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

Put simply - money. Virginia Guiffre is a great example here. She had friends, family and even a boyfriend. They all knew that her life, her flat, her car her trips abroad were all funded by Epstein in exchange for money. But not one of them did anything about it. Her boyfriend watched her leave the house and come back every day knowing full well what she was doing whilst she was out but never did anything. She was funding his life as well as hers so apparently that was fine. From the top to the bottom, its all about money.

This.

I’m from what was Yugoslavia, and I lived there through the most recent shitshow that was the 90s. When societal structures break down the ‘unthinkable’ swiftly becomes reality.

That's assuming nobody has morals though. I can't imagine being like that, regardless of whether you told me there was no consequences, no comeback, doesn't cost anything or whatever.
I'm surely not the only one out there who feels like that. So we're not entirely doomed yet.

Meh … shit happens. Not unthinkable at all. It’s happening right now , all over the world on small or large scales. “Unthinkable” is how people get away with it for so long. Unthinkable makes people let their guard down. Unthinkable gives people a false sense of security. Unthinkable makes people doubt themselves, even when they want to do something. Unthinkable makes them quiet, pliable, compliant, complicit.

Eyes wide open (but carry on anyway).

The perpetrators will be almost all men, and the victims will be almost all girls, I don't think we should lose sight of that.

Is it less common or dont we hear about it as much, how many men would admit or report abuse by a woman?

I suspect GM got a sense of both power and protection from the father and then Epstein. If she had feelings for Epstein and he clesrly preferred very yoing gorgeous model types. then I'm guessing by repositoning herself ss a recruiter/ perpetrator she can set herself apart from his other women.......and convince herself of her ' superiority'. That would be my take on it.

I edited my comment after you quoted, but will copy and paste in reply here:

Take Nazi prison guards - there were many notably vicious women amongst them. Further removed, you also have those bureaucrats that developed and maintained the infrastructure of genocide. The Yugoslav wars - when neighbor butchered neighbor. People who had happily lived in close proximity to one another justified slaughtering each other. The same in Rwanda.

Most of these people weren’t particularly remarkable or abnormal people who wouldn’t have lived/ didn’t otherwise live perfectly ‘good’ and respectable lives. They would have done, and did. That’s the banality of evil.

Tbh all of this stuff was simply considered normal for the patriarchy. Women henchmen, pick me girls, handmaidens & good girls or bad girls. All trying to find a way to survive. So that some became perpetrators themselves. Throw in group behaviour, power politics, desperation, corruption & greed. The trafficking, commodifying of women as sex objects, breeders, slaves, and literal commodities is as old as time. It’s a core pillar of patriarchal power & its economy. It’s what our post colonnial, post imperial patriarchal society was built on. It’s horrific. And it’s still happening. Thank god we as a society are able to fully see it. How nobody could see it during the Saville era despite it being blatant. Thank god the tide is turning. Patriarchy is horrific.

Unfortunately, women have always been perpetrators and will always be perpetrators too. It’s less common than with men, and therefore we are more shocked when we see women act in such a way.

Why do people assume women are more saintly than men? And what nonsense is this sisterhood all women are perfect angels thing

Since when?

There are good and bad men same as women why is it so hard to understand

As far as no one noticing anything or 'doing anything about it' - what would you, personally, have done?? Really and truly? If you had somehow stumbled upon what was happening do you think you would have been the only soul who would have said something?

This sort of set up is incredibly powerful, as we are seeing. Do you imagine that you would have been in a position to tell anyone, without threat or consequences? And who would you have told? Who could you trust? Who would have had the power to do something?

I think you're being naive.

Because you don’t want it to be?

It’s true. People are largely as good or as bad as circumstances permit them to be.

Take Nazi prison guards - there were many notably vicious women amongst them. Further removed, you also have those bureaucrats that developed and maintained the infrastructure of genocide. The Yugoslav wars - when neighbor butchered neighbor. People who had happily lived in close proximity to one another justified slaughtering each other.

Most of these people weren’t particularly remarkable or abnormal people who wouldn’t have lived/ didn’t otherwise live perfectly ‘good’ and respectable lives. They would have done, and did. That’s the banality of evil.

Yes, I'm fed up with that. Women ARE often victims, but victims can also be perpetrators and it's infantilising to always assume women are victims. If women choose to sell sex and promote 'sex work is work', many posters still say she is only a victim. A woman chooses to be an OW : it's only the DH's fault. A woman enables abuse: she was abused too and couldn't help it.

Many argue against these attitudes, but too many promote them.

If men have the agency to be bad and do bad things, so do women.
There is some fucked up double-think in this thread that assumes men can be bad regardless of social norms but women are only bad because of social norms.
JE was a beast. Those women that enabled him were just as bad. No-one should be making excuses for them.
Nevertheless, in the 1980s, it was a joke that 14-year-old Mandy Smith was going out with (possibly fucking?) 48 year-old Rolling Stone Bill Wyman. In fact, the tabloids thought it was a hoot. I completely agree that we should protect kids but we need to persecute the enablers as well as the perpetrators

Right, but let's remember it still IS mostly men who rape & murder and force no consenting people into orgies etc Women have always done these things too, but they've still been in a minority in such groups.

'this is the ugly truth of human nature. Sometimes I wonder if this what we are as a species, underneath. Just strip us back, tell us we can have what we want, do what we want and our so called humanity fucking vanishes.'

• I agree to some extent with this but am more optimistic. And moreover, this still mainly applies to men.

I spoke to someone this week who knew her and said she was totally screwed up and that amongst their friends it was assumed she had been sexually abused by her father

I’ve also heard from another friend who came across her in the 80s that she was an obnoxious bully who delighted in sneering at underlings.

as has already been said, two things can be true at the same time.

I've done a lot of reading about Nazi Germany, (and about Soviet soldiers' behaviour during the war) and I'm afraid you're probably right. But hey there were some resisters, and Nazism didn't win in the end.

I'm with you on this - as in I can see and be disgusted by the men being involved, but can also see that women can be just as involved too.
I haven't been following the files too closely as I just can't bear to, but women seem to get a free pass on MN from what I've seen over the years. We're always victims, can never think for ourselves, anything we do is a product of the patriarchy and we've just been conditioned to think a certain way
To hell with personal responsibility.
Fuck all that, as you say, where were the safe adults?

On a very small scale , but my mum sent me to a maths tutor that she had been “warned” about.She didn’t get any financial gain, in fact she paid for it. She thought I’d be safe because I was fat. I wasn’t. Plus the return … good grades, going to uni , becoming successful probably made it all worth it. She did fuck all when I told her what happened. As did so many other parents , because the gossip mill must’ve been running is she was warned. And yet dozens of parents , professional, educated people (doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers) kept sending their kids to the great, amazing, esteemed professor X. Paying for the privilege of having their teenage daughters abused. And doing nothing. Saying nothing. Except for whispered warnings.

Now time that by 1000000. The power, the influence ,the strings , the corruption nevermind the money.

The biggest enabler of all is surely Pam Bondi - and her weird "protective of abuser" redactions.