Epstein, Diddy, and the Cruel Spectacle of Gender-Based Violence
Otherwise known as: Epstein / Diddy -- SCREAM RAGE
I saw a post about a group in Chicago who goes to the lake, counts to three, and screams into the horizon. Honestly? Sign me up.
As I sat down to write this, I opened a blank Google Doc as I usually do and went to title it something that would indicate the general topic. Today, I quickly wrote: “Epstein / Diddy - SCREAM RAGE.
I’m tired. Of trying to package rage neatly. Of mincing words. Of pretending there’s a way to write about gender-based violence that won’t upset people. Because what I’m sitting with is not calm. It’s fury and rage.
I am so sick of reading about domestic and sexual violence in the media and feeling as though I am reading some romance-turned-thriller novel. I am so tired of the headlines about conspiracy and Epstein and the horror and shock behind those headlines on what-could-be with-who and where. It’s like we’re in a really fucked up game of Clue.
For those of us who’ve spent years in this work and those of us who have experienced violence, it’s not shocking. It’s familiar. Gender-based violence isn’t seen as harm—it’s treated like a scandal. Like conspiracy. Like gossip.
Case in point: Diddy’s lawyer calling his abuse of Cassie a “great modern love story.” Seriously? In the same breath, he admits to domestic violence caught on camera—while dismissing her and “Jane’s” stories of coerced sex as just… “unconventional sex lives” that were consensual. “Freak offs” were not consensual. They were fear-driven, as discussed under oath by both Cassie and “Jane”. But the jury bought it. And so did much of the public.
Then came the lube. The defense claimed the government was overreaching by confiscating sex-related items. He referred to it as “policing the bedroom.” You heard that right. A man accused of rape and trafficking is the victim—because someone took his lube. We are right back in the 1950s and 1960s when domestic violence and marital rape were private matters.
The audacity to decry “bedroom policing” and proclaim “excessive government intrusion” when people who can get pregnant are literally dying or being jailed because of abortion bans across this country.
The audacity of calling it “bedroom policing” when law enforcement seizes lube—while in every sexual violence case, defense attorneys rip apart survivors’ sexual histories to discredit them, shame them, and claim they’re either lying or asked for it. Survivors’ private lives are fair game. But a rich man’s lubricant? That’s where we draw the line.
Welcome to the fucking patriarchy, folks.
And back to the damn Epstein Files. I am not going to unpack it all — you can read the articles, lord knows there are plenty. I don’t actually care what is or isn’t in those files. Not even a little surprised that the rich and powerful cozied up to Epstein—at best they looked the other way, at worst they joined in the abuse he orchestrated. Because where there is power and wealth there is sexual violence. The guessing who is in those files and what they knew or did is a disgusting and tactical distraction from WHAT happened. In all the headlines and thousands of words written about this, no one is thinking about or offering space for the survivors.
Well, perhaps Federal Prosecutor Maureen Comey was when she blocked the release of sensitive information that could compromise the safety and privacy of the survivors in the case. But she was just fired, so there’s that.
We have decades worth of evidence to demonstrate that the system was never built to protect survivors and we have months worth of recent evidence that society does not care about the people who experience the harm, the exploitation, the abuse. So many are here for the click baits and the conspiracies — jumping on the bandwagon discrediting survivor’s first-hand stories of what happened, believing the person who inflicted the harm because of their fame, power, and wealth.
So yeah. I want to scream into the lake. Deep, guttural screams.
