Marina Hyde on Epstein’s enablers: will they get away with it? |

[BuffysBigSister]

Just wanted to share this video where Marina Hyde (journalist and podcaster) talks about the misogyny of the Epstein saga. I agree in all this chat about political scandal etc the mainstream media are not discussing the deeply rooted misogyny behind all of this. It is depressing, dispiriting, totally unsurprising (to most women).

I love Marina and she is bang on here.

She was saying as much on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast. She brought the subject back to this a couple of times.
The world is interested in which rich men are paedos or nonces and the UK is interested that a knight of the realm did something corrupt while serving in the government.
But none of them are that bothered about the real victims in all of this, the women.
I've seen women on MN (even) excuse the situation because the girls weren't under 16.
It matters more that they were young, impressionable and lied to by a rich English woman with a posh accent - that made the abject lies they and their families were told more credible. It matters a lot more. But surely the fact that they were trafficked matters just as much, they could have been in their 20's and it would have mattered.
It's a tale as old as time. Money matters, reputation matters, titillation matters, but females don't.

So far the only 2 Brits implicated by the files are a homosexual, so the subject of the degrading treatment of the women in this loathsome boys club is not relevant, which is why the MSM and politicians get to ignore it.

The second is a unwanted spare, who's not been charged with any crime, but has had everything stripped off him and has now been banished to living quietly in the country, off his brother.

It'll be interesting to see if any more high profile Brits are named in these files, and if any charges can be brought against anyone of them. If they are we'll see how much attention is paid to the women then, I'm betting none of course.

Branson has been named in them. Not much seems to have been said about him.

All those lefties fretting over transwomen have been schtum so far.

Helen Rumbelow wrote an article in the Times about the misogyny of the Epstein files. I haven’t been able to read it yet as my DH keeps forgetting to reactivate my subscription but I think it is addressing exactly this issue.

@Ox136jl Someone shared it with a share token on a different thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5485848-brilliant-article-on-epstein-by-helen-rumbelow-in-the-times-tw-distressing-content

Hopefully this works for you!

I read the guardian article about how the men involved wrote about women.

Nothing has changed. I didn’t really think it had but seeing it in black and white is so utterly depressing.

There is a wafer thin veneer of respect and equality put on for show in modern society (and of course sometimes not even that) but really it is just business as usual.

Where are the huge anti misogyny protests, attended as much by men as women? Oh yeah we can't have them can we because even the name for our class of human offends some men.

The movement against misogyny has been so effectively scuppered. Men who benefit from the status quo exist across all sections of society, in all political flavours. We can't really win against them.

Greer told us, she warned us. It feels like a hard lesson to learn

Agree with everything she has said. It’s disgraceful that after all of this evidence, everyone will move on and nothing will have changed for women and girls.

On Skye yesterday there was an article about the young girls abused by Epstein's lot. It mentioned how many of them were 17 and still at school, and what one victim has said about being made to go to give a man a massage, which she didn't want to do, and then being sexually assaulted. On reading the article it came home to me that almost all the articles I've seen have just been about the men and what they wrote in emails etc. On the radio, they've sometimes prefaced it with a sentence saying that we should think about the victims, but have then gone on to talk about the men and only the men. I think we could do with more information on what the men actually did to those girls, how they were "recruited" and what they were put through.

The impression I get is that the men thought that they were in a protected environment where they were safe from any consequences. How did Epstein create that illusion? And did none of the men realise that they were being photographed or more likely filmed? How were they lured into being so reckless?

There was a question about this on Any Questions R4.

Very direct asking why isn't anyone talking about the underlying misogyny.

And apart from one panelist (a woman sadly) who only wanted to go on about it being all Labour's fault the other's tried to address the issue. Even Caroline Lucas came over as a strong feminist, and had to remind myself of the Green Party ideology.

What was also interesting, when Laila Cunningham (Reform candidate for London Mayor) starting spouting stuff about it wouldn't get better until the UK stop illegal immigrants, the audience booed her! This was in Essex, which the MSM claim is going to go Reform.

Also the first caller to Any Answers was a woman who spoke movinglly about here experience in 1980s of being exploited by a man who gave her her first job.

It was heartbreaking. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002r39h

Not sure how big an audience this programme gets, but horrible to hear what happened to her and the impact on her life hopefully it will make som R4 listerns stop and think.

What does this mean?

I think what I dont understand is how so many people seem to think what was happening is rare. And of course men cover up for each other.

It's all levels of society. Given the opportunity men will behave like this. And as we have also learnt or been reminded of, it can happen in families. And institutions.

All that is happening know is that because of this being about rich people, everyone can go on about the detail of the places it happened, etc..

Being flown across the Atlantic is in the end no different tnn being taken by taxi from one side of the town you live in to the other by men for other men.

Lets just hope all these journalists suddenly finding this worthwhile material for an article are just as zealous when the same is happening it remote parts of the country, run down estates, children's homes, seaside towns, big cities. And for all we know Fleet Street.

everytime I hear someone saying ‘’my thoughts are with the victims’ or ‘we should focus on the victims’ I think oh fuck off, you’re only bringing up the victims to deflect from you and shut down the questions - they haven’t cared about the victims before today

Me as a sex class will not care unless it affects them. In the same way we agree wheelchair users need built environment access, but until we are in a wheelchair, we won't understand how bad everyday designs are.

Men benefit from this. Our best bet is not trying to make them understand, but get women into places of power who do understand.

I heard Any Questions and was heartened by the boos and shouting directed at the Reform woman. She was just nauseating.

I heard it as well and was incredibly frustrated by the idiot who kept banging on about Keir Starmer when asked about misogyny. She should have been shut down because she was still repeating her answer to the previous question.

The Times article was great on this, quoting extensively from the letters. They were utterly vile. And yes I too would like to hear more about the ways those girls were recruited. Interestingly one of the emails quoted was from a girl refusing to be one of those girls who recruits girls for Epstein.

Carole Cadwalladr wrote a really good piece on her Substack too (her column is called The Broligarchy). She, Gaby Hinsliff, Marina Hyde, Helena Rumbelow are telling it like it is, but 50% of the population aren’t listening.

For me this whole situation also highlights part of the enormous argument against legitimising and sanitising prostitution.

The men Epstein was providing victims for can say but I thought she was being paid/ I paid her in their disingenuous defence that they had no idea about trafficking and abuse.

If buying or selling sex was always illegal they wouldn’t have this to hide behind.

The story of men/males taking advantage of, and exploiting, women and girls is as old as the hills. And clearly, given certain circumstances, and an opportunity, many men, all kinds of men, are susceptible to behaving in this way.

What does this tell us? i suggest it tells us that one of the most negative masculine traits is this opportunistic and exploitative attitude towards sex, and towards females generally. ( though men also sexually abuse and exploit boys and other men too)

Is this negative manifestation the result of a 'patriarchal system' and its accompanying 'misogyny' which can somehow be eradicated entirely, or is it more simply a negative trait that is inherent to 'masculinity' and/or the male sexual urge?

All humans experience the same kinds of instinctive drives and urges - which are accompanied by strong emotions, and in civilised societies there is an attempt to control or regulate their expression, in pursuit of social harmony and functionality. There tends to be a system of rewards and punishments which are meant to reinforce desired behaviours, and suppress, or guard against, more negative or destructive ones.

Obviously those with power have more control and ability to shape the value system (with its accompanying rewards and punishments). It could well be that power differentials are hard-wired in - since there seem scant few examples of societies in which there is total equality of status between all members. Most often it is the biggest, the strongest, the loudest, the most skilful, the most agile, talented, able, clever, cunning, industrious...... who tend to accrue more influence, more power and more benefits.

This is where safeguarding principles come in, and the concept of a safety net and/or basic standards of provision. If we know these are the enduring facts of human nature and human society then we, at best, take measures to mitigate against the worst effects and impacts of that.

The Epstein case shocks us and wakes us up to this enduring reality.

“What made the men think they were protected…”

Continued experience.

Only one person has been convicted. And she’s not a man. Arguably Andrew M-W’s fall, cushioned as it is, has been due to his obnoxious behaviour parading through Windsor great park, grinning. And had Mandelson not sent the ‘financial emails’ he would not be facing the same opprobrium.

girls and young women trafficked internationally; girls and young women trafficked across cities/towns; girls and young women passed around by rich men; girls and young women passed around by “grooming” (rape) gangs; vulnerable girls and young women drugged and raped by multiple men; married women drugged and raped by multiple men.

This isnt a case of Epstein-the-unique-monster, much as we are tempted to believe and the fevered and salacious media focus only on him is sickening in itself.

You must be following a completely different bunch of lefties than me.