When news of men’s coordinated sex attacks erupt in the media, such as the recent Cornell 7, or the Giséle Pelicot case, or the global Whatsapp groups dedicated to rape techniques, not to mention the Epstein files - we desperately want to think about these atrocities against women and children as an abomination. We call for the punishment of the depraved men who did it. We feel compelled to think of these crimes as a horrific breakdown of societal norms.

Author Aurora Linnea has written an extraordinary essay titled The Unexceptional Jeffrey Epstein: Rapist Everyman and Ubermensch published on her Substack Holistic Anti Atrocity Feminism - which takes the very opposite view. In her essay, Aurora examines Epstein’s sex crimes enterprise - trading girls and women to other men for sexual abuse - in a historical context. She traces the practice of men working together in informal or formal networks to sexually violate, back in history - showing us that Epstein and all other predator networks IS our social norm, and actually fits very neatly into our cultural landscape.

In this hour we talk about how we stop pretending that Epstein is a rare monstrosity, what gang rape as a practice reveals about male sexual mores and norms, and the very central role that sexual violence against girls and women play in how men bond with each other and how they broker status and power amongst one another. Or as Aurora puts it, “ women and girls are very valuable capital in the homosocial maneuvering of men under patriarchy.”

EPISODE LINKS

Man Against Being (Spinifex Press) by Aurora Linnea

The Unexceptional Jeffrey Epstein: Rapist Everyman and Ubermensch

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

40 years ago, Jane Caputi wrote a brilliant book about serial sex killers - The Age of Sex Crime - which is as relevant today as it was in 1987. In the book, Jane analyzes the histories of well-known, individual serial sex killers, from Jack The Ripper to The Boston Strangler to Son of Sam to Ted Bundy and many more - and answers fundamental questions about how and why they came to be - and how they fit into our cultural narratives. Jane argues that far from being monstrous aberrations, serial sex murderers occupy a role in our patriarchal culture that is both accommodated and endorsed.

In this hour Elle talks with Jane about all aspects of serial sex killing; the folk hero appeal of serial sex killers, how sexual terror is used to preserve male power, how the serial killers, police and media co-create “monster genius mastermind" narratives and how these narratives fit hand in glove with a common collective male fantasy of hurting women.

We also talk about the real silencing of victims and how women everywhere are invited to identify with the serial killer’s victims, both in the real-life cases, then in the true crime media that retells the gruesome details, and then finally in the fictional movies, books and television that serves up an endless buffet of dead women, bloody sacrifices to male power.

EPISODE LINKS

Professor Jane Caputi

The Age Of Sex Crime

Are Women Human? by Catharine MacKinnon

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

Abuse and systematic cruelty against women and children is common across the world, but the term torture is still reserved mostly for men - think political prisoners, prisoners of war, victims of evil regimes.

But guests on today’s episode, retired-community-nurses-turned-global-human-rights-activists Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald have a plan - a 60-year plan - to broaden our understanding of torture to include women and children, and to get non-state torture recognized as a crime everywhere.

Jeanne and Linda spent their whole working lives as public health nurses in Nova Scotia, Canada, providing womb-to-tomb care throughout their province. As nurses they came into contact with a lot of family violence and abuse of women and children - and advocating for and counseling victims were an essential part of their job and their personal mission.

But in 1993, Linda and Jeanne had a fateful encounter with a woman who reported being a victim of life-long systematic torture, and they soon realized that they were dealing with a very different category of harm - and this set their careers and their lives in a whole new direction.

The story of how Jeanne and Linda helped and cared for this torture victim, what they discovered about organized torture networks and perpetrators, how they created the model for understanding non-state torture as a phenomenon and as a crime - and how they became global activists in the process - is chronicled in their book Women Unsilenced.

In this hour Elle talks with Linda and Jeanne about their story, their decades of research and founding the organization Persons Against Non-State Torture - and how they used nursing science and an unshakable ethic of care to help victims break out of silence, to tell of their victimization, to escape, and to heal from their traumas.

EPISODE LINKS

Persons Against Non-State Torture website

Women Unsilenced

Healing

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com