By Ann E. Menasche.
This piece is the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of Feminists in Struggle as an organization.
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal, as revealed in the Epstein files, provides all that we need to know about the men (and a few women) at the highest echelons of wealth and power and their support of, or at best indifference to, the ubiquitous sexual exploitation of women and girls. In their eyes, women and girls are merely sexual objects, property to be bought and sold, used and abused by men. Women are not recognized as full human beings.
Clearly, Epstein himself was both a misogynist and a sociopath – a sex trafficker and serial child molester, raping and torturing underaged girls, delivering them as prey to the powerful men he flew on the “Lolita Express” and “serviced” on his islands. He was a pathological liar (he even lied about obtaining a college degree
). a thief, a crook, who raised his millions through dishonesty and complete lack of a conscience. He was also a eugenicist and trans-humanist, enamored with the fantasy of creating a super-race from his own sperm; and a close collaborator with the reactionary leadership of the Israeli state, whose dehumanizing of Palestinians and myriad crimes against humanity are re-known (none of which have made Jews one iota safer).
The scandal is also a mirror into the souls of the men who run our society – the Banksters, war profiteers, imperialists, real estate speculators, owners of the fossil fuel industry, Big Pharma, the health insurance industry, corporate politicians and others of or beholden to the billionaire class who cavorted with Epstein and embraced him as one of their own. It is not a pretty sight.
The Epstein files have also exposed men on the Left including well-known intellectuals and anti-imperialists like Noam Chomsky who associated with, and defended Epstein. This continued even after Epstein was convicted of child abuse, thereby revealing Chomsky’s own sexism, hypocrisy, and moral bankruptcy.
The refusal of so many men on the Left to recognize women as fellow humans deserving of full rights or to see us at all, has not only led to defending sex traffickers like Epstein, and to supporting institutions that degrade and exploit women’s bodies such as prostitution, pornography, and commercial surrogacy. It has also led to the wholesale embrace by the male dominated Left of gender identity ideology that deems women’s rights expendable and subordinated to males who claim to be women, thereby rendering us invisible or reduced to our body parts or lack thereof (“uterus-bearers”, “non-men”).
Patriarchy and capitalism are joined at the hip; one cannot be uprooted without the other. Men who purport to be on the Left need to figure out whose side they are on, i.e., whether their identification with male power and privilege is greater than their commitment to securing a peaceful, just and sustainable world for the women and ultimately for all the people of this planet.