Epstein, the Pelicot case, ISIS brides: same story, different fonts

Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence, coercion, grooming, and rape.

Let me start with the most reliable opening line on the greatest hits compilation of modern masculinity: First, he asks you what you want.

Not to give you what you want, but to find the handle. Because once he knows his dream – actor, model, artist, escape route, scholarship, belonging, love – he doesn’t have to force anything. He needs to position himself between you and him.

Once you understand this pattern, you start to see it everywhere: in the Epstein files, the Gisèle Pelicot case and – yes – Australia’s talk about ISIS-affiliated women in Syria, as if they were the only villains in a story where men do what men have always done when given power, anonymity and cultural license: treat women like consumables.