian Bible colleges with people's names on them, like those all started because they didn't want their children to go to school with black children, right? So all of this is about that. And you know, the last thing I want to emphasize is purity requirements are impossible. That's why they work really well for coercive control, right? So like, I, in not the distant past had a very what I call come to Dr. Taylor, Alison Swift moment where I think I was starting to die because of trying to maintain skinny perfection. It's not possible. That's why cult leaders never follow their own purity requirements. As you mentioned, the men in the church are very big, but the women have to be so tiny. And one of the things that purity requirements does that is the most harmful is it turns us into our own jailers. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** You know, so in my example, I've been out of the cult for 20 years. I've been out of the army for a decade. I am still jailing myself and trying to get through that hierarchy that I've been taught my entire life. This idea of purity culture and lots of people are talking about that, or at least there are more conversations going on than what there used to be around this idea of purity culture. Primarily as it applies to sexual behavior. But it goes beyond sexual behavior. It goes to the way primarily women look and how they carry themselves. But also speaking from a man's perspective, I know growing up in that purity culture, it also had an impact on me, right? Because I often tell the story that growing up in the United Pentecostal Church, I was faced with the dilemma of how do I receive attention? Being the last born in my family, my parents being older, there was a lot of desire on my part psychologically for people to see me and to hear me. And so growing up in the United Pentecostal Church, I realized that I could either be very bad and get a lot of attention, right? The rebels, the sinners. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (19:00.332):** The kids sitting on the back pew slouching during service, they got a lot of attention, they were preached to, but the kids being very good got a lot of attention as well. So I sat on the front pew. I was the Bible quizzer that committed most of the King James Version to memory. I could recite it. I could give you chapter and verse and I was steeped in that culture. But then it presented a problem for me when adolescence happens, right? Because my body starts experiencing all of these changes. And, you know, one of the big things, unfortunately, in purity culture, as it was in my church, is that women are the subject of this policing. Like, don't dress that way because you'll cause the young men to stumble. Well, I've got to tell you, in my church, they were covered head to toe and I was still stumbling all over the place, right? Because it was something natural that my body was going through, but because of the purity culture, I was conditioned to believe that everything that I was feeling, everything that I was thinking, everything that I was experiencing, as it related to natural changes in my body, something that everyone goes through, that somehow I was guilty of sin. And then you couple that, oops, you couple that with the idea that Jesus could return at any moment. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** And I'm living not only in guilt, but also carrying around this great anxiety. And you can imagine that if I was facing that as a young man, that what young women were dealing with was far worse. **Scot Loyd:** Yeah. Well, and you know, this just underscores too that like the answer is never fix the victim, right? But, you know, the reason you feel so much guilt is because it's impossible. But they don't tell you that. So you feel all this guilt for completely normal things. And because of that, you are easily able to be manipulated, right? This is the same reason that the US government does background checks on people, right? if you have guilt, if you have hidden secrets, you are easier to manipulate. Count David Petraeus count. But you know, what you were saying was so interesting to me too, when you were talking about purity requirements. And it just makes me realize that like the black and white thinking itself that the cult relies on is also a purity requirement, right? And the way we do attitude policing is also a purity requirement because you are either, you know, in cults generally you are allowed to be happy or wailing on command at the altar call or at the tap ceremony, right? You are not allowed to be any other gray. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (21:25.976):** And all of this is about making people more open to just absolute control. And you reference the wailing on command or being happy and certainly in the emotionally saturated Pentecostal services that I experienced, especially during this time of the year, we're recording this in June. It was summer camp time and we would all be put in a van, right? And we'd be hauled off to this rural secluded area. And we would do nothing during the day except there were two options. You went to church for three hour stints, and then you played softball or walked around and sweated in the heat and humidity and had the occasional snow cone. **Scot Loyd:** But then at night, right, there was another three hour Pentecostal service where everything was hyper emotional. And I joke, you know, because they would tell hormone infused teenagers to abstain from any touching, from any kissing, from any contact of any kind. But then at the end of that emotionally charged service, we were encouraged to lay hands on one another and to pray for one another and to do so in a way that was, you know, we were whispering in people's ears. We were shouting in people's ears. And, you know, it was, it was, it was in another context. It was highly erotic, right? And it was something that definitely in retrospect was confusing. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Which, and by the way, so many of the cult tactics that are used to make you feel like you are having these spiritual or emotional breakthroughs are these very sensual, corporeal, you know, as you were talking, I was like, yep, it's part of the pattern to tire you out all day long and then bring you into the emotions. Quick deconstruction tip for our audience. This is called, when cults do this, it's called emotional evocation. So if you grew up in a cult, you are probably very, very good at just deadening your emotions. The thing that we tend to not do though is have those moments of release. And so, you I think this is why so many of us get out and we're, we're like drawn to these like slow ballad type musics, you know, because it's the praise music kink or like, mean, when my husband was deployed and I, my literal area of expertise was ways that helicopter pilots die in Afghanistan. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (23:48.546):** And this was four years, six to nine months out of the year, he's over there. And I would just find myself like sitting in my car or something, just like listening to these really sad, you know, soldier doesn't come home songs and just bawling my eyes out. And then I could like feel better and go deal with the baby and the life and everything, right? So this is one of those things that like, as we know it, we can do that for ourselves and we can understand that we need to have this emotional outbursts and releases, right? Because once again, the purity standards are impossible. The other thing you've talked about was like those of us that throw ourselves into perfection. And ever since writing "Uncultured," where I go from growing up in a cult to being in the US Army, I have found that it gets very, very, very common for kids from high control religions to go into the US military and the US government. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (26:10.146):** And like across the board, we're like, yeah, it wasn't difficult. Like it was so easy for me to be the best runner on the same way it was for me to be the best sword drill memorization verse finder. That skill comes in handy now when I'm trying to find parts in my own book for a live audience, let me tell you. But it's this discipline. And when I first read somewhere that good grades could be a sign of depression, I was like, oh, like, that's what I did. You know, like I left the cult, I was thrown out at 15. Like, I just thought I was just working so hard to get my life in order. But no, it was like, I could get attention from teachers by being absolutely the best student. And so that was what I needed. And it gets to this idea of superiority. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** That cults give us, like cults tell us that we are the best. And I think sometimes that's what makes us go cult hopping afterwards is because we're looking for something that's gonna feed that superiority again. I also describe it for myself as like, so in the children of God, the concept was you're nothing without Jesus. The only proper response to a compliment was it's only Jesus. You know, it's still really hard for me to just take compliments and be like, thank you. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (28:33.3):** And so then when I'm 15 and I reject Jesus, like now I need to spend the next 20 years of my life proving that I am in fact something without Jesus. And so all of these things, you know, I think brings us right back to the skinny white woman and like she's working so hard to prove that she can be this perfect sacrificial person, but it's also out of ego, right? It's through the sacrifice, we are proving that we are the best. **Scot Loyd:** And you bring up an interesting point that I want to explore a little bit and perhaps there's something to this, something that I observed in the United Pentecostal Church and you referenced it there, right? When you received a compliment, you were supposed to respond, well, it's only Jesus. I often saw people, and this could apply to men or women, obviously because of the culture and the cult dynamics, it applies primarily to women. If there was a woman in the group that was naturally beautiful, that met all of the constructed aesthetics, you know, that we apply universally to beauty, like symmetry and color and tone and all of those standards, often they received a type of persecution as well, especially if the skinny white woman at the top felt somehow threatened by the dynamic that was going on here. And so it's almost a bell curve. What they were aiming for, it seemed like, was a homogeneity . They wanted everyone to look alike. And so if you had **Scot Loyd:** If you were on the flip side of that and you were a someone that was naturally beautiful and attractive, then you had a target on your back as well. Was that your experience? **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Like a super nuanced point here is that the whole point is uniformity, right? So the stereotypes is always cults have uniforms. You know, we can thank Heaven's Gate for that one. People be like, no, not a cult don't have uniforms, but there is a uniform appearance. Right, very much helped by the glassy-eyed, you know, stay in your ability to fool yourself gaze. But like you said, when somebody stands out, that's the problem, right? So get this, in the military, right, okay, so in the Children of God, we had whatever rules we had about clothes, but then we also had like this very vague, ambiguous, you can't be trying to look **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (30:55.766):** cool. And basically, you're trying to be cooler than Jesus, right? And so, which is so ironic, because there's this rap video of me as a 10-year-old rapping Apocalypse Bible verses looking very cool and would never have been allowed to dress like that. And then in the US military, right, they have hundreds of pages of appearance regulations for exactly how you must look. And then they have their catch-all ambiguous, anything the commander decides is too faddish. And so I literally used to get told that I had to redo my hair because it looked too good, which is what you were saying, right? And so basically like I have naturally curly hair. I discovered before my second deployment as an army captain that a lot of the frozen hairstyles meet army regulations and are much easier on the head than a bun for so many reasons. And, you know, because I have curls spilling out of whatever, I would get told like, my God, that looks like an updo. How long would that take you? And then anytime a leader was upset, they would just be like, Nope, redo it. It looks too good. It looks too faddish. Which this also goes to my theory of any arbitrary regulations or legislations are used to oppress people without power. But, you know, back to the concept that hair control is very, very, very important in appearance control. But also, yes, like you are not supposed to stand out, which in the army, by the way, means you are supposed to look like a World War II GI Joe. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Who is six foot two, blonde with blue eyes and a jaw that can cut glass and is a helicopter pilot. And, you know, I love the one of those that lives in my house, but every demographic you are away from being a Tom Young, your career is harder. And when men don't understand this, I just lean in and say, you're short, right? **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** They get it pretty much immediately, right? Because their entire world is built for you to be six feet tall. And so if you've been in something like the military and you are a man who's five anything, you know that your career has suffered in comparison to my husband because of your shortness. And that is true again, just like every demographic piled on. And so I say, you know, for women, we fail the cult test on day one because we stand out. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (33:14.552):** from day one because we have been held to be in such a minority and because they don't shave our heads. And, you know, in a closed society, the other becomes the enemy. And in the US Army, our doctrinal job is to find, fix, and finish the enemy. So I trace these lines a lot, right, from like your hair being different to rape culture. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** And it's all part of this control. I'm gonna end this rant with something else you said, which was the gender policing, right? So in these white women that are policing, like the gender roles and this all we always see this happening in all kinds of cults. And I'm pretty convinced that that is because coercive control is patriarchal and is therefore always must have your gender roles. And the US Army's attitude is, y 'all asked to be here, but we don't want you here, but now that you're here, you better be proper effing women. **Scot Loyd:** And one of the functions of the skinny white woman at the side of whoever the leader might be, especially in these cults, you're right. It's based upon patriarchy because one of the functions of that skinny white lieutenant at the leader's side is to enforce the wishes of the patriarchy. And so what this does, it's sort of a divide and conquer mentality. So the skinny white woman, not only by her appearance, polices the bodies of every other woman in the group. But also if there is a divergent woman that is somehow out of line, it is then the skinny white woman's responsibility to go to that woman or to go to that group of women and to correct them or to further marginalize them by pulling in other women or other men to somehow use rhetoric or to use treatment or shunning or some type of behavior to further marginalize those divergent women or divergent men who are not falling in line with the expectations of the group. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (35:26.306):** And what you said was so important, right? Because that is the lieutenant's job, right? In a military unit, the commander is the strict, tough, scary one. The lieutenant is the one that everybody loves, the XO. And their job is to be the enforcer. And this very much jives with a message that black women are telling us right now, which is, hey, yeah, white ladies, like we all choose the bear because the white men are our worst predator, but you're sleeping in their beds, right? And so I personally take this as a very personal challenge and it took me seven years of effort to radicalize the person in my bed into like a full-fledged feminist. And now we are working on the anti-racism, which by the way, y'all can check out my other podcast, Hey White Women, that I'm creating with a white woman whisperer to deconstruct white supremacy, like the cult that it is. But yeah, right. So there's this point in our lives where we get to choose to stop being the skinny white woman. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** And I think this is what is important about this realization. You know, so for me, this has meant, cause people again, that are not trying to understand this in good faith, I think will be like, well, what now I'm a bad guy for being a skinny white woman. But like there were other things in there, right? You can't immediately change your body type. can't immediately tear out all of the bad stitching that's been put into your brain and re-knit it all back **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** but you can stop being a light shade of beige. You can stop being quiet. You can get ugly when people around you are being white supremacists or misogynists or other things, right? All of these things are going to get you kicked out of the cult of the skinny white woman, no matter what body you're in. You know, for me, I had this realization when... **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (37:48.11):** which does make it into the end of the chapter when this black woman says to me on TikTok, you know, when a white woman is dressed like that, she is about to drop some truths. And I thought about that and I was like, yep, I think there's two things about the way I dress myself today, not for the male gaze and not for the cult of white supremacy. Like nobody sees me walking down the street and thinks that I am a nice evangelical white lady. **Scot Loyd:** which I think is the role I tried to play so hard to fit in for a long time. And I do want to point out that I think that you exemplify this well. And in fact, I just saw a recent, I believe it was recent video of yours where you're talking about the fact that you recognize the fact that you are a straight presenting white woman that gives you the ability and the opportunities to write your book and to get noticed in ways that other people with different identities, women of color may have not had the opportunity. So I think we referenced this in a previous episode that people that look like me, people that look like you, it is very important for us to acknowledge that we are speaking from a place of privilege and we are committed to dismantling that privilege. And if you hear a speaker or a leader, **Scot Loyd:** that is unwilling to do that and is back doing the opposite, is doing everything to, to, boister, that, white supremacy and that systemic racism, then you're likely in a cult. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Right. And also like, this is what we can do about it, right? You and I right here, right? Like when I realized that I got to have a major Macmillan book, can we see it? Nope. Coming it up. Anyways, it exists somewhere. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Then I got to have a book because I am considered every woman author while anyone from other demographics would be considered a niche author. I can rage about that. I can talk about that. I can educate that. I can also go out and buy those women's books and convince all of my 150 million white women friends to go buy their books. Suddenly it's not niche, right? Something is not niche if everyone is buying it. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (40:11.842):** And this brings me back to our point, one of the points where we started, which was the most powerful person to take down a cult is the ex-members of that cult. So one of the things, one of at least my answers to realizing privilege, this is something I've worked hard to teach my husband, that now that he is this fully radicalized feminist, **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** He is a phenomenal six foot two billboard for feminism, literally hang feminist t-shirts on him and send him out to the world. And he's always has these scenarios in his head for what he's gonna say when somebody comes up to him and says something, but that doesn't happen because he's in the body of the most powerful voice in the room, right? So no, we can't change certain unchangeable things about us. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** And we can't change. can't change that I'm in this body that has been weaponized against people who don't look like me, but I can use my more powerful voice to fight for them. I'm calling this concept becoming the Karens of anti-racism. **Scot Loyd:** Nice. I like it. Well said. So just to bring us full circle and you referenced your book and by the way, for our listeners and viewers, absolutely buy Uncultured and read it today. Growing up in the children of God, how did you see this principle exemplified in the skinny white woman? Who was the organization's skinny white women? Was there more than one? How did that function? And just out of curiosity, when did you begin to question these sorts of things? Was **Scot Loyd:** One of the primary thoughts that you had about the way that women are treated, I know growing up in the United Pentecostal Church, for a lot of us that exited that group, one of the reasons, the primary reasons that we left initially and got into this world of thinking about it more deeply was immediately we saw, hey, women are being treated differently than men. The expectations for women are different than men. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (42:27.982):** When it comes to dress and style and all of this, and it's just ridiculous. And so that's one of the reasons that a lot of people exit, at least initially. So what did that look like for you in the Children of God? **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** So I think I always realized like the sexism aspect of it. That's probably part of why like I could never buy as a child or a young teenager, and I think because I'm neurodivergent, I don't feel like a proper woman. And I definitely can't be convinced that there's any reason that the boys are better than me. So I always realized that part, but that's where a lot of us white women get to and stop, right? We're like, the patriarchy is bad. Let us own the plantation. And so I did **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** hear the term white privilege until 2014, I was deployed as a captain and somebody was trying to use me as the example that white privilege didn't exist. And that's when I had my neurodivergent moment of joy because someone gave me a term for something I observed for 13, however many years I'd been in the US, but I hadn't had like words for it. So I wouldn't have even been able to start like recognizing it before that, I don't think. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** And that was like the beginning of probably my crack in the white supremacy brainwashing. And then, you know, we've been working on it for quite a while. But in, you know, in the Children of God, we always had that we had our, you know, 75 year old man leader who was married to skinny white woman who ultimately rises up and takes over, which is one of the three types of skinny white women, because I have subsets, of course. Well, talk about that. Tell us, tell us about those three subsets. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (44:40.362):** Yeah, so I think there's just like the quiet sidekick, right? It's the Melania Trumps. It's the Mama Maria of Children of God. It's like even Ghislaine Maxwell, you know, it's like they're there, they're absolutely part of the whole evil plot, but they're being used more for the body that they're in, in many ways. Then there's your skinny white woman who like actually wants power. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** And uses that to actively work her way in. And then there's the skinny white woman who's just like, no, I'm not playing this game. And then, therefore, either takes over the whole thing outright, or leaves. And so we kind of have like, think Princess Diana is one we use as an example in the book. And so yeah, so but you know, we had **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** So our head skinny white woman, but then also, you know, the woman who wrote the Dava Ditto book, which was basically a manual on pedophilia, who was like the big, probably second in command woman in this 10,000 person cult, you know, former Dallas cheerleader, who somehow was always permitted to have blonde hair, even though we didn't have her hair. You know, so like, it was very much and it was very much a bully. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** To be skinny culture, you know, even to the point where all of the comics that were drawn, you know, my dad was one of the comic artists. And so of course he would draw the women with these tiny waists, right? And you big boobs, tiny waists. And like the character for my mom was always drawn that way. However, my mom was pregnant and nursing for 14 years straight from the age of 14 to 30 or 16 years straight. Like she didn't have that figure. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (47:04.558):** Right? But in our heads, from the very beginning, we were being taught skinniness. And we were also being semi-starved, which is the other part of being skinny, is that you are semi-starved and you are much easier to manipulate for a number of reasons. **Scot Loyd:** Was that put in the context of fasting, of going without food for spiritual reasons, or was it just food withheld for no reason at? **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Yeah, it was just food control. In my opinion, there was definitely a sexism angle to it. I still eat very quickly. I've had multiple boyfriends be like, promise I'm not going to eat your food. But that was my safety in the cult, right? Because if there was one piece of chicken for everyone, but someone took two and now this uncle or even older boy doesn't have a piece of chicken, they're going to take it from the seven-year-old girl. And that's something I understand would have been beneficial in the army as well, huh? **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** I mean, this was the same in the army and the army does it through controlled time for eating. But in basic training, you're given three minutes to eat. And when I tell you I studied this, Scot, I studied the fastest ways to shovel food into your mouth, which is sandwiches, by the way, bread, spaghetti, sandwich, everything sandwich, shove it in your mouth. And I cannot do it. I every time. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** the army owns me, whether that's a training or deployment, I end up on the seriously underweight needs extra rations program because it's impossible. And so we grew up very, very food controlled, which is another thing that cults do. And this has had a lot of lasting effects in my life. I would say for 10 years, I was trying to name this emotion that was **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (49:07.714):** feeling empty and hollow and kind of see-through and very anxious. And I finally realized that is hunger. And what I have been taught is hunger my whole life is starvation pains. And, you know, part of the struggle, like, well, neurodiversity, I lose my triggers for food when I get anxious. But part of the struggle with me is both from cult followed by army. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** my first reaction when I feel hunger pains is breathe through it. You know, because that is the way I had been trained for basically 28 years of my life. **Scot Loyd:** What is the best way to combat these ideas? Because so many of these ideas have found their way out of the cult. And so it's sort of a chicken and egg conundrum. It's hard to know that the culture influenced the cults or are the cults influencing the culture with these ideas because they're so prevalent, right? And we're bombarded with images every day, whether it's advertising, movies, the standard for women in the United States. so **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (51:07 .692):** The best way to combat these ideas in your estimation. You know, the sort of meta understanding that's the most helpful, think, is like understanding that like black and white dichotomies are always a lie. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** You know, no process works for everyone. No process is right for everyone. No group is the only group that does something. No person is the only person that has figured this out. Elon Musk is not going to take us to Mars when every other scientist has failed to figure out a biodome. Just like a 19-year-old Stanford dropout wasn't going to solve the hardest blood testing question that, you know, the world scientists can't do. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** So anytime you're presented with a dichotomy or we're trying to police ourselves as a dichotomy, intellectually knowing, I think that's wrong. So for me, that has been, I have a little mantra of there are many ways to live a life. Because that is really what we're being taught in cults, that there is one right way to do just about everything. And every rule you have in a cult, that is the only way. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** And black and white thinking is easier in so many ways. And so so many of us like fall into that. You know, come out of black and white thinking and the world is incredibly scary. So you find it, you go back in, even if that's finding a new one that you think is less harmful. So that is one thing for me. And then the other thing about this, you know, skinny question, body standards question, beauty. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Is for me has just been understanding just how much it is tied to racism and white supremacy. And there's a really wonderful book called "Fearing the Black Body" by Dr. Sabrina Strings. And she like traces it through all of this. And I, you know, I don't know, that's something that works for me. One of the things that has helped me the most because I know how **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** want to be an anti racist is understanding that this concept came in directly through, you know, eugenics and all this stuff we've been talking about proving that we are better. and then one that my therapist tells me, but I don't know, is just like, you just, you understand that you're doing this as an fu to the cults, you are eating as an fu to the cults, you are being ugly, you are being **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** All the things you're not supposed to be, which is very difficult because society also tells us we're supposed to be that. So those are my main tips. **Scot Loyd:** And speaking of FU to the cults, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention your t-shirt that you're wearing today. She's a Jezebel. And maybe for those that don't know, at least in my experience, Jezebel... **Scot Loyd:** this woman that is depicted in an Old Testament story as someone who puts on makeup with the expressed desire to seduce and to derail the efforts of quote unquote, the man of God, Elijah the prophet, and to seduce her husband, the king, and all of these issues. I've often wondered if that story had said that Jezebel took a bath. Would that have been the thing that bad women do, right? They take a bath. But in our experience, it was, you can't put on makeup because that's something a Jezebel would do. And so now this idea of a Jezebel is any divergent woman that does anything against the system. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (53:27.854):** Exactly. And that's what keeps the skinny white woman in line, right? So in evangelical or a lot of Christian traditions, JW and not Mormons I don't think but that that Jezebel literally is used right as the threat because if you're the woman that's Intentionally acting out you're the Jezebel but even if you're the woman that's just standing out Because of natural things that you can't help whether that's appearance or personality like you're the Jezebel right and that is the the weapon So I have a lot of shirts actually and if you like any of my shirts, you can always get them the links are **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** I'll try to wear a relevant one for episodes as I can. But you know, I have shirts that say backslider, which is what we were called, we called people that left the cult in the children of God or systemite, which is what we call the outsiders. And I think part of all of this is understanding that the cult's threat is not real. You know, being a Jezebel is as much of a personality trope that you don't have to choose. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (55:46.466):** being a skinny white woman. And you know, and also if you do choose this, there's nothing, you know, necessarily harmful either. But yes, she's been very much the demonized, right? Jezebel, Eve. I have a t-shirt that says, Delilah, get your scissors. And I have something about Eve in the apple, but I can't remember. **Scot Loyd:** Absolutely. And there's something about Jezebel, you know, it's even evolved now in evangelical circles. where it's a condemnation of men, right? So now they call it a quote unquote Jezebel spirit. And I'm like, you know, these internet pastors that get up and call a group of men like one did recently as having a Jezebel spirit. I'm wondering, why can't you just call out the behavior of men instead of weaponizing the behavior of women that you see as bad and evil? **Scot Loyd:** and then turning that on men. So that's another function of the patriarchy. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal) (57:04.418):** Yeah. And you know, that's really what's at play here is that like when you have a hierarchy, each group is invested in holding up that hierarchy because they don't want to slip down a rock. You know, so there are a be compared to a woman, like we all inherently know that being a woman is worse. My wonder was because we call them the weaker sex for so long. Yeah, who knows could have come from any. And so that can be a threat against men too. And I will tell you that getting my husband into lace button down shirts and flowery shirts was a big part of my ultimate radicalization plan. But to do so I very much had **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** tell him that nobody was gonna question his masculinity. Like you're a retired special operations helicopter pilot. I think you can wear a lace shirt with a leather vest and you're gonna be okay. You know, clothing is so, so, so important. There's a reason that coercive control is always appearance policing because owning your appearance and presenting yourself to the world the way you want to simply because you choose to do it. You know, I'm gonna go **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** after this dressed exactly like this. And people are like, why are you wearing this? Like, because I woke up and I was the adult today and I realized I could decide what I wanted to wear out of my closet with no rules. So I did. And just that, right? The clothes you wear absolutely change everything about the way that the world reacts to you, the way that you react to the world. So. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Realizing what the rules were, what you were being policed for, and then kind of doing the opposite of that is a really constructive thing that you can do for deconstructing. Like it's not all just rebellion and acting out, but there's some of this that is very intentional that we can all do to rip out those bad stitches that the cult folks put in our minds. **Scot Loyd:** Well said. And on that helpful note, I want to encourage all of our listeners and viewers again to follow Daniella, go to her online store, purchase a t-shirt, get the book "Uncultured," educate yourself because that's one of the best ways to combat these particular groups. Educate yourself, prepare yourself for what's out there and develop that critical thinking. And do us a favor, if you like the podcast, which what's not to like, make sure you hit that button, like it, subscribe to it, share it with a friend, leave a comment that helps us gain an audience here on the podcast. And we're very appreciative. Daniella, thank you so much as always. **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Thank you, Scot. **Scot Loyd:** All right. For Daniella Mestyanek Young, I'm Scot Loyd. We'll see you on the next episode of "Cults and the Culting of America." Thank you for joining us for this episode of "Cults and the Culting of America." **Daniella (Group Behavior Gal):** Be sure and follow Daniella on social media and subscribe to her Patreon page for exclusive content that you won't find anywhere else. Pick up her book "Uncultured." Until next time, I'm Scot Loyd for Daniella Mestyanek Young. We'll see you on the next episode of "Cults and the Culting of America."