by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I had to stop reading what was in this recent release of more Epstein Files. I am not sure if I can look again because the sickness in it is far more insidious than one can stomach. I have access to all of them that can be accessed so I can access the details of more of them should I choose to do so. Don’t send me any of them, please.

Many of the men who have clamored for the release of these files have done so primarily to make political capital out of them. They don’t actually care that much about what happened to those girls. And I don’t care if they get angry about what I just wrote. 

These are the same men who rarely, if ever, confront men who have sexually violated women and who never organize as a collective group to publicly state that this behavior is wrong. They tend to just tell women and girls in their orbit how to avoid certain types of men. That is honorable, but… 

the responsibility is still left on women and girls to police men’s behavior. And before I hear that typical smokescreen that says “she should have known better than to…” please know that those kinds of statements not only prove that this heinous sexual behavior exists, but it also tacitly condones that behavior since the men in these scenarios are allegedly not responsible for their behavior because the girls and women should have expected to be violated based on their location or their appearance, not on certain men’s inability to behave themselves. 

An excited 16-year-old girl who just met her favorite male singer and who foolishly follows him up to his hotel room when he says, “I have invited a few friends up, come join us,” should not expect to be raped. He never should have invited her up for a variety of reasons—the first reason being her age and the second reason being that she is a stranger that he just met. 

An impressionable 16-year-old boy with a crush on his neighbor, a 35-year-old woman, should not expect to be forced/seduced by her because he mowed her lawn and then helped her take her groceries in the house. Importantly, his initial feelings of violation should not be replaced with congratulatory praise for his participation in the act which confuses her wrong behavior towards him as some male rite of passage for him. 

These same men crying out for Trump and his sexually perverted team members to be brought to justice are not trying to destroy or collapse the current legal system at least until they have covered their asses and the asses of men they know that might not easily swim out of the Epstein quagmire. Illegality and sexual impropriety were built into the system. It’s still there. 

(from The Arbitrary Ages of Consent: The Epstein Files by Leslye Joy Allen on Substack)

It is not that all men (or women) are potential sexual abusers; it’s just that the ability to get away with it or have it somehow described with less severity is enshrined in the very definitions and expectations of masculinity. Rape is rarely forgiven by ethical men, but excessive male sexual prowess and promiscuity often is.

So here’s where it gets dicey, particularly for women. I have several good Black male friends, most of whom I have known since elementary school. There isn’t one of them that would not protect me if they witnessed me being physically harmed in any way by anyone.

There isn’t one of them who would not go, or at least want to go, after someone they believed had assaulted me sexually. Yet, if something like that happened I would not be likely to tell them because they would either end up in jail due to a physical confrontation with my offender or they would be injured or killed for their efforts. That kind of love is gratifying; yet some of the things that kind of love can produce is scary, and it can occasionally make certain scenarios worse. So…

the real onus for ethical and righteous men is not simply protection, but correction. If men do not confront other men about their behavior, their sexism, their misogyny, their misogynoir, and their double standards then the process of bringing sex offenders to justice will always be processed first through that “Boys will be boys” lens.

(from “The Evidence of Things Not Seen” and the Epstein Files by Leslye Joy Allen on Substack)

Furthermore, a woman’s chronic need for protection from rape or other forms of assault essentially means that the problem remains chronically intact. The only way to end this is to end the manner in which men think of women and how they interact with and talk to other men; and whether they can do the most unpopular thing to do, which is: confront other men. 

Additionally, the sexual violation of boys by men and women will continue to be swept under the rug by the perverted tenets of masculinity that insist that a boy or man should be silent because to speak up about his abuse is anathema to the myth that all men are physically and psychologically strong simply because they are men. It is male sexual assault victims’ equivalent to that nonsense that says, “Big boys don’t cry.”

Every opinion, good or bad, biased or unbiased, informed or uninformed, is also a confession. Silence, when the needs of the hour demand that you speak, can be proof of cowardice or a desire to conform to the status quo or an admission that you are protecting the guilt of someone else or even your own. 

Justice for Epstein’s victims and prison time for the participants in these heinous actions is only a first step. Yet, we won’t correct the alleged norms that generated and aided and abetted Epstein and his cronies as long as their actions are seen as some anomaly rather than proof of a perpetual problem. 

©️Leslye Joy Allen

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