Its own cloak of glamour

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February 14, 2026

Epstein’s cult demanded human sacrifice, preferably that of young virgins. (“He likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Donald Trump smirked in 2002.) The scale of the demand was vast: the US department of justice estimated that Epstein sexually abused more than a thousand girls.

Those girls were, in this system, fungible assets, their value interchangeable with that of the dollar. They functioned as currency in an elite gift economy, passed around as tokens of status – to be granted the right to use their bodies was to be in with an ultimate in-crowd, a charmed circle of mutual enrichment and reciprocal advancement.

Sexual predation was not a mere perk of membership. It clearly functioned as a rite of passage. Either directly through participation in the abuse of these girls, or indirectly through choosing to ignore what we might call ambient rape – the muzak of misogyny that played all the time in every room of Epstein’s mansions – collusion was established and maintained. Guilt was shared – but so was the sadistic pleasure of male domination. “Pain,” writes one of Epstein’s anonymised scientific correspondents, “is interesting.”

The Epstein files (and we should remember that millions of documents are still being withheld, presumably to protect the guilty) are the underground waste disposal system of a very open and massive construct: the backlash against feminism. These are secret histories of a counter-revolution. Epstein and all those within his astonishingly expansive sphere of influence – bankers, speculators, political players, but also scientists, intellectuals and artists – are culture warriors. The war is being waged on women.

And some of the warriors are men we (women) thought of as friends or allies or both.

At one level, this is all about unrestrained power. But at another it is very much about restraint: on women’s right to object to sexual predation. “Just as the Me Too movement has gone too far so has Botox” (Soon-Yi Previn to Epstein). “Bugs me a little the metoo (sic) entitlement What does an actress think if she goes to a producer hotel at 2am?” (Name of sender blanked out). “MeToo. MeNotTrue” (physicist Lawrence Krauss). “Good news btw is that woman on conciliation committee seems like a sweetie.. she is old.. not some young metoo bitch” (Krauss to Epstein on a hearing into his behaviour at Arizona State University). “The hysteria that has developed about abuse of women” (Noam Chomsky to Epstein). And so on.

Ah yes. We know what “young metoo bitches” Krauss had in mind. It’s so bitchy of women to object to sexual abuse and generalized subordination and contempt.

Violent misogyny never went away, of course – it is literally at home in every society. Yet it needs to be validated as an elite practice, a way of life not just for unkempt thugs but for the rich and famous. It needs its own cloak of glamour.

What the Epstein files show is that there is no jarring contradiction between, on the one side, high-flown discourse (pretentious discussions on the nature of consciousness), ostentatious philanthropy, private jets, private islands, gorgeous mansions – and on the other side, the cannibalistic consumption of young female lives.

The grammar of wealth meets the vocabulary of the brothel. One indelible image from the files is a photograph of a wall-sized mirror from one of Epstein’s houses on which is imprinted in big capital letters: “F— ME LIKE THE WHORE I AM.”

It’s as Germaine Greer said decades ago – “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.”

Comments

19 responses to “Its own cloak of glamour”

Mike B

Feb 14, 2026 10:10 AM

This speaks to the gigantic blank spot in my gay brain. It’s as indelible it’s the blind spot in one’s eyeball:

How could a heterosexual man hate the object of his desire so much?

It simply does not compute.
iknklast

Feb 14, 2026 11:15 AM

Muzak of misogyny – that is a great phrase.

Mike, I have often suspected they hate us because they desire us. And those of us who have passed the age of desire (or whom they find undesirable) are not entitled to anything but contempt.
Omar

Feb 14, 2026 11:55 AM

It’s as Germaine Greer said decades ago – “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.”

In my student days, used to drink in the same back room of the same Sydney pub as Germaine. (The Royal George in Sussex St) But I never sought to engage with her in one-to-one conversation.

We all found her to be pretty awesome, but nobody hated her. So she must have got that from her contacts and observations she made out there in the wider society..
Omar

Feb 14, 2026 12:13 PM

See also:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-04/germaine-greer-book-the-female-eunuch-feminist-blockbuster/104875722?utm_medium=social&utm_content=sf276270363&utm_campaign=abc_news&utm_source=m.facebook.com&sf276270363=1&fbclid=IwY2xjawP9tdtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETJLN0FUTDREOEpTdDM1SG40c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHjNJmn3GEeTcMJaKD7Q8yAGDzsegIn193uoByUx89d_yBEwTTOnZTyU0lPVJ_aem_Vsi70J0PVgV6UbXtIXcwIA
Mostly Cloudy

Feb 14, 2026 12:32 PM

Iknklast #2 :

As a heterosexual male, I don’t understand the mindsets of people like Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew Tate or the “Pick-Up Artists” that Laura Bates wrote about.

How could someone simultaneously sexually desire women but at the same time loathe them to the point of total dehumanization? Maybe such men resent women’s perceived sexual power over purportedly “rational” males, and thus lash out at women. Hating women *because* they also desire them, as you pointed out. And also despising women who don’t fit in the category of sex object (older women, gay women, feminist women).
Mostly Cloudy

Feb 14, 2026 12:33 PM

A prediction: the release of the Epstein files is going to trigger a widespread public movement against the abuse of women, similar to the Metoo and Time’s Up Movements.
Bjarte Foshaug

Feb 14, 2026 7:45 PM

Mike B #1

As a militant single guy, I have never hit on a woman in my life, but I haven’t spent my life in a sealed box either. I have heard the way other men talk about women when they get together (including to me), and I have seen the way they behave when they get out, and the theory I have developed goes something like this: There is an irreducible element of disrespect involved in the very act of hitting on a woman that cannot be entirely explained away by talk of consent. As important and necessary as (enthusiastic!) consent is, it can only be given or withheld in retrospect (you cannot consent to a proposal that hasn’t been made in the first place), by which time the “damage” may already be done*. Before consent can be given or withheld there has to be something to consent to or not, and there is no “safe” or “right” way to get that “something” across**. The very fact that somebody is thinking of you “in that way” can be awkward and uncomfortable enough, especially if the interest is not mutual. Hence every man who hits on a woman must at the very least be willing to let her pay this emotional and psychological price in order to get what he wants, which is kind of disrespectful when you think about it. All these men must know this on some level, and so have an incentive to convince themselves that all women are bitches who don’t deserve respect anyway to justify their own behavior (cognitive dissonance at work again). There is obviously also the ever-present chance of rejection which can be humiliating to the man, once again creating a psychological incentive to blame the woman and discount her opinions as worthless. I suspect this is one the main sources of misogyny in the world. Of course it goes both ways to some degree, but the stakes are hardly symmetrical. As they say, men are afraid that women are going to laugh at them. Women are afraid that men are going to kill them.

* As someone once put it, a woman having to say no to you is a sign that a line has already been crossed, even though failing to respect that “no” obviously means crossing an even more fundamental line.

** As Steven Pinker has pointed out, the compromise is usually to cloak the proposition in euphemisms and innuendo about “etchings”, “Netflix and chill” etc. to generate plausible deniability, but the very lack of specificity that makes the deniability (semi-)plausible in the first place obviously also increases the risk of catastrophic misunderstandings.
Bjarte Foshaug

Feb 14, 2026 7:52 PM

Mostly Cloudy #6

I have already predicted the inevitable backlash against that public movement.
Steven

Feb 14, 2026 8:01 PM

the US department of justice estimated that Epstein sexually abused more than a thousand girls

JFC

Those guys in Rochdale were pikers.
Steven

Feb 14, 2026 8:06 PM

Before consent can be given or withheld there has to be something to consent to or not, and there is no “safe” or “right” way to get that “something” across**.

Actually, this is doable.

Tradesmen (contractors, delivery men, etc.) who think a female client might be receptive to sex will sometimes slap on some heavy cologne. It’s an obvious signal. If the woman is interested, she can make her interest known; if not, nothing needs be said by either party.

I have seen this first-hand (I was there; I smelled the cologne) twice over the years.
Your Name’s not Bruce?

Feb 14, 2026 11:09 PM

… the cannibalistic consumption of young female lives.

From the outside we can see it’s cannibalism, but from the inside, the young females being consumed aren’t human. They are some lower species to be factory farmed and bought to slaughter, and served on a plate. Resources to be exchanged and exploited. It would only be seen as “cannibalism” if one of these powerful men turned on another of their own, say if Trump had fucked Chomsky. That would be a category error, friendly fire, an own goal, poor form, treason. That would have been unforgivable. That would have crossed a line that they would never even see with regards to their victims. You don’t fuck your own kind, you fuck the other.

How could a heterosexual man hate the object of his desire so much?

See above. If someone who eats steak really loved and respected cows, they wouldn’t eat steak. We disguise the being-ness of many of the creatures we consume, turning them into inert, no-longer-animate products, resources, and food. Just like trees become lumber, cattle become beef, chickens become poultry, sheep become mutton, pigs become pork. But they don’t “become” these, we turn them into these things, exercising our assumed power and right to do so. And we now do so on an industrial scale, strip-mining protein from sentient beings. So with these young women trafficked by Epstein and his circle. The consumers and the consumed.

How could someone simultaneously sexually desire women but at the same time loathe them to the point of total dehumanization?

This feels so close to the same thing I’ve wondered about trans identified males: How could someone simultaneously want to become women, but at the same time loathe them to the point of total dehumanization? (The partial answer being their knowledge that they can never actually become women.)
Your Name’s not Bruce?

Feb 14, 2026 11:53 PM

Additional thought:

It would only be seen as “cannibalism” if one of these powerful men turned on another of their own, say if Trump had fucked Chomsky. Or vise versa.
Mike B

Feb 15, 2026 1:49 AM

B. F. , thanks for taking the time to explain that. I can relate to it as a gay man by remembering one episode I experienced many years ago in a gay bar: A fellow there, slightly drunk, the friend of a friend, expressed interest in me by reaching behind himself and grabbing onto my fingers when I tried to squeeze past him (crowded bar). I had to wrench myself free (I can’t think of a more explicit way of expressing to him that I was NOT interested). This wasn’t enough, and he continued to grope and grab me throughout the night. . . . Then the mutual friend asked him if he would give the two of us a ride home! He made an obscenely obvious detour to drop my friend off first before doubling back to my apartment. When we got there and he leaned over the seat toward me, I opened the door and fled. It’s hideous to think that women suffer from this sort of behaviour constantly. Men can stand up to other men, but it isn’t so easy for women.
Bjarte Foshaug

Feb 15, 2026 2:20 AM

Ugh!

That sounds awful. My own stalking experience wasn’t that blatant, but it sure as hell wasn’t fun…
Bjarte Foshaug

Feb 15, 2026 3:05 AM

And, of course, the obligatory Catch-22s: If a woman is not prepared to give every male creep on the planet the benefit of the doubt up to the last millisecond before the rape is a fact, she’s a “man-hating bitch”, but if she does behave the way she’s required to behave to avoid being called a “man-hating bitch” and does indeed get raped as a result, she “should have seen it coming from miles away” and “doesn’t deserve better” because of her stupidity. It’s all “Do you want it in the head or the stomach?”. You can’t win.
Mostly Cloudy

Feb 15, 2026 4:05 AM

Mike, Bjarte, I’m sorry those things happened to you. You both have my sympathy.

Your Name’s not Bruce? #12 : It might also have been seen as “cannibalism” if one of the powerful men had gone after another of the powerful men’s “trophy wife”, like Steve Bannon going after Melania Trump.
Mike Haubrich

Feb 15, 2026 5:51 AM

My take on it is that such men love the expression of power over women, and that’s what they desire more than the actual sex. That’s what motivates rapists, and that’s what these guys are doing. Rape. So, yes, they do hate the women they exploit and trade.

And, YNNB, I don’t think this is a great analogy:

If someone who eats steak really loved and respected cows, they wouldn’t eat steak. We disguise the being-ness of many of the creatures we consume, turning them into inert, no-longer-animate products, resources, and food. Just like trees become lumber, cattle become beef, chickens become poultry, sheep become mutton, pigs become pork. But they don’t “become” these, we turn them into these things, exercising our assumed power and right to do so. And we now do so on an industrial scale, strip-mining protein from sentient beings.

In an industrial agriculture sense, perhaps, but most small farmers and ranchers do have a great deal of respect for the livestock. I think we have lost touch with our connections to our food and agricultural products, but we can have a sense of the continuity of life while eating cattle that we have birthed, named, fed, and even groomed. Same with sheep. The connection to the french roots of the words we use for the animals as food stems from the Norman invasion, where they royalty used French as their native language and consumed the products of the peasantry, who still spoke the more Germanic early English.
Your Name’s not Bruce?

Feb 15, 2026 11:44 AM

In an industrial agriculture sense, perhaps, but most small farmers and ranchers do have a great deal of respect for the livestock. I think we have lost touch with our connections to our food and agricultural products, but we can have a sense of the continuity of life while eating cattle that we have birthed, named, fed, and even groomed.

Fair point, point taken. It was indeed the industrialized, factory farm system I had in mind when writing this.
iknklast

Feb 15, 2026 3:14 PM

Sooner or later, it comes down to men seeing women as not-quite-human. Animals that are lower. A playwright I know wrote a play in which he compared women to kittens (so not even adult animals, but fuzzy cuddly big-eyed infant ones). What disturbed me most was now many women were talking about the importance of this play, and the insight of the playwright.

No insight. There was nothing there that hasn’t been said eleventy million times by someone somewhere – give a boy a kitten, and he’ll learn how to treat women right. Bullshit. And I repeat, bullshit. Women are not kittens, and raising a kitten – or a calf, a lamb, a kid, a butterfly, a whatever – will not give you any insight into how to treat a woman. We are not soft, cuddly kittens just waiting for someone to stroke us.

I’ve never seen anyone treat a baby animal (especially a kitten) with true respect. They are fond of them, maybe proud of them, but they do not respect them, other than in the way that Mike @#17 describes. That isn’t respect in the same way you would give your male friends and colleagues respect. It is respect for the ‘other’. To many (perhaps most) men, women are the ‘other’ in the same sense that kittens are the ‘other’.

Treating a woman with decency and respect is the correct way to formulate a good relationship with a woman…though I realize there are women who do not want that, but if you start out that way, adjustments can be made later. Most men I know demand respect from the women, but do not reciprocate. If they do reciprocate, it is usually very perfunctory, automatic.

I consider myself fortunate to have found a man who actually does have respect for women, who admires intelligence and education in women, and who doesn’t treat me like a kitten, a sex toy, or an automatic dishwasher.