Clicking through the “Epstein Files,” the chaotic 3-million-page selection of documents released a month ago by the Department of Justice, related to the horrific abuse of women and children by dead financier Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful associates around the world, can make you feel like you are going crazy. These pieces of shit talk about raping, selling, and torturing human beings so casually. As fresh revelations from the files hit the news, survivors of sexual violence have been left reeling by how familiar these public descriptions of very personal violations feel, and theories abound regarding who was involved, how sex trafficking conspiracies may have been arranged, and, given the positions of power all these rapists occupy, what this means for global politics.
The oppression of women and children forms the molecular structure, the building blocks, of the oppression and exploitation of the world.
Though the content of the Epstein files should be shocking to any decent person (as in, it’s probably not shocking to the millions of men who make and consume child and torture porn), it is not exactly surprising that the men who shape and maintain our collective nightmare share a hatred of women and like to pathetically flex their enormous oppressive power by victimizing the most powerless people. The likes of Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, (the former) Prince Andrew, and so many others commit concentrated expressions of the patriarchal violence which poisons our entire society. Most survivors of sexual violence and harassment (81% of women in the US) have not been victimized by an actual member of the ruling class, but the ruling class writes the terms of our trauma and then sells it back to us.
The Epstein Files are emblematic of the contempt for the humanity of women and children that can be seen in the fact that 1 in 3 women worldwide have been victims of rape or attempted rape, and can be seen in intimate relationships, on the street, in workplaces, online, in the medical industry, and especially in porn and the sex trade.
Take just one striking example of how extreme forms of sexual violence are nurtured by the law enforcement apparatus of the ruling class. In 2018, 17-year-old Chrystul Kizer rose up against her rapist, the prolific child sex trafficker Randall Volar, shooting him dead and freeing hersef and the many other Black girls Volar had abused as part of a child pornography ring. Volar, a white man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was already under police investigation at the time of his death for trafficking Black children from Milwaukee, though the state waited three months after finding evidence to bring charges and it is unclear whether Volar would have ever faced criminal justice. Chrystul was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Volar was not a famous, wealthy, or particularly powerful man, but the state closed ranks around this pedophile and defended even in death his right to sexually exploit poor, Black girls.
One more example: In France, 70-year-old grandmother Gisele Pelicot learned that her husband had been drugging her, raping her, filming it for the internet, and recruiting other men from online to rape her. She was raped by over 50 different men of various ages and backgrounds, many of whom protested at their trials that they didn’t commit rape because Gisele’s husband consented for her.
In France, as in most of the world, victims of sexual violence have a right to a closed, private trial, where they can stay anonymous and the media is not allowed in the courtroom. Gisele, who had never been anything like a women’s rights activist, asked a simple question: why should I be the one who has to hide my face? She waived her right to a closed trial, stating that “shame must change sides.”
When the #MeToo hashtag took over the internet, an upswelling of women, especially in the entertainment industry, speaking out about sexual violence brought the oppression of women to where it should be, at the forefront of public consciousness.
Unfortunately, it never went beyond the limits of online discussion and a few especially rapists being “cancelled,” and eventually dissipated into the realm of celebrity scandal.
The courage of the Epstein survivors in speaking up against some of the most powerful men in the world must not be brushed away with the death of Epstein and the arrest or deposition of a few associates.
The only way to honor their bravery is to let their voices unleash the cries of the masses of women, taking frank discussion of sexual violence out of the private sphere of hushed conversations and therapists’ offices and into public consciousness.
We need to mobilize in a movement that reaches women in the sex trade, women who are behind bars for fighting back against their abusers, women who are brutalized in the brothels that spring up around every US military base, women being economically and sexually exploited in sweatshops around the world, women being abused by prison guards and shackled as they give birth, women who are raped as the spoils of imperialist war.
Our cry should be that it is time for shame to change sides. Dare to Struggle wants to bring women together to raise our voices against patriarchal violence and bring down the monstrous system that creates it. Reach out to talk about how we can mobilize women for our own liberation.
Dare to Struggle 