More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Sexual violence is any kind of sexual act without consent for one or more persons involved, including sexual assault, rape, sexual abuse and trafficking. Anyone can be a victim of sexual violence.
An excerpt from Allison T. Butler’s The Judgment of Gender: How Women Are Centered and Silenced in Pop Culture, published March 8, 2026:
While Sinead O’Connor was roundly criticized for ripping up the picture of the pope, the passage of time has revealed: She was right.
O’Connor was labeled a pop star, but she never saw herself that way. From Rememberings: “Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I’m a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame.”
In the wake of newly reported sexual abuse allegations against labor leader César Chávez, our hearts are with our long-time Ms. advisor, Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms.) board member, friend, and feminist and labor icon Dolores Huerta. The fact that she felt she had to bear this in silence speaks to the layers of harm that women who suffer sexual assault must bear.
In the wake of going public for the first time, Huerta writes, “I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor—of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.”
“The knowledge that he hurt young girls sickens me. My heart aches for everyone who suffered alone and in silence for years. There are no words strong enough to condemn those deplorable actions that he did. César’s actions do not reflect the values of our community and our movement.”
Releasing the Epstein files without real consequences risks turning a long fight for truth into yet another moment of exposure that leaves survivors without justice and systems of abuse intact.
The rich men surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, and the working and middle-class men who were lured into Dominique Pelicot’s twisted fantasy, navigate the social world from very different sides of the class chasm.
But they share something in common, too: They’re all men who were socialized into a misogynous culture that dehumanizes women, turns them into sexual commodities and licenses men to mistreat them.
Misogynous exploitation is not rooted primarily in plutocratic privilege. The sense of unquestioned entitlement to women’s bodies that many observers have noted about “Epstein class” men is hardly confined to the wealthy.
Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes were not carried out in isolation—they were enabled by a system that repeatedly narrowed investigations, shielded powerful figures and sidelined survivors.
Investigative journalist Julie K. Brown with the Miami Herald has extensively documented the mishandling of the Epstein case. Early reports and accusations were treated with skepticism; initial investigations were shut down; charges were narrowed; powerful actors were shielded; and even meaningful survivor notification of prosecutorial decisions was bypassed. Drawing on more than two decades working within the legal system on domestic violence and sexual assault cases, I see the Epstein files as a stark illustration of how institutions often fail those they are meant to protect.
The partial and selective release of the Epstein files only deepens these concerns. Survivors’ identifying information has been exposed while the names of powerful associates remain redacted. When victims are left vulnerable and power remains protected, accountability has not merely failed—it has been inverted.
This moment demands more than incremental disclosure: It requires full transparency, rigorous investigation and prosecution wherever the evidence leads, so that survivors’ courage is met with the justice they were promised.
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.
This week:
—“Kristi Noem sees immigrants like me as subhuman,” says Santiago Mayer, executive director of Voters of Tomorrow.
—A majority of U.S. voters think DHS Secretary Kristi Noem should be removed, and disagree with how ICE is operating.
—Women are 47 percent of athletes at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
—California Gov. Gavin Newsom fired back at threats from Louisiana over abortion protections.
—President Trump appointed no women of color to federal judgeships in his first year in office.
—A new Kansas law introduces a “bounty hunter” aspect to transphobic bathroom bills.
—Some ICE detention facilities and prisons refuse to provide appropriate menstrual products.
—A Kentucky couple was arrested over a year after seeking care for a miscarriage.
—A wave of “common sense” candidates, more than half women, recently won competitive school board races in swing states. Sixty-two percent of “extremist” candidates lost their elections, showing that culture war tactics like book bans may no longer resonate with local voters.
… and more.
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.
Media commentary has explored seemingly every angle. Or has it? On closer examination, something has been missing.
The latest batch of Epstein files—over 3 million documents, only around half of what the Department of Justice reports to have amassed—has unleashed a new cast of characters, a list that includes tech titans, health influencers, litigation rainmakers, university leaders, sports executives, Hollywood moguls and international royalty. None of the those named in the latest tranche of Epstein files strike me as people I ever assumed possessed particularly stellar moral character, and their collective fall from grace doesn’t shock me.
But what does turn my stomach is how pathetically small the price of entry into Epstein’s world appears to have been.
The expressions of regret now surfacing—I am ashamed, this is not who I am!—read less like moral reckonings and more like the lament of those who simply got caught.
The emails reveal a tawdry economy of access: absurd favors, crude jokes, dating advice, shared handwringing about #MeToo, and giddy acceptance of gifts—Apple Watches, Prada bags, monogrammed sweatshirts—that these already powerful figures could easily have bought themselves.
Whether any individual named in the files participated in or witnessed Epstein’s crimes is only part of the story. Just as telling is the desperate desire to remain in his orbit—often long after his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from girls.
That eagerness to maintain proximity, for so little in return, speaks volumes about how power protects itself—and what too many were willing to overlook to stay connected to it.
In 2019, Jovana Gligorijević wrote a damning profile of a Serbian influencer who had connections to political power players and alleged criminal networks.
Gligorijević works at Vreme, an independent news magazine founded in 1990 by intellectuals and activists fighting state censorship. Aside from her political reportage, she’s covered stories on sexual violence and, specifically, how Serbia’s judiciary treats rape victims. She notes wryly that in her experience, “when you report on politics and human rights, sooner or later you come across the far right as the root cause of the problem.”
Other independent women journalists like Gligorijević that are critical of the Serbian government face sexual insults, threats of lawsuits, surveillance, smear campaigns and online rage.
Featuring the cases of Amber Heard, Gisèle Pelicot, Brittany Higgins, Colombian journalists at Volcánicas and others, Silenced traces a global pattern of defamation suits used to punish survivors and the reporters who amplify their stories.
It’s a fitting but frustrating coda that Silenced itself faced legal threats right after its festival premiere.
(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)