So Kristi Noem is (finally) out of her cosplaying role as the great protector of so-called “homeland security” and to force the nation’s remaining population to be and look more like her and her bossman. Pam Bondi has bent over backward, forward and sideways to keep the nation from really seeing every damn thing in the Epstein files, no matter where the depraved chips fall. And Ghislaine Maxwell is, so far, the only person imprisoned for helping orchestrate the rape and abuse of God knows how many children in an international sex-trafficking ring to please the man to whom she dedicated her life and work.
These three women sicken me. Other women have disgusted me, too, in the ways they sell out women and people of any color but theirs and prop up bad men and systems meant to hold women back. But this power trio has sold out all women and girls by not only being hopelessly devoted to the horrific men who propped them up and paid for their finer things in life—but by actively resisting any efforts to use their platforms to come clean with information that can start changing the guarded way we women have to move through this world.
Truth is power, and these women hold it close, cover it up and do everything possible to protect some of the worst men this nation and world have ever seen. Two of them have reached heights women have had so little opportunity to even aspire to, and they use those platforms to preserve and propagate misogyny, racism and xenophobia—somehow parroting the idea that they are among God’s chosen people.
Ghislaine Maxwell tasted all that wealth has to offer while ruining the lives of girls and young women by ensuring they became rape victims, as far too many of us are, thanks to a system that protects sexual predators and punishes us if and when we speak out. And it’s not like she’s now speaking out and blowing the whistle to protect other victims, past or future, of the rapist ring she helped manage.
Women are supposed to be better than this.
Women Who Sell Out Women
Kristi, Pam and Ghislaine are not the only horrific women supporting the system of misogyny and abuse of power with their silence, of course. It filters down the power chain, often to feed not-famous women’s own greed and quests for power, including over other women. Think of all the supporting players who emerged during the powerful #MeToo movement—before the system basically shut it down—as colleagues of and assistants to rape and protectors or rapists.
They are women who sell out women. What a groovy club to be in.
One of the horrors of the eventual outing of Harvey Weinstein, the rapist geezer who is still trying to appeal his rape convictions, is how many women surrounded him, helping him abuse women or getting so-and-so media execs on the line to help them cover it up.
These women—assistants, handlers, marketing types, friends—covered for Weinstein just as a whole sick network of women covered for Jeffrey Epstein and his universe of pedophile friends. They were part of the business of rape; they kept quiet or helped cover it up, or spread rumors about potential accusers on behalf of their male benefactors because they were trying to rise to the top, or keep their jobs, or get paid more, or had a big crush, or whatever.
The system has turned such women facilitators into monsters, too, and there should be a special room in hell for such liars and enablers.
Yes, many women probably feared being fired, lied about or having former Mossad agents follow them around. (Read Ronan Farrow’s book “Catch and Kill: A Conspiracy to Protect Predators,” which the system, including The New York Times and other male media leaders, also tried to discredit.) On some level, I get women’s fear—it’s why I didn’t reveal my rapist’s name—but you know what? Those facilitating predators’ schemes have the power to quit, to say no to hush money, to chart a new course, as many have done. Or to tell someone pressuring you to shut up about their friends’ and colleagues’ predator/enabler habits to go to hell.
I didn’t use those exact words to a woman inside my industry who told me off a couple of years ago for my old #MeToo-era tweets, but I telegraphed them face-to-face as she chastised me. She was so, so outraged that back before the Mississippi Free Press existed, I had publicly criticized a corporate-media leader in the wake of network-TV serial rape by his close friend on his watch, not to mention his own NDA history with women on his own staff. I stared her down in Zoom as she told me off for criticizing her apparent friend while explaining to my co-founder and me that my critique of the news leader was why she was killing a plan to help fund reporters and training of Mississippians in our newsroom.
In so doing, and so brazenly, she confirmed my lifelong belief, along with that of probably most survivors, that speaking up about the sexual-predator system would bring financial retribution. And let’s be honest: Most of us survivors don’t have deep pockets; many of us worked our way through high school and missed a meal here or there. Note the backgrounds of most of Epstein’s victims as evidence. We’re considered powerless and, thus, easy victims.
That recent revenge event is seared in my memory. She, of course, indicated that I was obsessed. Huh. Let’s talk about obsession.
Why yes, as a rape survivor, I am rather obsessed with the protection of girls and women, not to mention men and boys who are sexually abused. I’m also obsessed with enablers’ sick efforts to protect predators as well as the power circles of men and women, damn it. And as a rape victim who knew I wouldn’t be believed if I exposed him, I’m damn obsessed with those who punish those of us who want the nation, and the world, to finally fully face and stop this brazen abuse from spreading amid a cloud of protection.
More than anything, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of watching this system recreate itself forward, helped by women of all people.
If you want to know how the Epstein and the Weinstein and the NBC scandals stayed behind the curtain for so long despite so many knowing, there are many hints in my obsessions. Too much is about intentional intimidation and the creation of fear in women for ourselves, our futures, and those of our loved ones and colleagues. The system forces us to stay quiet and punishes us when we don’t.
Yes, it is true that speaking up comes at great risk for many women, and a lot of us have families or staff members who need the resources we might lose for speaking up and trying to break through the codes of silence. Both my team members and my home state would have benefitted from the resources my old #MeToo tweets cost me, and the money would’ve contributed to Mississippi’s economy, as all donations to our nonprofit do.
And I can’t say I haven’t held back more of what needs to be said in order to be able to pay and grow this remarkable team to do this systemic work for our state. Women do the risk math continually. I have a continual internal cost-benefit analysis over the words I use, as so many women do.
But as we’ve seen with so many Epstein-network survivors, there is a higher ground we must aspire to—but it takes women banding together to protect (and frankly, in many cases, fund) each other with the power of sheer numbers backing us up. We need a strong sisterhood, and yes brotherhood, standing with us and speaking out against predators, no matter who they are and of what party. Sexual predation isn’t just red or blue, and we all know it.
Still, far too many women don’t bother to even do a harm analysis; they just go along with predators to get along or get ahead. They sell us all out. Women are supposed to be better than this.
No Good Person Can Let Up Or Stay Quiet
There is hope now, however tenuous. But no good person can let up or stay quiet.
Our current attorney general is under subpoena right now for apparently blocking and/or removing Epstein files and could be facing impeachment, led by transphobic Republican Rep. Nancy Mace. How we all, not just women, respond now will define each of us for future generations. So many women and men are speaking out against the horrors that populated Jeffrey Epstein’s sick universe.
For God’s sake, if you can’t speak out and demand all truth about actual pedophilia, you might as well pack it up and head on down to heaven to beat the traffic.
I’ve lived long enough to know how hard it is to get even “good” men to criticize their brothers around sexual abuse of women and other misogyny. Watching so many of them demand the facts and the full Epstein truth now is a huge deal and an improvement over the handwringing we all heard, even from liberal men during the #MeToo revelations. Somehow, many managed to still blame women too often for how they dressed, remarks interpreted as an invitation for rape, being in the wrong damn place at the wrong time, whatever. But more men, in both parties, now have found the courage to speak out.
Cheers, for instance, to Rep. Thomas Massie for holding firm in his demand for full Epstein disclosure. It’s too bad that supposedly God-fearing Mississippians in the House and Senate, and any elected official of any party, aren’t just as outspoken as Massie. It is very telling and, if there is a hell, this has to get you there.
It’s also a defining moment for women across parties. Who knew that former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene would come out so strongly against the administration’s course reversal on the Epstein files after he was elected? Think what you want of her for her life’s work to date, but it is one thing to support certain conservative policies and another entirely to defend and hide the identities of pedophiles and sexual predators. She proved she knew the difference.
Despite her little gold cross, Pam Bondi has not proved that she cares about the safety and care of women and girls at all. She, like Noem and Maxwell in their execrable ways, picked a sick road to fame and success as she hides the truth of so many Epstein files from public view. In so doing, she is preventing, or at best delaying, a reckoning our nation desperately needs now on behalf of every adult and child ever abused in the system of sexual predation passed forward for generations.
Too few people, including those who should be our sisters in blowing up the system, had the moral decency to demand transparency and change like those Epstein victims have modeled for all of us while risking their lives and livelihoods. And don’t misunderstand me: I believe all three of these women will go down hard into the dustbin of history; the only question is if they will be the only ones, while American men in the Epstein files escape unscathed.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is a woman with the power to effect real change by bringing those predators down, but so far, she has refused. Women are supposed to be better than this.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.