As pundits dissect elite corruption, they’ve largely sidelined the experts who understand the deeper cultural roots of sexual exploitation and male peer complicity.
This analysis was originally published on In the Arena With Jackson Katz.
The Epstein files scandal has all the elements of a gigantic media spectacle. It encompasses everything from true crime to political intrigue, and offers a peak behind closed doors into the lifestyles of the rich and famous. It has more than a little sex and violence.
It’s a conspiracy theory come to life.
Naturally, it has attracted an immense amount of media coverage, dating back years. The volume of coverage—already high—has increased exponentially since the recent release by the Justice Department of millions of emails, photos and other documents.
The public appetite for more salacious information isn’t close to being satisfied.
For media outlets and content creators, the scandal has delivered an endless supply of marketable storylines, and a boon for the chattering classes, especially for political pundits. For them, the files are a fertile source of material for speculations on everything from what this means for Donald Trump’s approval rating, to the viability of the MAGA coalition, to the ramifications in this cynical era of even greater public distrust for institutions and the people who lead them.
Media commentary has explored seemingly every angle. Or has it?
On closer examination, the commentariat has largely overlooked, if not consciously ignored, one of the central dimensions of the case: the ways in which the sordid behavior of an elite subculture is a product of the more widespread societal phenomenon of men’s sexual objectification and exploitation of women and girls.
… Men’s violence against women is not an elitist crime. It’s a pervasive societal problem that transcends the categories of socioeconomics, ethnicity, race and region
There is no doubt that membership in the oligarchy has its privileges; in this case, that included presumed impunity for sexual crimes. For many social critics and political analysts, the Epstein files scandal mainly indicts an unaccountable transnational elite, who, as Molly Jong-Fast wrote in The New York Times, were convinced that “the rules didn’t apply to them.”
Anand Giridharadas, also in The New York Times, put it like this: “a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media … all too often takes care of its own more than the common good.”
Each new revelation in the Epstein files saga provides a fresh opportunity to throw fuel on the populist fire and heap scorn on the misogyny of rich and powerful men (and a handful of women). The guilty ones deserve this scorn—perpetrators, enablers and bystanders.
But men’s violence against women is not an elitist crime. It’s a pervasive societal problem that transcends the categories of socioeconomics, ethnicity, race and region. It’s a problem in red states and blue, in big urban centers and small rural towns. It happens in the private sphere of relationships and the family, as well as out in public: on the streets, public transportation and the workplace.
It’s a huge problem in online spaces, where open expressions of misogyny are so normalized that few people in virtual communities are ever held even minimally accountable for them.
And of course, the ubiquitous porn culture—once relegated to the shadows, but now available 24-7 at the touch of a button—provides a steady stream of misogynous sexual scripts, available at the touch of a button, that depict men’s casual sexual degradation of women as part of the natural heterosexual order.
This is the larger societal context within which Jeffrey Epstein, his collaborators and his network operated. It’s impossible to understand the scandal fully without taking into account this bigger picture.
And yet very little attention has been paid, in Epstein files coverage, to the role of deeper cultural misogyny—and the entire patriarchal system in which it is rooted.
The Pervasive Sexual Exploitation of Girls as Backdrop to Epstein’s Crimes
One measure of that failure has been the relative dearth of feminist experts on sexual assault and exploitation that have appeared as guests on major outlets in new and old media.
The feminist-led movement against sexual violence has been theorizing and organizing since the 1970s. That means advocates, writers and researchers can draw on more than half a century of lived experience and intensive study of this topic, and help connect the dots between the depraved acts of Epstein and company, and the misogynous insults and violations that so many girls and women routinely endure.
Feminists have warned about the dangers of sexualizing young girls for decades. In fact, in 2008, the same year that Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring a child for prostitution, two mainstream books were published on this very topic: So Sexy, So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids by Diane E. Levin and Jean Kilbourne, and The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It by M. Gigi Durham.
So why have so few of these and other experts been part of mainstream discussions about Epstein’s crimes, and the culture that made them possible?
It’s true that many media personalities have vocally supported the courageous Epstein survivors who chose to go public, and the many more who remain anonymous. They’ve mused aloud what all this means for them, what barriers they’ve overcome to speak their truth, what risks they continue to face. It has become the norm for talk show hosts and other commentators to praise the survivors, and to remind people that their bravery is what has forced some measure of accountability for the abusers.
But there’s a big difference between appropriate expressions of compassion, empathy and gratitude for survivors, and a clear-eyed analysis of the ways in which cultural misogyny is the necessary backdrop to the nefarious behavior committed or tolerated by the numerous men named in the files. It’s the latter analysis that largely has been missing.
It’s not as if feminist—and profeminist—critiques of this cultural misogyny don’t exist. Writers like Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Traister have published brilliant essays on this topic. Soraya Chemaly and Liz Plank continue to churn out deeply insightful takes on their Substacks. (I’ve written about it here as well.)
The author and journalist Nina Burleigh, who has written extensively about Trump’s misogyny, has an indispensable Substack newsletter called American Freak Show that showcases her investigative journalism on the extensive interplay between Epstein, Trump and MAGA world.
Women like these have platforms in parts of the online universe, but their work isn’t featured nearly enough in mainstream venues.
Why Don’t Media Outlets Feature the Perspectives of Sexual Assault Prevention Educators?
The same holds true with regard to the voices of people who do sexual assault prevention education. The field consists of thousands of educators and practitioners, many of whom have decades of experience working with men around issues related to sexual entitlement, coercion and consent.
Could some of the men (and women) who knew about Epstein’s sexual exploitation of girls and young women, but did not take part, have broken with him in a way that mattered? What options did they have besides walking away? Did they even know they had options?
These educators—women, nonbinary people and men—have worked extensively with men in a variety of sub-cultures: athletic teams, college fraternities, military units and workplaces large and small. They possess a tremendous amount of insight into the dynamics of male peer cultures, and the ways in which shared misogynous rituals and practices often facilitate relationships between and among men.
Why are their voices not a central part of media commentary about the Epstein files, especially when somber journalists step back from commenting on the latest news developments in order to explore underlying causes and broader themes?
When was the last time, for example, that you heard a sexual assault prevention educator interviewed in the media, and asked to comment about similarities and differences in the dynamic between men in the groups with whom they work, and those in Epstein’s social network?
Do some of the email interchanges between Epstein and others mirror the language they’ve heard from men in other subcultures? If so, how? What are some common threads? What other aspects of the peer culture around Epstein look similar to other elite and non-elite male peer cultures?
In the bystander trainings that I’ve developed and taught since the 1990s, my colleagues and I discuss and debate these sorts of questions all the time: Could some of the men (and women) who knew about Epstein’s sexual exploitation of girls and young women, but did not take part, have broken with him in a way that mattered? What options did they have besides walking away? Did they even know they had options? What specific cost-benefit analysis did they apply before choosing to remain silent? If some of those men had acted, would their actions have made a difference? Would it have prevented further abuse? We’ll never know.
We do know, however, that if we fail to take advantage of the knowledge and expertise of the educators and activists who grapple with these issues every day, we’re not really serious about getting to the root causes of the problem, or preventing similar outrages in the future.
