To be the most shocked about the women possibly involved in it all

As with the rape gangs scandal, there is a real class element to this. Middle and upper class men and women seeing working class women and girls as low calibre, disposable, and exploitable bodies with little intelligence or humanity to consider. Actually you can see that in their attitudes to surrogacy and prostituion in general.

Why do you think women are a different species?

how on earth could women see children and young girls being abused and hurt and actively make that happen?? how could PEOPLE see that should be question. Who cares if they have a penis or a vagina, what difference does it make?

I am so sick of all these women who talk about sisterhood, or try to portray us as fragile innocent idiotic weak victims, when we are trying to prove equality. Being equally abusive is not exactly what we want from equality, but what stopped these women is the lack of opportunity, not a superiority.

and the question stands, how can people be so I don't know, pervert? I am not even sure of the word

But if we could stop pretending that men and women are 2 different species, because that does not help anyone. In the same token, men are as outraged and disgusted about the reports.

I’m not. I have two female family members both married to convicted paedophiles. The mental gymnastics they are able to accomplish to convince themselves that their and their partners behaviour is perfectly normal is quite amazing. They can explain away everything. How DNA ended up where it did for entirely innocent reasons. Why it’s really not their partners’ faults that a young teen girl enticed them into the situations they ended up in. One even acts as a front so he can be around vulnerable children where it would be weird for a single man to be there alone, but not a ‘nice’ older couple. Some women are incredibly desperate. None of this is at all shocking to me. Unfortunately.

Yes true, there has been progression but somehow the pretence of moral superiority that goes on now by so many of the most powerful people in the western world is just as sickening it’s own way as the barefaced misogyny of the past/in other parts of the world. The hypocrisy, collusion and enablement are their own brand of bleak and terrifying. Not minimising the experiences of women in other times and places. I’m incredibly thankful that I’m not one of them but I certainly don’t celebrate where we are today.

Whilst it is bleak and there is an awful lot more to do, it is also wrong to think that westernised culture has not progressed dramatically. In huge swathes of this world, particularly Africa and Asia, women are used, raped and abused as a matter of course. It is just the norm for men to have full control and women are treated as second class citizens. It is embedded into their culture. We are way ahead of this. Most men and women in western cultures welcome equality which is why this has been headline news for years.

This is big but let's get it into context. Westernised culture is comparatively 'decent and superior'. By claiming it isn't belittles the every day abuse that women endure in other parts of the world. This is awful but we are still incredibly lucky to have been brought up in a westernised culture.

I think with the right mindset you can actually portray yourself as doing the girls a favour. "Sex work is work", and so you're just helping someone get a job. "Maybe technically they're a year or two underage," you tell yourself, "but it's normal for girls that age to have sex." And so you recast the bad things you're doing as something actually positive.

I would imagine his money would be a big draw for many women

GM went to school with Cressida Dick head of the Met responsible for investigating Prince Andrew a few years ago

I think part of this that people forget is about the Madonna / whore dichotomy that was internalised completely. I worked at Harrods while some of the abuse was happening but the word on the shop floor I was part of was ‘he has some women up there who suck him off’ - zero sense of them as victims, just a lumpen sense of some faceless women.
So one side of the coin was always perfect women who never abuse or get abused, and others who are slags or just unlucky. Now inwardly I know I felt ‘lucky’ about not being subject to it - and a lot of shame about other problematic sexual things that happened in my life - but the ‘fault’ or the luck was mine alone. Zero sense that the men were at fault primarily.
This two tier way of looking at women was so ingrained 20 years ago - grooming just wasn’t understood. And there was a sense of fatalism about what you might be subjected to.
So now we can see if men have a bevy of women ‘servicing’ them it is definitely dodgy and probably coercive.

For me all of this has been a wake up call that we as (westernised) humans have done a good job of fooling ourselves for generations that our societal & moral structures make us decent and superior. But this wool is now falling from our eyes and we see corruption and exploitation to exert or gain power (sex and money) is everywhere and at the heart of so many of our institutions. It’s profoundly bleak to me. Yes, men have been undoubtedly the drivers of this rather than women, but I just wonder if that is because they have held more power.

So sorry for everyone who has experienced abuse.

Many women benefit from having a group of women who are there to be abused as it takes the expectation off them, providing self preservation in a male dominated society and also an opportunity to indulge sadistic and abusive tendencies in yourself. I also feel a lot of people, men and women are disposed to be utterly in thrall to certain personality types - you see it all the time that they believe certain people (usually men) can do no wrong and will defend anything those people do to the death as the cognitive dissonance of seeing what is actually happening is so distressing to them.

The statistics on men regarding violent crime, abuse/sexual abuse/of children etc clearly persuade me that they are the weird and perverted of the human race.

So when a woman is involved, yes, it is odd and to be questioned. Usually some sort of vulnerability/persuasion involved.

What are men and mothers of boys doing to address this, or is it just biology? Do they need forced medication?!

When there’s massive sums of money and power involved, you’d be surprised at what women (and of course, anyone!) will do.

No, but that is exactly what I'm saying. Morality, fairness, kindness- call it what you like, it's the product of self-interest and self-preservation. When it stops serving you, individually, and maybe your immediate community, it becomes redundant.

Have you read Hobbes? As this is his entire thesis. We all give up some of our individual autonomy to a higher authority (in his conception a king because he was writing at a time when the idea of kingship was highly contested) and that authority enforces law for the common good. And that's the basis of morality. It's how he explains the emergence of the polity - or, as he calls it, the commonwealth.

I have read my history, and my political philosophy as it happens, and a bit of anthropology too, so this isn't an entirely uninformed viewpoint

Women can be just as depraved and evil as men. My first abuser was my biological mother. When I read my files as an adult I realised that my adoptive mother only agreed to adopt me to appease her husband. It is partly related to saving face and maybe the relief that they are being spared from it. A list of comments I have heard over the years.

Comments I heard as a teenager in the 1990’s.

It happens to girls like her, it is to be expected - mother of a girl who I wanted to be friends with (I was a late adoptee aged 11). The comments were heard about my 13 year old self.

How could you tell such lies about your family - female social worker. - aged 13.

She is enjoying the attention and notoriety it brings - female head of year - aged 13.

A list of things I must do “to be kind” written by female social worker when being returned to the abusers home include the types of clothing I would wear and cover myself up (I was 14 not buying my own clothes). My AM presented me with nightdresses I would not even wear as an adult (sliky slip dresses). I wanted to wear onesies and cover up my body. - A month after my 14th birthday.

I am disappointed she has not changed, she is promiscuous as ever - female social worker to police when I complained about my groomer (clearly an peadophile) abusive boyfriend. I was aged 16. This man was also the son of one of my teachers she introduced us and encouraged the relationship I was 15 to his 20. It was well known within the school and no adult ever tried to stop this relationship. They probably felt sorry for my maths teacher and listened to her lies. After all I was just a child from care, not worth anything unlike the lovely proper young girls who were not cared for children.

All documented in my social care files in black and white. All comments made by middle class white females.
As an adult I had the humiliation of hearing jokes about men being called Pedo-Pete for dating a women a few years younger e.g a 29 year old male with a 26 year old women. Jokes about Pedo’s were acceptable. All made by women.

Your vagina had scaring from you choosing to have sex so young - female practice nurse who had known me since childhood during my first smear test.

I actually asked my adoptive mother as an adult if she thought I was a liar, she said no you are very honest (I cannot lie it is a well known trait of mine). She admitted she knew the abuse was true however would still not leave him. I tried until I was 30 to save her, offered to find a home just for us. She stayed with him and I had to walk away for my mental health. Not long afterwards I spent time in a mental health ward.

Sadly a majority of middle class just ignore the abuse and I think are glad it is not them. I have also experienced as I said in a previous post that some women see it as drama - trauma porn. It only happens to certain types of girls.

I survived initially by building a persona of being a sex positive, nearly anything goes pretending that sexual intimacy is fun and being a bubbly, chatty outgoing girl/women inside I was a wreck. I struggle with touch (that is more than my sensory autism). The only man whose touch I can tolerate is my husband’s.

I often wonder if one day, I would have the courage to ask those types of women who belittled me what is like to enjoy sex and intimacy as I have never in reality experienced it.

To answer the question, some women choose to turn a blind eye, they are either depraved or just glad it is not them.

Theres no "possibly involved"

A lot of epsteins facilitators were female. In 2007 he negotiated a non prosecution agreement. all of the named co conspirators were female.

Maxwell was the just the most high profile in a long list...

Its an inconvenient truth.

Im inclined to think that is an oversimplification. It seems to go against the idea of evolution to me. If, historically, we were never anything but brutish, we would have died out long ago. The capacity for cooperation, love, fairness etc is imo built in just as much as violence and self preservation..You dont go from hunter gatherer to farmer just by being constantly violent. Those people were.more sophisticated than you think. Read your history and prehistory.

Seems Naomi Campbell was a good friend of JE and GM.
Interesting that she has now bought a baby for herself.

They are responsible for their own behaviour though.

Often women are gate keepers.

Let’s concentrate on the perpetrators first. Before we go down the “women are responsible for policing men’s behaviour” route.

We're literally watching the attorney General who's Jon is law enforcement, who has watched all these videos of the most heinous things being done to children. Knowing exactly who has done what. And is desperately trying to protect the men and throwing the victims under the bus.

There are lots of women who believe men are superior and can treat women and children how they want. There are also lots of women willing to overlook how evil men are for their own gain.

It was a regime where Epstein was rich and powerful and surrounded by people who did what he said and talked about what he did in ways that excused it. People who called him out for what he was would be silenced very quickly, sacked, thrown out, paid off, potentially threatened. People would be attracted to his orbit by the glamour money and power and then would join a circle who laughed off his behaviour as Jeffrey being Jeffrey, as being a ladies man, as liking young women. You can see the language between all the men in the emails. They joked about it. And joking excuses and legitimises it. Some would stay because of the money, some might have been frightened to speak out, some might have thought saying anything wouldn't have made a difference. We know some went to the police and not much happened to him initially. Most would have justified what was happening by thinking that the women and girls were there voluntarily. There was less understanding of the mechanics of sexual abuse and less media coverage of it as well. I've talked to men about this case and seen them comment on it online. They focus on the age of consent as if that is the most important thing. So even today people don't understand what was going on. We know women are punished for speaking up about patriarchy and abuse, belittled, minimised, mocked, ignored, silenced so I don't find it especially shocking that women were involved alongside men.

What is your question?

Yes, I would like to think the same but I don't, not really. How many generations do you think morals would survive without a society that rewards them? Whether that is through religion or laws. I don't believe that morality is innate, I think it's self interested. And if you remove the benefits of behaving "morally", eventually the behaviour will die out too. As pp have pointed out, this is what you see in societies where the rewards have been temporarily removed. It's just a question of how long it takes for people to revert to self-preservation at any cost.

You might not become a murderer or abuser, but would you definitely stand up and try to stop it at risk to your own life, if society no longer said it was a bad thing to be?

I'm with Hobbes on this. Life, in a state of nature, is "poor, nasty, brutish and short". We forget that at our peril.